Wednesday 19 August 2015

Authentication for user denied - Weblogic server startup failure - OBIEE 11.1.1.9.0



The Problem

With the fresh install of OBIEE 11.1.1.9.0, upon the first restart of the services, the Admin Server [Weblogic] doesn’t start by default. When you investigate the logs [or “nohup.out”, if started in background using nohup], you might see the following entries.

<Critical> <Security> <BEA-090403> <Authentication for user  denied>
<Critical> <WebLogicServer> <BEA-000386> <Server subsystem failed. Reason: weblogic.security.SecurityInitializationException: Authentication for user  denied
weblogic.security.SecurityInitializationException: Authentication for user  denied
         at weblogic.security.service.CommonSecurityServiceManagerDelegateImpl.doBootAuthorization(CommonSecurityServiceManagerDelegateImpl.java:966)
         at weblogic.security.service.CommonSecurityServiceManagerDelegateImpl.initialize(CommonSecurityServiceManagerDelegateImpl.java:1054)
         at weblogic.security.service.SecurityServiceManager.initialize(SecurityServiceManager.java:873)
         at weblogic.security.SecurityService.start(SecurityService.java:141)
         at weblogic.t3.srvr.SubsystemRequest.run(SubsystemRequest.java:64)
         Truncated. see log file for complete stacktrace
Caused By: javax.security.auth.login.FailedLoginException: [Security:090304]Authentication Failed: User  javax.security.auth.login.LoginException: [Security:090301]Password Not Supplied
         at weblogic.security.providers.authentication.LDAPAtnLoginModuleImpl.login(LDAPAtnLoginModuleImpl.java:261)
         at com.bea.common.security.internal.service.LoginModuleWrapper$1.run(LoginModuleWrapper.java:110)
         at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
         at com.bea.common.security.internal.service.LoginModuleWrapper.login(LoginModuleWrapper.java:106)
         at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
         Truncated. see log file for complete stacktrace
>
<Notice> <WebLogicServer> <BEA-000365> <Server state changed to FAILED>
<Error> <WebLogicServer> <BEA-000383> <A critical service failed. The server will shut itself down>
<Notice> <WebLogicServer> <BEA-000365> <Server state changed to FORCE_SHUTTING_DOWN>

This error is not restricted to OBIEE11.1.1.9.0 though, it might also show up in other versions and here is the cause.

The culprit

If you are wondering why the server which was working fine after the installation, doesn’t work all of sudden, the reason behind is the missing boot.properties file under <MIDDLEWARE_HOME>/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/servers/AdminServer/security

Some background

This boot.properties is a file that gets created while configuring your Weblogic server and contains the Weblogic admin user credentials stored. Whenever the server is started, this file will be looked up at the back end, the username and password will be retrieved and thus the server is booted using the retrieved credentials. By default, OBIEE 11.1.1.9.0 installation [Enterprise install] doesn’t create this file for some reason. Fortunately or unfortunately, the server, right after the installation doesn’t need this file since we key in the username and password during the setup [5th step to be exact]. Thus, the Weblogic server fails to start only after the first restart.

In other versions, it could be because of the boot.properties file was accidentally corrupted or deleted.

So what can be done?

Simply create a file called boot.properties under <MIDDLEWARE_HOME>/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/servers/AdminServer/security with the Weblogic admin username and password, as shown below.


 
Once created, try restarting your Weblogic server and there, for your surprise, these simple 2 liners will do the magic for you.


Also, upon the Weblogic server’s successful restart, you may also notice that your boot.properties file is encrypted for security reasons [using AES algorithm].


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