Reporter starts but immediately stops.

Products

Reporter

Issue/Introduction

Error: Failed to bind on port 8082 or 8081 when attempting to start Reporter

When attempting to start the Reporter process, you see the following error: failed to bind on port 8082 or 8081.

The Reporter service starts but immediately stops.

There are two possible errors that cause this condition.

Error #1 will be in the Journal:

BCRJ:2010-06-22 11:53:37 (4c209631) ALW.ERRO.START
   src/sg_task.cpp,1780,MasterThread::Run_Init
      master_thread_00000fec(4076),,
   Web server CLR socket bind failure 10013 for port 0.0.0.0:8081

Error #2 will be in the bcreporter.out file:

2011-04-18 10:45:24 (4dac5c94) ALW.ERRO.CONFI
   src/sg_cfg_node.cpp,1945,CfgNode::CreateTreeFromBuffer
      main_00001714(5908),,
   Invalid configuration format at line 4: must be "<name> = {" or else "<name> = <value>" or else "}" (new_location = ""-//IETF//DTD")

Resolution

Error #1 listed above can be found in the Journal file, which is Reporter's logging file. Open the most recent journal file and look for the log entry listed above. You can find those Journal files in the following default locations on your Reporter server:

Windows: C:\Program Files\Blue Coat Reporter 9\journal

Linux: /opt/bc/reporter/journal

The bind failure for port 8081 tells you that some other application is holding that port open while Reporter's Web server went to use it.
Verify Reporter is starting before IIS.
Before loading Reporter, verify that there is nothing listening on 8081. A common application that uses 8081 as a Web server interface is McAfee's VirusScan; ISS (not IIS) security software is also known to use 8081.

Use netstat -an in a DOS box prior to starting Reporter to determine if some other program is listening on those ports.
Use the following command to find a port on the server:
- Netstat -an | find "8987"
To find the other Reporter port:
- Netstat -an | find "8081"
To check the status of the port every second, run the following command:
- Netstat -an 1 | find "8081"
- NOTE: This pollsl the port every second. To increase the port polling from one second to five seconds, change the 1 to a 5.

Error #2 listed above can be found in the bcreporter.out file, which is located in the root of the Reporter directory. By default, find the directory at the following locations:

Windows: C:\Program Files\Blue Coat Reporter 9\

Linux: /opt/bc/reporter/

If you see Error #2 in the bcreporter.out file, there is some extra data on the new_location = line in your preferences.cfg file, which is located in the /settings Reporter subdirectory. When you are experiencing the issue, open preferences.cfg with a text editor and look for the following line:

new_location = ""-//IETF//DTD"

That line must be:

new_location = ""

Change the line and save the file. You should be able to start Reporter again successfully. The exact root cause of this issue is still under investigation.

NOTE1: In both versions of Reporter, the Web server port configuration is kept in the preferences.cfg file. For information on how to change this on the version 9.x product, see 000010147

NOTE2: The version 8.x product also requires port 8987 opened, as two web servers are required. Version 9.x does not have this requirement; only need one port: either 8081 or 8082 if you are using SSL.

NOTE3: Another common cause of Reporter 9 failing to start is database corruption. See 000010417 for information about this condition and how to recover from it.

NOTE4: For details on other journal entries, see 000014639.