Unable to start Glassfish 3.1 even though port not occupied

Question

I'm having trouble starting Glassfish 3.1 on a newly setup Debian "Squeeze" server. This is a testing server that has been setup and the Glassfish installation was copied from a working server to this other server.

I tried running:

# ./asadmin start-domain There is a process already using the admin port 4848 -- it probably is another instance of a GlassFish server. Command start-domain failed. 

I also tried restarting the domain because I thought maybe it was running:

# ./asadmin restart-domain Server is not running, will attempt to start it... There is a process already using the admin port 4848 -- it probably is another instance of a GlassFish server. Command restart-domain failed. 

At this point I confirmed that Glassfish was not running so I checked to see if port 4848 was occupied:

# netstat -aon | grep 4848 

which returned nothing.

I have suspicion that Glassfish was copied from the source server while Glassfish was still running. Maybe there is some sort of pid file or lock file that was copied over as well.

Any suggestions on how to get Glassfish to start?

Edit

Here's the server.log file from domain1 after executing the asadmin start-domain command:

Sep 12, 2011 11:18:02 AM com.sun.enterprise.admin.launcher.GFLauncherLogger info INFO: JVM invocation command line: /opt/glassfish3/jdk/bin/java -cp /opt/glassfish3/glassfish/modules/glassfish.jar -XX:+UnlockDiagnosticVMOptions -XX:MaxPermSize=192m -XX:NewRatio=2 -Xmx512m -client -javaagent:/opt/glassfish3/glassfish/lib/monitor/flashlight-agent.jar -Dosgi.shell.telnet.maxconn=1 -Djdbc.drivers=org.apache.derby.jdbc.ClientDriver -Dfelix.fileinstall.disableConfigSave=false -Dfelix.fileinstall.dir=/opt/glassfish3/glassfish/modules/autostart/ -Djavax.net.ssl.keyStore=/opt/glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/keystore.jks -Dosgi.shell.telnet.port=6666 -Djava.security.policy=/opt/glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/server.policy -Dfelix.fileinstall.log.level=2 -Dfelix.fileinstall.poll=5000 -Dcom.sun.aas.instanceRoot=/opt/glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1 -Dosgi.shell.telnet.ip=127.0.0.1 -Dcom.sun.enterprise.config.config_environment_factory_class=com.sun.enterprise.config.serverbeans.AppserverConfigEnvironmentFactory -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/opt/glassfish3/glassfish/modules/endorsed:/opt/glassfish3/glassfish/lib/endorsed -Dcom.sun.aas.installRoot=/opt/glassfish3/glassfish -Djava.ext.dirs=/opt/glassfish3/jdk/lib/ext:/opt/glassfish3/jdk/jre/lib/ext:/opt/glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1/lib/ext -Dfelix.fileinstall.bundles.startTransient=true -Dfelix.fileinstall.bundles.new.start=true -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=/opt/glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/cacerts.jks -Dorg.glassfish.additionalOSGiBundlesToStart=org.apache.felix.shell,org.apache.felix.gogo.runtime,org.apache.felix.gogo.shell,org.apache.felix.gogo.command -Dcom.sun.enterprise.security.httpsOutboundKeyAlias=s1as -DANTLR_USE_DIRECT_CLASS_LOADING=true -Djava.security.auth.login.config=/opt/glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/login.conf -Dgosh.args=--nointeractive -Djava.library.path=/opt/glassfish3/glassfish/lib:/opt/glassfish3/jdk/jre/lib/amd64/server:/opt/glassfish3/jdk/jre/lib/amd64:/opt/glassfish3/jdk/lib/amd64:/usr/java/packages/lib/amd64:/usr/lib64:/lib64:/lib:/usr/lib com.sun.enterprise.glassfish.bootstrap.ASMain -domainname domain1 -asadmin-args --host,,,localhost,,,--port,,,4848,,,--secure=false,,,--terse=false,,,--echo=false,,,--interactive=true,,,start-domain,,,--verbose=false,,,--debug=false,,,--domaindir,,,/opt/glassfish3/glassfish/domains,,,domain1 -instancename server -verbose false -debug false -asadmin-classpath /opt/glassfish3/glassfish/modules/admin-cli.jar -asadmin-classname com.sun.enterprise.admin.cli.AsadminMain -upgrade false -type DAS -domaindir /opt/glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1 -read-stdin true 

Answer 1

First of all check the $HOSTNAME and the etc/hosts file configuration , not try to find a problem with ps aux or netstat -aon .

> echo $HOSTNAME 

response > server (or etc)

> cat /etc/hosts 

in response if you cannot see "$HOSTNAME" after 127.0.0.1 then add it end of the string . Try again to execute the start-domain command.

Answer 2

Check your /etc/hosts file if the current hostname translates to a valid IP address. I think something is misconfigured or simple the IP do not exists.

When I changed it back (in my situation) to the 127.0.0.1 address (of course it could be any other but working and attached IP address), the glassfish could be started properly again.