lookupsvc on vCenter server fails to start

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• Multiple vCenter server services fail to start with services getting stuck at starting lookupsvc
• Manual starting of lookupsvc also fails
• On the /var/log/vmware/lookupsvc/tomcat/catalina.log of vCenter server we see entries similar to below:

DD-MM-YYYY hh:mm:ss.042 SEVERE [localhost-startStop-1]
org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWAR Error deploying web application archive
[/var/lib/lookupsvc/webapps/ROOT.war]
java.lang.IllegalStateException: Error starting child
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:714)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:687)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:660)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWAR(HostConfig.java:1015)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig$DeployWar.run(HostConfig.java:1867)
at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:511)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1149)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:624)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:750)
Caused by: org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: Failed to initialize component
[org.apache.catalina.webresources.JarResourceSet@5060b727]

Environment

vCenter Server 7.x , 8.x

Resolution

To resolve the issue remove the ROOT directory and recreate it by following the below steps:

1. Take offline snapshots on vCenter(s)
2. Move the ROOT directory to a temporary location
   • mv /var/lib/lookupsvc/webapps/ROOT /tmp/
3. Restart the services on the vCenter Server to automatically extract /var/lib/lookupsvc/webapps/ROOT.war and deploy the ROOT directory
   • service-control --stop --all && service-control --start --all