AWI page returns 404; tomcat:8080 shows 500 with No output folder

Products

• CA Automic Workload Automation - Automation Engine

Issue/Introduction

When attempting to get to the AWI login site on tomcat at servername.domain.com:8080/AWI (in this example, it's at /ECC), there is a HTTP status 404 - Not Found

Going to servername.domain.com:8080 returns HTTP Status 500 - Internal Server Error

Type: Exception Report
Message java.lang.IllegalStateException: No output folder
Description: The server encountered an unexpected condition that prevented it from fulfilling the request.
Exception
     org.apache.jasper.JasperException: java.lang.IllegalStateException: No output folder
     org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.handleJspException(JspServletWrapper.java:589)
     org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:425)
     org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServletWrapper.java:379)
     org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServletWrapper.java:327)
     javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:764)
     org.apache.tomcat.websocket.server.WsFilter.doFilter(WsFilter.java.53)

Root Cause
java.lang.IllegalStateException: No output folder
     org.apache.jasper.JspCompilationContext.createOutputDir(JspCompilationContext.java:697)
     org.apache.jasper.JspCompilationContext.getOutputDir(JspCompilationContext.java:204)
     org.apache.jasper.JspCompilationContext.getClassFileName(JspCompilationContext.java:545)
     org.apache.jasper.compiler.Compiler.isOutDated(Compiler.java:473)
     org.apache.jasper.compiler.Compiler.isOutDated(Compiler.java:439)
     org.apache.jasper.JspCompilationContext.compile(JspCompilationContext.java:598)
     org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServletWrapper.java:399)
     org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:379)
     org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServletWrapper.java:327)
     javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:764)
     org.apache.tomcat.websocket.server.WsFilter.doFilter(WsFilter.java.53)

Note The full stack trace of the root cause is available in the server logs

 

Environment

Release : All

Component: AWI on Apache tomcat

Cause

This is caused by a problem with tomcat where different users are used to start tomcat and that causes some files to be owned by a different user than they should be

Resolution

A system admin will be need to troubleshoot this issue as it is an issue with Apache Tomcat which is not a Broadcom Automic product. 

• The tomcat/logs folder may have some files that are owned by root (or another user) with rw-r----- permissions on them
• The tomcat/work directory may also have files in it owned by root (or another user) with rw-r----- permissions.

This means that the user who then starts tomcat cannot write to those files.

This was caused by tomcat be started by different users - AUTOMIC and root.  To prevent this in the future, tomcat should always be started with the same user (AUTOMIC in this case).