How to solve management service not starting up in Worklight 6.2

Question

I have installed Worklight 6.2 on Linux, using Liberty 8.5.5 and DB2 10.5. Created the DB2 databases for WRKLGHT and WLREPORT. Have executed the Server Configuration Tool and successfully created a Worklight Server configuration (did not have any errors in the Console view when running the Ant tasks, tables were created successfully in the database, and configuration shows deployed status in the SCT). Created a runtime environment in the SCT, also seemed to succeed (no errors in Console view, tables created/updated, runtime environment shows deployed in the SCT). Stopped and restarted the Liberty server.

Can hit Worklight admin at (/worklightconsole) and log in successfully using my demo user, however it then indicates there are no runtime environments. When trying to access runtime environment at /worklight/console (which should be the correct URL given how I created the runtime config in SCT using my Worklight project WAR), I get various errors: first "Service unavailable since initialization is not yet complete." then after retrying for about a minute or two I get "javax.servlet.ServletException: java.lang.RuntimeException: Timeout while waiting for the management service to start up at com.worklight.core.auth.impl.AuthenticationFilter.isWaitingForInitialization(AuthenticationFilter.java:561)".

Seems the management service is not starting up successfully. Upon reviewing the messages.log I see the following error precede it: "FWLSE0242E: Failed to synchronize application runtime information. The servlet initialization failed and the servlet will deny serve. The most common reason is a failure in JMX communication with the ''worklightadmin'' service. You need to restart the web application after fixing the problem. [project worklight]" and this creates an FFDC log.

I know this is a lot of information but trying to be complete. Anything I should check to fix the JMX communication issue and get the management service starting?

Answer 1

Thank you for the replies back. Turns out there is an issue with Liberty (I was on 8.5.5.0) and the IBM JDK I was using (1.7_64). Swapped out to the Oracle JRE (1.7.0_60-b19), pointed Liberty to use it, and the problem was solved. I am pursuing a fix with the Liberty team through IBM Support for this issue.

Answer 2

I cannot give a unique solution, but I can explain the situation and this may lead to a solution.

The runtime servlet initialization tries to contact the Worklight Admin service. The Worklight Admin service is a web application that must be running when the runtime starts. The runtime was not able to find the Worklight Admin service. It waited a while, in case that the Worklight Admin service is just starting up, but then gave up due to a timeout because within a given time, it could not find the Worklight Admin service.

Possible reasons:

1. the web server is not at all configured to run the Worklight Admin service. In your case, this seems not the problem, since you can access the Worklight Console. You should also see in the log file whether the Worklight Admin service did start.
2. the worklightadmin service might never start up ... this could be a configuration problem, e.g. with the WLADMIN data base. This could also be detected from the server logs.
3. when the runtimes and the Worklight Admin service start up together, it might be that the Worklight Admin service simply takes too long to start. Let's say you have 100 webapps, and the runtime starts first and the Worklight Admin service starts last, it could be that the 98 other webapps take too much time to start. In that case, make your web server lighter ... run only Worklight on that webserver, nothing else.
4. the Worklight Admin service starts, but the runtime cannot communicate with it. This indicates that the JMX communication is misconfigured. Follow the documentation of the webserver how to configure JMX. For liberty, see http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSD28V_8.5.5/com.ibm.websphere.wlp.core.doc/ae/twlp_admin_restconnector.html?cp=SSD28V_8.5.5%2F1-5-2-10-1&lang=en