Troubleshooting: Service Request Catalog (SRC)

If you are a system administrator, read this section to discover how to troubleshoot some common problems that you might encounter when you use Service Request Catalog.

Use Luke to examine Apache Lucene indexes

Lucene is an open source Java search engine that Service Request Catalog uses to create indexes from downloaded catalog data. Luke is a diagnostic tool that enables you to view or modify the Lucene indexes in the catalog. For more information, see the Luke project site at http://code.google.com/p/luke/.

To use Luke, follow these steps.

1. Stop the Tomcat service.
2. Download the latest version of Luke from http://code.google.com/p/luke/. For example, the downloaded file for version 3. is lukeall-3..0.jar.
3. Double-click the downloaded .jar file to run Luke. The Luke Toolbox appears.
4. In the Path Index directory dialog, browse to the Service Request Catalog installation directory\secure\luceneIndexedData. For example, if you deploy the Service Request Catalog application in a folder named C:\src, the path index would be C:\src\secure\luceneIndexedData
5. Click OK.
6. When Luke displays the folder structure within luceneIndexedData. Each folder represents a complete index. Open a folder to view the indexed contents. Do not open individual files. For example, open the index folder en_US to view the indexed information in the US English catalog.
7. You can view catalog items and fields within an index. You can also search for a specific item. Use this tool to troubleshoot catalog download problems.

You can view catalog items and fields within an index. You can also search for a specific item. Use this tool to troubleshoot catalog download problems.

Use Charles to monitor internet activity

Charles enables you to monitor Internet requests and responses, including the internet traffic between Service Request Catalog and Service Manager. Use Charles to troubleshoot communication issues. For more information, see the Charles project site at www.charlesproxy.com.

To use Charles, follow these steps.

1. Make sure that you comply with the system requirements described on the download site (http://www.charlesproxy.com/download/).
2. Download the latest version of Charles. For example, the downloaded file for version 3.5 is charles_setup.exe.
3. Double-click the downloaded .exe file to install Charles.
4. Click Run to start the installation.
5. Follow the installation prompts and click Finish when the installation is complete.
6. Start Charles.
7. Start the browser that you want to use. Firefox requires you to install an add-on before you can use Charles successfully.

Charles functions as a play/record mechanism to track and troubleshoot internet activity.

Use logs to monitor Service Request Catalog/Service Manager Communication

You can set the log4j properties to provide more log information. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to this location

   src-9.60\WEB-INF\classes

2. Open log4j.properties with a text editor. Log4j parameters typically have these settings.
   • INFO provides a minimal amount of operational information
   • DEBUG provides detailed operational information
   • TRACE captures all activities.

3. Locate this property and change the logging level to increase (or decrease) the amount of log information captured during communication between Service Request Catalog and Service Manager.

   log4j.rootLogger=TRACE, stdout, rolling

You can also change the log level for packages to increase or decrease the log size. For more information about additional settings, see the documentation for the Apache Software Foundation log4j logging utility.

Run the svcCatalogMix script

If you have upgraded from a previous version of Service Manager or if you import some catalog items from a .unl file in Service Manager, the svcCatalogMix script must be run in Service Manager before you start SRC.  

This script updates the Service Catalog records in older versions of Service Manager as one of the following types:

• Category: The record contains only child categories or only bundles/items.
• Item: The record is a bundle/item only.
• Mix: The record contains both child categories and bundles/items.

To execute the script, follow these steps:

1. In the Service Manager client, type "SL" in command line in SM and then press the ENTER key to open ScriptLibrary editor.
2. Enter "svcCatalogMix" into the Name field and then click Search.
3. Select svcCatalogMix from the list and then click Execute button to run this script.

Common issues

Insufficient memory

Not enough memory to load the catalog.

1. If you see one of these messages:

   java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space at java.lang.Throwable.getStackTraceElement(Native Method)

   java.lang.OutOfMemoryError

2. Verify that you completed the steps to configure Java Options (see Install Service Request Catalog (SRC)). These steps include increasing the amount of available memory for Tomcat.

Corrupt indexes

Follow these steps to fix index problems:

1. Stop the Tomcat service.
2. Navigate to the Service Request Catalog installation directory\secure\luceneIndexedData folder. For example, if you deploy the Service Request Catalog application in a folder named C:\src, the path index would be C:\src\secure\luceneIndexedData
3. Delete the contents of the luceneIndexedData folder.
4. Navigate to the C:\src\secure\attachments directory

5. Delete files that begin with "version" as shown in the following example:

   C:\src\secure\attachments\version*.*

6. Re-start the Tomcat service.

Service Manager connections

Connection errors occur when the Service Manager server is unavailable or your connection information is invalid

I/O error: Connection refused: connect; nested exception

Unable to authenticate and therefore load the catalog

If you receive one of these messages, follow these steps to resolve:

1. Make sure the Service Manager server is running and you can access the Service Manager server wsdl from the browser by typing:

   http://fqdn:portnumber/SM/7/ServiceCatalogAPI.wsdl

   For example: http://myserver:13088/SM/7/ServiceCatalogAPI.wsdl

2. Verify the Service Manager server connection information is correct in the applicationContext.properties file. You can locate this file in the Service Request Catalog installation directory. For example:

   C:\src\WEB-INF\classes\applicationContext.properties

3. Verify these properties are accurate:

   serviceManager.hostname=<IP or hostname>

   serviceManager.port=<PortNumber>

   serviceManager.adminCredentials=LIST (username, ENC(EncryptedPassword))

Service Managersessions

If a user logs into Service Request Catalog and then logs out, the session may still appear to be active on the Service Manager server. This may happen if there is a Load Balancer managing traffic between the Service Request Catalog and Service Manager nodes. In this case the Load Balancer is not able to maintain session stickiness between the Service Request Catalog and Service Manager nodes.

The solution is to configure the Load Balancer for session stickiness using the http cookie value JSESSIONID and assign it to the Service Manager node.

Troubleshooting tips

Best practices

• The minimum resolution for SRC is 1024 x 768 pixels.
• Do not edit the applicationContext.properties file while Tomcat is still running.
• Do not attach a file more than 30MB to prevent the failure of a request submission.

• Do not set the max logins value in a user's operator record in Service Manager below the default value of 2.

  Note When you close the browser tab or browser window without logging out SRC, the current session is terminated in 15 to 30 seconds instead of being terminated immediately. When you log in to SRC again during this period, the following error message may occur:

  <Message: Login failed. Maximum active logins for this user exceeded.>
  

  To prevent this from happening, you can set the value of max logins to 3 or a bigger number.

• If the hostname format of SRC is different from the hostname format of Service Manager, or the Service Manager server disables the query harsh feature, you may fail to open SRC links which are generated by the Service Manager server. To prevent this from happening, you can disable the src.enableQueryHash parameter in applicationcontext.properties.

Login problems

• Verify the Service Manager server is running.
• Verify the user you created has the SOAP API and other required capability words configured in Service Manager.