Chaos Magnet

Know your path

Here's a little tidbit for you: always make sure you know what application you're executing. Three times now, the http://www.metrosphere.com has gone down because the HTTP server hung up. That sounds like a simple problem, except that MetroSphere runs on IBM's WebSphere Portal, so the HTTP server is only a small part of the process. Trouble was, when I restarted the httpd server, it wasn't recognizing the portal application server. Twice, I spent a week in technical support hell, with a severity one problem (production system down). That means I personally have to be on call 24 hours a day until it's resolved.

Twice now, the problem has mysteriously resolved itself after we figured out all the other problems. This time I decided to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and find out what the deal was with the HTTP server before I even touched the application server.

The answer?

Although I was going to the /opt/IBMHTTPServer/bin directory,

httpd

was running a different application than

./httpd

The former was running an HTTP server that is, I think, part of Linux. The latter actually runs the version we need to run.

Let that be a lesson to you. (I know it's a lesson to me!)

Technorati tags: httpd | path | portal | metrosphere | websphere | application server |

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