Failed to initialize TCP server socket: Socket error:9999

Products

• CA Single Sign On SOA Security Manager (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign-On
• SITEMINDER

Issue/Introduction

After trying to start the Policy Server it is going down after some seconds. While reviewing the smps.log the following error is seen:

[3327/140582757984][Mon Jul 02 2018 04:30:35][CServer.cpp:8629][ERROR][sm-Server-01660] Failed to initialize TCP server socket: Socket error:9999
[3327/140582757984][Mon Jul 02 2018 04:30:35][CServer.cpp:6923][ERROR][sm-Server-03470] TCP port initialization failure

 

Environment

Policy Server 12.8.x

Resolution

This error occurs when the Policy Server process cannot open the sockets needed to start the process. Usually, this happens because the TCP ports are already taken by another process.

This can happen if there is already another Policy Server process running using the same ports, which could be a stale process that was never shut down properly, or if the service was stopped and started too quickly. It can also occur if there are problems at the OS network layer or another process already reserved the TCP ports.

Restarting the server usually solves this issue.