Troubleshooting Problems Accessing the V3.5 and V4.0 Administrative Console

Technote (FAQ)
Problem
Troubleshooting problems connecting to the WebSphere® Application Server administrative console for all releases of V3.5 and V4.0.
Cause
If you are unable to access the administrative console, follow these steps to quickly determine the cause.
Solution

I. Verify whether the console is connecting to a local or a remote administrative server process

    1. If the console is remote, check to see if the console can be accessed locally.
    2. If you cannot access the console locally, then you will not be able to connect remotely.
II. If the console can be accessed locally but not remotely try the following steps before performing a trace:


    1. Determine if you can resolve the hostname/IP address from the remote machine?


      a. If you are using DNS to resolve hostnames, then perform the following command from a command window:

      nslookup hostname

    This command should come back with the following information:

    Server: DNS Server Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQN)

    Address: DNS Server IP Address

    Name: Hostname Fully Qualified Domain Name

    Address: Hostname IP Address


      b. If the server is not registered or is misconfigured in DNS you will get the following response:

      *** DNS Server FQN can't find hostname(the host you tried to resolve.:Nonexistent


    domain.

    You will need to consult your network administrator to ensure that the

    hostname can be resolved by DNS or host files.

    2. If the above step was successful, then verify that the client and server are running the same version of WebSphere Application Server and the same Java™ Developer Kit (JDK) levels.


For example, If the server is running V3.5.4, then the client should be also.

To verify that client and server are at the same JDK levels, perform the following

command in the $WAS_HOME/jdk/bin directory:

java -fullversion

Both client and server should be running the same level of the JDK.

III. If after verfiying steps 1 and 2, the console will still not load, gather the below traces and contact support:

1. Admin Server Trace:

You will want to edit the admin.config file of the host you are connecting to via the

adminclient.

For all releases of V3.5, edit the $WAS_HOME/bin/admin.config file and the following two lines:


com.ibm.ejs.sm.adminServer.traceOutput=/path to WAS logs directory/adminservertrace.txt
com.ibm.ejs.sm.adminServer.traceString=com.ibm.ejs.sm.*=all=enabled

For V4.0, Edit the $WAS_HOME/bin/admin.config file and uncomment the
following two lines:

com.ibm.ejs.sm.adminServer.traceOutput=/path to WebSphere logs directory/adminservertrace.txt
com.ibm.ejs.sm.adminServer.traceString=com.ibm.ejs.sm.*=all=enabled

Save the admin.config file and then recycle the adminserver. To ensure that logs are
from the current test only, you should delete and/or backup the /logs. This will give you only new logs to review.

2. AdminClient Trace

When running the administrative client, run it in debug mode:

For all releases of V3 and V4 use the following command:

adminclient debug hostname > adminclienttrace.txt

NOTE: If you have modified the bootstrap port for the administrative server
from its default value of 900 then you will also need to specify the
port number in the above command after the hostname.

NOTE: On Unix® platforms, run adminclient.sh and on Windows platforms use
adminclient.bat.

Send both trace files, adminservertrace.txt and the adminclienttrace.txt to analyze why
the connection is failing.












Document Information

Product categories: Software, Application Servers, Distributed Application & Web Servers, WebSphere Application Server, Administrative Console (all non-scripting)
Operating system(s): Multi-Platform
Software version: 3.5, 4.0
Software edition: Advanced, Standard
Reference #: 1049179
IBM Group: Software Group
Modified date: 2003-12-08