Starting Websphere from Eclipse hangs when security is enabled

Question

I have a Websphere Application Server 8.0.0.6, which was installed as part of RAD.

I need to run the server from an Eclipse Java EE Kepler or Luna. There is no problem when administrative security is disabled. However, once security is enabled, the server either doesn't start completely, or Ecplise is unable to to detect it.

The progress bar stops at 23%. The last message logged is "Server server1 open for e-business". The status however is still "starting". After a while I get an error complaining that the server didn't start within 300 seconds. It then tries to stop the server, and remains in "stopping" indefinitely.

The server is started, Eclipse just seems unable to see it. I can't access the admin console from within Eclipse (though I can with a browser), I can't publish or debug applications, and I can't stop the server from Eclipse.

This happens with both Kepler and Luna.

The server starts fine in RAD, or when started with the start script.

I have checked start websphere server from RAD hangs at "Server server1 open for e-business" . There is a similar question: Websphere in RAD hangs on startup, but there was no solution.

Update: The problem is the communication between Ecipse and Websphere, after Websphere has started (as wFateem also has pointed out).

Eclipse makes SOAP calls to Websphere to check the status. If administrative security is disabled in WAS, it accepts SOAP calls in plain HTTP. Once security is enabled, only HTTPS is allowed.

I checked communications between Eclipse and WAS using the TCP-Monitor built into Eclipse. With disabled security I can see the successful SOAP calls. After enabling security I expected to see just the binary SSL data. However, Eclipse was still trying to use HTTP, without any success of course.

Eclipse has a setting for the WAS server to indicate that the server is secured, and which user and password to use for the calls. It even has a flag pertaining to the SSL communication ("automatically trust server certificate during SSL handshake"). But still, it is not using SSL for some reason.

I had no problem in this scenario on my old development machine, which got replaced by my current machine a few days ago.

So, the current status is: Eclipse does not use SSL when talking to the WAS, even though it knows the server is secured.

The question now is: What did I do wrong that Eclipse does not use SSL to talk to a secured server?

Answer 1

I solved same problems for WebSphere 7 and Eclipse Neon. Just run eclipse with ibm jdk 8 (type in google "ibm jdk 8 download").

My eclipse ini is

-vm 
..\ibm_sdk80\jre\bin\javaw.exe 
-vmargs
-XX:+UseG1GC
-XX:+UseStringDeduplication
-Xms256m
-Xmx1024m
-XX:MaxPermSize=320m   
-Dcom.ibm.ws.management.event.max_polling_interval=1000
-Dcom.ibm.websphere.thinclient=true

Best regards, Sergey Batsura

Answer 2

If you suspect problems with SSL, you could try the following workaround.
Once server is started (e.g. via command line), go to web admin console and then to: Global security > CSIv2 inbound communications and in transport section set transport to TCP-IP. Save and restart the server. This will disable SSL for RMI/IIOP connections.

Then in RAD in Server settings change Server connection types... to Manually provide connection settings and select only RMI.

Check if it will work better.

As last resort you could also try to start the server, then exit the RAD and restart the RAD again, it should detect server as already running. But it's not very useful...