OWB error: "Received fatal alert 'handshake_failure'"

Products

• Clarity PPM On Premise
• Clarity PPM SaaS

Issue/Introduction

When trying to open a project in Open Workbench (OWB), the following error is shown: "A server error occurred during login: - Received fatal alert: handshake_failure".

Cause

This is caused by incompatible cryptographic algorithms between Open Workbench and Clarity.

This is likely because a mismatched (and old/unsupported) version of OWB is in use, and Clarity has been configured to use only TLS 1.2. Older versions of OWB shipped with old versions of Java.

Resolution

Check that the version of OWB match the version in Clarity, and that they are both supported:

• Clarity: Click on the About link, in the top right corner, and look for the 'Version/Build'
• Open Workbench: Click on the blue 'i' icon in the top right corner, and look for the version number inside the parentheses.

If you are using a current and supported version of Clarity, download the matching version of OWB by going to Home > Personal > Account Settings > Software Downloads.

To check if your version of Clarity is supported, see: Clarity Release and Support Lifecycle Dates

Additional Information

See also: Clean uninstall / install of OWB