SPS does not start and sends an HTTP error 503

Products

• CA Single Sign On Secure Proxy Server (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign On SOA Security Manager (SiteMinder)
• CA Single Sign-On

Issue/Introduction

Description:

- Installation of AG on Windows OS

- When starting the httpd.exe file and try to access the home page of the server, it gives a HTTP 503 error.

- No logs are created for the proxy-engine and no errors are logged in httpd logs (error logs are in DEBUG level).

 

Environment

Release:
Component: SMSPS

Resolution

HTTP error 503 means that the service is unavailable. According to RFC 2616, "the server is currently unable to handle the request due to a temporary overloading or maintenance of the server. The implication is that this is a temporary condition which will be alleviated after some delay. If known, the length of the delay MAY be indicated in a Retry-After header. If no Retry-After is given, the client SHOULD handle the response as it would for a 500 response."

This can be due to multiple reasons one of them being installation failure.

You can start by verifying the Install logs of the AG that can be found under /CA/secure-proxy/install_config_info 

In this case, when checking the installation log, it appears that the service could not be started after the installation had completed, failing on the error message:
"only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted. : make_sock: could not bind to address 0.0.0.0:80"

that means that another Web Server or service is currently listening on port 80 and you should reconfigure the SPS to use another port, or stop the another server if not in use.