Troubleshooting

Where are the log files?

There are multiple different log files that yield information in case of an error scenario. The following subsections will assist you in finding the log files for every part of the Effektif application. The most important one, regarding the Effektif system is the effektif.log. It will contain any application related log entries.

Effektif

The Effektif log file effektif.log can be found in the location you configured in the logging configuration file $TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes/logback.xml. This file contains the line:

<property name="LOG_DIR" value="/path/to/log"/>

The value contains the directory of the log file. Besides the effektif.log the directory contains more log files for every day of the past 30 days the server was running. If you are looking for any information about incidents on a specific date, open the log file with the respective timestamp.

MongoDB

The MongoDB log file is configured by the logpath option. This is either defined in the MongoDB configuration file that you reference when starting MongoDB or directly as a start parameter of MongoDB. Anyway, the value of this parameter will tell you where to find the log file.

On Linux, one default location where the log file can be found is /var/log/mongodb/mongodb.log. Whereas a default location for the configuration file is /etc/mongodb.conf. Be aware, these locations can change depending on the distribution and depend on how you have installed MongoDB.

If you are using Windows and followed the instructions in this guide to setup MongoDB, you should find the log file in your MongoDB installation directory $MONGO_HOME\logs.

Tomcat

If not configured otherwise, the log files of the Apache Tomcat application server can be found either in the installation directory of the Tomcat $TOMCAT_HOME\logs (Windows) or a common log directory e.g. /var/log/tomcat7 (Linux).

Common problems

This section lists some common problems that can arise during the setup of the Effektif system and gives instructions on how to solve them.

Problem:
The Effektif site shows a HTTP Status 500 error including the message root cause java.lang.RuntimeException: Cannot find license.xml.
Solution:
You have not installed the Effektif license.xml at all or placed it in the wrong directory. Jump to section Install the license file to solve the issue.
Problem:
The Effektif site shows a HTTP Status 500 error including the message com/effektif/EffektifServlet : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0 (unable to load class com.effektif.EffektifServlet).
Solution:

The Tomcat server is using the wrong Java version. Effektif requires Java 7. Make sure you have installed the correct Java version. You can check your Java version by executing:

java -version

Section Install Java explains how to install the correct Java version.

Problem:
Executing a MongoDB command yields the error message errmsg: “unauthorized” or errmsg: “auth fails”.
Solution:

Either the username / password combination that is used to execute the command is wrong or the respective MongoDB user lacks some required roles.

The first issue can be checked by executing:

Windows: mongo.exe admin -u effektif -p <yourEffektifUserPassword>

Debian: mongo admin -u effektif -p <yourEffektifUserPassword>

If this command fails with the error message exception: login failed you know that your username / password combination is wrong. Please, make sure you spelled the username and password correctly.

In order to check the second issue, jump to section Add a database user for Effektif. This section lists all necessary roles and explains how to verify that the Effektif user has all the required roles. Especially the restore and backup commands require certain roles to work properly.

Problem:
Effektif does not start and the log file contains the error message INFO  LockingDbExecutor Database is locked by another executor. Wait....
Solution:

The problem with the LockingDbExecutor arises when the application server is shutdown during the initialisation (update of licenses and migration of database) before the lock can be released again. You have to manually remove the respective lock from the database. It is recommened to use a tool like Robomongo for this purpose. Section MongoDB explains how to retrieve Robomongo and in section How to add the Effektif MongoDB user with Robomongo you will find an explanation on how to setup a connection to your MongoDB.

  1. Open Robomongo.
  2. Establish a connection to MongoDB.
  3. Open the content of the Effektif DB on the left side of the application.
  4. Under Collections you will find the table properties.
  5. A double click on properties shows all entries. In case of an error you will see three entries, if everything is normal there will be only two.
  6. Out of the three entries in the list, select the one that contains the value schema.lock for the key k.
  7. Use a right click to open the context menu for the respective entry and choose „Delete Document…“ to remove the entry.

IMPORTANT: Only the entry for schema.lock must be deleted. You are advised to create a backup of the database upfront.