Serco ePortal Service not starting

[darragh]

Hi, we have a server setup for ePortal and Facilty Admin, all the servces are running locally on this machine however i'm now moving it to a virtual machine, this is a clean installation of W2K3, MS SQL, IIS and Facilty Admin along with the Facilty controller + ePortal webservice

After i had everything installed following the instructions, ported the database over. I have Admin working and connecting to the SQL DB, also the facilty controller can connect too, it's service "Facilty Data Server" is running however when i go to start "Facilty ePortal" it begins to start and however never sucseeds and returns this error. nothing shows up on the system event log.



I guess this is just a typical error, and there must be some log somewhere to find out the problem, If anyone has seen similar error please let me know.

Thanks in Advance
Darragh

[gb2048]

Dear Darragh,

I have you checked what ports IIS is serving? Try stopping IIS and see if ePortal then works. If there is a clash, then ePortal can be configured to operate on a different port, though I cannot remember exactly where off the top of my head.

ePortal is Apache Tomcat based and thus a separate web server.

Cheers,

Gareth

Hi, we have a server setup for ePortal and Facilty Admin, all the servces are running locally on this machine however i'm now moving it to a virtual machine, this is a clean installation of W2K3, MS SQL, IIS and Facilty Admin along with the Facilty controller + ePortal webservice

After i had everything installed following the instructions, ported the database over. I have Admin working and connecting to the SQL DB, also the facilty controller can connect too, it's service "Facilty Data Server" is running however when i go to start "Facilty ePortal" it begins to start and however never sucseeds and returns this error. nothing shows up on the system event log.



I guess this is just a typical error, and there must be some log somewhere to find out the problem, If anyone has seen similar error please let me know.

Thanks in Advance
Darragh

[darragh]

Hi Gareth

I tried with IIS disabled, and no luck either. However doesn't the default install run on port 8080, and IIS port 80 and 443?
My guess is there maybe a problem with the Tomcat server, when ePortal installs is the tomcat installation included or how does that work? I guess there still have to be some setup related to IIS as eportal is not listed at a website in the IIS manager, Also this new release doesn't include instructions on setting up IIS like the previous releases, or am I wrong it doesn't require IIS now?

Darragh

[john]

There is a guide on the Serco Portal site on how to configure IIS for Eportal have you followed that?

[darragh]

There is a guide on the Serco Portal site on how to configure IIS for Eportal have you followed that?

Is this the website your referring to?
Serco Support

these are the 5 documents I have
1. ePortal_Installation_Guide_v09.1
2. Facility Admin Install Guide v09.1
3. Facility Product Release Notes v09.1
4. Facility Scheduler Install Guide v09.1
5. Facility Timetabler Install Guide v09.1

is there any other support site? as i think this is for the Irish release of eportal however the two packages can't be so different?

[john]

Yes, but there is a dedicated guide for Eportal and IIS.

Sign in to the support site, go to Service Desk, Select Eportal in the left menu, then Installation and its in there the details about setting it up with IIS

The books you have are just the basic ones for general installation of the new releases but your doing a complete config from scratch so best read the IIS guide.

[darragh]

Yes, but there is a dedicated guide for Eportal and IIS.

Sign in to the support site, go to Service Desk, Select Eportal in the left menu, then Installation and its in there the details about setting it up with IIS

The books you have are just the basic ones for general installation of the new releases but your doing a complete config from scratch so best read the IIS guide.

Thanks, however had to create an account the login details I have for the other link don't work for the main support site. might get the login details tomorrow

[gb2048]

Dear Darragh,

Sorry about the delay.

As ePortal is tomcat based, I did a search and found this:

why can't start Tomcat --Installation problem?? - Hot Scripts Forums

Therefore, there should be a log file somewhere in the installation that explains the issue, perhaps a missing DLL or the Java JRE?

ePortal will not be listed in IIS as it is a web server in its own right. Check out Apache Tomcat 6.0 - Documentation Index

Is JAVA_HOME defined?

Cheers,

Gareth

Hi Gareth

I tried with IIS disabled, and no luck either. However doesn't the default install run on port 8080, and IIS port 80 and 443?
My guess is there maybe a problem with the Tomcat server, when ePortal installs is the tomcat installation included or how does that work? I guess there still have to be some setup related to IIS as eportal is not listed at a website in the IIS manager, Also this new release doesn't include instructions on setting up IIS like the previous releases, or am I wrong it doesn't require IIS now?

Darragh

[michael2k6]

As JB2048 says there are a few sites dealing with this.
I tend to find it's usually a missing dll. Go into c:\facility\facilitydataserver (or there abours) and copy the dll's in there into c:\windows\system32. If it asks you to overwirte, click no.
Try again.

Mic@Serco

[darragh]

Yes, that had the answer!, it was a path problem not pointing to the bin director of JRE installation, such a simple problem I wish serco had a better installer!!

Anyways this is a new build of a server and a default installation of tomcat uses port 8080, I went to the /conf dir and edited the server.xml file and chaged the connector port to 80, but no luck even with IIS off,
I'm guessing it's the unusual install of tomcat with eportal that makes it differcult to change this
I'll have a look at the detailed guide tomorrow as i'd like to get this to work with IIS

Darragh

Dear Darragh,

Sorry about the delay.

As ePortal is tomcat based, I did a search and found this:

why can't start Tomcat --Installation problem?? - Hot Scripts Forums

Therefore, there should be a log file somewhere in the installation that explains the issue, perhaps a missing DLL or the Java JRE?

ePortal will not be listed in IIS as it is a web server in its own right. Check out Apache Tomcat 6.0 - Documentation Index

Is JAVA_HOME defined?

Cheers,

Gareth

[michael2k6]

Hi,

If you changed the server.xml file to port 80, it should be using port 80. If something else is using port 80 on the server (but i know you said you turned IIS off) then it might be causing a problem. Maybe run a port scanner to check.
Other thing is <forgive me> check that you didn't accidentally edit the example, there is an exmaple close to the actual setting in the server.xml file, so make sure the bit that you edited isn't remarked out.

If you want it to work with IIS on port 80, then you'll need the eportal service to be running on a different port (8080 is usually fine, again, unless something else is using it) and then to configure IIS to work with it. If you get stuck with the guide give me a shout.

Mic@Serco

[darragh]

....
If you want it to work with IIS on port 80, then you'll need the eportal service to be running on a different port (8080 is usually fine, again, unless something else is using it) and then to configure IIS to work with it. If you get stuck with the guide give me a shout.

Mic@Serco

Hi, I've IIS running on the same system but if i stop the service i think it still conflicts in some way as even though I change in the server.xml file the port to 80 the changes are reflected but I get not web pages displayed, would it be something related to the .war file?

Also registered on the serco support site but they have not emailed me an account registration any chance you could send me the ePortal and IIS manual

Thanks in Advance