Tomcat crashes if licensing setup is not correct - Thingworx 7.4 and above

[#1]

Starting with the 7.4 version of Thingworx, a license.bin file locked to the specific version of Thingworx is required in order to successfully start the Thingworx webapp. If something is wrong with the licensing, Tomcat will crash and will not show any information regarding the problem in its log files. The Catalina*.log file will look like this

13-Jun-2017 04:36:43.268 INFO [main] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService.startInternal Starting service Catalina

13-Jun-2017 04:36:43.268 INFO [main] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine.startInternal Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/8.5.13

13-Jun-2017 04:36:43.315 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWAR Deploying web application archive C:\PTC\KinexForManufacturing\PTC_Servlet_Engine\webapps\Thingworx.war

13-Jun-2017 04:36:56.080 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.jasper.servlet.TldScanner.scanJars At least one JAR was scanned for TLDs yet contained no TLDs. Enable debug logging for this logger for a complete list of JARs that were scanned but no TLDs were found in them. Skipping unneeded JARs during scanning can improve startup time and JSP compilation time.

instead of continuing on through the rest of the war files present on the server as it would if everything worked properly.

13-Jun-2017 04:37:20.001 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWAR Deployment of web application archive C:\PTC\KinexForManufacturing\PTC_Servlet_Engine\webapps\Thingworx.war has finished in 36,684 ms

13-Jun-2017 04:37:20.006 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory Deploying web application directory C:\PTC\KinexForManufacturing\PTC_Servlet_Engine\webapps\docs

13-Jun-2017 04:37:20.113 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory Deployment of web application directory C:\PTC\KinexForManufacturing\PTC_Servlet_Engine\webapps\docs has finished in 107 ms

13-Jun-2017 04:37:20.113 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory Deploying web application directory C:\PTC\KinexForManufacturing\PTC_Servlet_Engine\webapps\examples

13-Jun-2017 04:37:20.617 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory Deployment of web application directory C:\PTC\KinexForManufacturing\PTC_Servlet_Engine\webapps\examples has finished in 504 ms

13-Jun-2017 04:37:20.618 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory Deploying web application directory C:\PTC\KinexForManufacturing\PTC_Servlet_Engine\webapps\host-manager

13-Jun-2017 04:37:20.661 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory Deployment of web application directory C:\PTC\KinexForManufacturing\PTC_Servlet_Engine\webapps\host-manager has finished in 43 ms

13-Jun-2017 04:37:20.661 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory Deploying web application directory C:\PTC\KinexForManufacturing\PTC_Servlet_Engine\webapps\manager

13-Jun-2017 04:37:20.847 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory Deployment of web application directory C:\PTC\KinexForManufacturing\PTC_Servlet_Engine\webapps\manager has finished in 186 ms

13-Jun-2017 04:37:20.847 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory Deploying web application directory C:\PTC\KinexForManufacturing\PTC_Servlet_Engine\webapps\ROOT

13-Jun-2017 04:37:20.866 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDirectory Deployment of web application directory C:\PTC\KinexForManufacturing\PTC_Servlet_Engine\webapps\ROOT has finished in 18 ms

13-Jun-2017 04:37:20.949 INFO [main] org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol.start Starting ProtocolHandler ["https-jsse-nio-443"]

13-Jun-2017 04:37:20.957 INFO [main] org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol.start Starting ProtocolHandler ["ajp-nio-8009"]

13-Jun-2017 04:37:20.958 INFO [main] org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start Server startup in 37733 ms

The error will actually be in the ThingworxStorage/logs/ApplicationLog.log file - something like this:

2017-06-14 10:00:19.057-0700 [L: INFO] [O: c.t.s.ThingWorxServer] [I: ] [U: SuperUser] [S: ] [T: localhost-startStop-1] Subsystem LicensingSubsystem is starting

2017-06-14 10:00:19.057-0700 [L: INFO] [O: c.t.s.s.Subsystem] [I: ] [U: SuperUser] [S: ] [T: localhost-startStop-1] Starting Subsystem [LicensingSubsystem]

2017-06-14 10:00:19.088-0700 [L: ERROR] [O: c.t.s.s.l.LicensingSubsystem] [I: ] [U: SuperUser] [S: ] [T: localhost-startStop-1] ====================================================================

2017-06-14 10:00:19.088-0700 [L: ERROR] [O: c.t.s.s.l.LicensingSubsystem] [I: ] [U: SuperUser] [S: ] [T: localhost-startStop-1] C:\PTC\KinexForManufacturing\ThingworxPlatform\license.bin: license file does not exist!

2017-06-14 10:00:19.088-0700 [L: ERROR] [O: c.t.s.s.l.LicensingSubsystem] [I: ] [U: SuperUser] [S: ] [T: localhost-startStop-1] ====================================================================

2017-06-14 10:00:19.088-0700 [L: WARN] [O: c.t.s.ThingWorxServer] [I: ] [U: SuperUser] [S: ] [T: localhost-startStop-1] Shutting down the Platform.

Get your license installed properly and the problem should go away.

[PaiChung]

Getting the license properly installed is two part

1. put the license in ThingworxPlatform (and rename to license.bin if you are in 8.0)

2. make sure you add the java opt that points to the flex library: -Djava.library.path=[path to tomcat]\webapps\Thingworx\WEB-INF\extensions