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Security enablement followed by errors


Use this information if we are experiencing errors after security is enabled.

What kind of error are you seeing?

For general tips on diagnosing and resolving security-related problems, see the topic Troubleshooting the security component.

IBM Support has documents and tools that can save you time gathering information needed to resolve problems as described in Troubleshooting help from IBM. Before opening a problem report, see the Support page:

 

Authentication error accessing a Web page

Possible causes for authentication errors include:

If the user registry configuration, user ID, and password appear correct, use the trace to determine the cause of the problem. To enable security trace, use the com.ibm.ws.security.*=all=enabled trace specification.

 

Authorization error accessing a Web page

If a user who is supposed to have access to a resource does not, a configuration step is probably missing. Review Authorizing access to admin roles. Specifically:

If the user is granted required roles, but still fails to access the secured resources, enable security trace, using com.ibm.ws.security.*=all=enabled as the trace specification. Collect trace information for further resolution.

 

Authentication fails when code pages differ between the client and the server

When a client uses a code page that is different from the server, and non-US-ASCII characters are used for the user ID and password during basic authentication, the login does not succeed. The HTTP header does not include the encoding method information that is necessary to translate the encoded data, so the server does not know how to decode the information correctly.

Use a login form that relies on POST parameters, which are in the HTML body text. The encoding for the text is sent by the browser and so is capable of being decoded properly.

Web services customers are not able to use form login to resolve this problem. Users must ensure there is consistency in the code pages between the client and the server.

 

Error Message: CWSCJ0314E: Current Java 2 security policy reported a potential violation on server

If we find errors on the server similar to: 

Error Message: CWSCJ0314E: Current Java 2 Security policy reported a potential violation of  Java 2 Security Permission. Please refer to Problem Determination Guide for further information.
{0}Permission/:{1}Code/:{2}{3}Stack Trace/:{4}Code Base Location/:{5}
The Java security manager checkPermission method has reported a SecurityException exception .

The reported exception might be critical to the secure system. Turn on security trace to determine the potential code that might have violated the security policy. Once the violating code is determined, verify if the attempted operation is permitted with respect to Java 2 Security, by examining all applicable Java 2 security policy files and the application code. A more detailed report is enabled by either configuring RAS trace into debug mode, or specifying a Java property.

For a review of Java security policies, see the Java 2 Security documentation at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/guide/security/IBM_HTTP_Server_v735.html.

Tip: If the application is running with a Java Mail API, this message might be benign. We can update the installed Enterprise Application root/META-INF/was.policy file to grant the following permissions to the application:

 

Error message: CWMSG0508E: The JMS WAS security service was unable to authenticate user ID:" error displayed in SystemOut.log when starting an appserver

This error can result from installing the JMS API sample and then enabling security. We can follow the instructions in the Set and Run page of the corresponding JMS sample documentation to configure the sample to work with WAS security.

You can verify the installation of the message-driven bean sample by launching the installation program, selecting Custom, and browsing the components which are already installed in the Select the features you like to install panel. The JMS sample is shown as Message-Driven Bean Sample, under Embedded Messaging.

We can also verify this installation by using the admin console to open the properties of the appserver that contains the samples. Select MDBSamples and click uninstall.

 

Error message: CWSCJ0237E: One or more vital LTPAServerObject configuration attributes are null or not available after enabling security and starting the application server

This error message can result from selecting LTPA as the authentication mechanism, but not generating the LTPA keys. The LTPA keys encrypt the LTPA token. To resolve this problem:

  1. Click Security > Global security > Authentication > Authentication mechanisms and expiration> LTPA

  2. Enter a password, which can be anything.

  3. Enter the same password in Confirm Password.

  4. Click Apply.

  5. Click Generate Keys.

  6. Click Save.

 

The AccessControlException exception, is reported in the SystemOut.log

The problem is related to the Java 2 security feature of WAS, the API-level security framework that is implemented in WAS. An exception similar to the following example displays. The error message and number can vary. 

CWSRV0020E: [Servlet Error]-[validator]: Failed to load servlet:  java.security.AccessControlException: access denied  (java.io.FilePermission 

APP_ROOT/systemApps/isclite.ear/isclite.war/WEB-INF/validation.xml read)

For an explanation of Java 2 security, how and why to enable or disable it, how it relates to policy files, and how to edit policy files, see the Java 2 security topic in the information center navigation. The topic explains that Java 2 security is not only used by this product, but developers can also implement it for their business applications. Administrators might need to involve developers, if this exception is created when a client tries to access a resource that is hosted by WAS. Possible causes of these errors include:

To resolve these problems:

Tip: If the application is running with the Java Mail API, we can update the installed Enterprise Application root/META-INF/was.policy file to grant the following permissions to the application:

 

Error Message: CWSCJ0336E: Authentication failed for user {0} because of the following exception {1}

This error message results if the user ID that is indicated is not found in the LDAP user registry. To resolve this problem:

  1. Verify that the user ID and password are correct.

  2. Verify that the user ID exists in the registry.

  3. Verify that the base distinguished name (DN) is correct.

  4. Verify that the user filter is correct.

  5. Verify that the bind DN and the password for the bind DN are correct. If the bind DN and password are not specified, add the missing information and retry.

  6. Verify that the host name and LDAP type are correct.

Consult with the administrator of the user registry if the problem persists.

 

Error Message: SECJ0352E: Could not get the users matching the pattern {0} because of the following exception {1}

This authentication failure message displays when an external user account repository is corrupted or unavailable, and WAS is unable to authenticate the user name in the repository. Generally, authentication error messages are followed by additional information that indicates the nature or root cause of the problem, such as: 

Make sure the users matching the pattern exist in the registry. Contact the service representative if the problem persists.
This additional information might not provide a clear user action if the user account repository is corrupted or the user loses connectivity between WAS and an external user account repository. The external user account repository, which is referred to as a repository in this document, might be a LDAP product. To resolve this problem, we might need to re-install the repository and verify that it installs successfully by testing the connection. CAUTION:Proceed with the following steps only if we have ensured that all WAS-related configuration settings are accurate.

Complete the following steps to resolve the issue:

  1. Restart both the repository and WAS.

  2. Test the connection to the repository. If the connection attempt still fails, it might be necessary to re-install the repository.

  3. If diagnostics are provided with the repository, run them to avoid having to re-install the repository.

    If the previous steps do not fix the problem, we might need to re-install the repository. Before proceeding, generate a complete list of all the configured users and groups; you will need to re-populate these fields after the re-installation.

  4. If necessary, re-install the corrupted repository.

  5. Populate the users and groups from the list into the newly installed repository.

  6. Restart both the repository and WebSphere Application server.

  7. In the admin console, navigate to Security > Global security, and select the appropriate user account repository. For example, select Standalone LDAP registry if we are using a standalone LDAP repository.

  8. Click Test connection to ensure that WAS can connect to the repository.

 

Generate keys error when using the Profile Management tool to create a new profile

When you create a new profile using either the Profile Management tool or the command-line manageprofiles utility, an error message displays that indicates either partial success or failure. The error message, which is located in the install_dir/logs/manageprofiles/profile_name_create.log file, might point to an error in either the generateKeysforSingleProfile task or the generateKeysForCellProfile task.

The Profile Creation tool and the manageprofiles utility invoke several tasks. The generateKeysForSingleProfile task is invoked when creating a stand-alone appserver or a dmgr profile. The generateKeysForCellProfile task is invoked when creating a cell profile. Both of these tasks are the first tasks to invoke the wsadmin commands. Although the log indicates an error in one of these tasks, the error might actually result from a wsadmin command failure and not an error in the security tasks.

To determine the actual cause of the problem, review the information that is provided in the following log files:

 

Some security roles are not immediately available for a secured application where LDAP has TAM enabled

In some instances, some security roles might not be immediately available when you deploy a secured application where LDAP has TAM enabled. We might see an error such as the following: 

"Exception: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError"
You might be able to address this issue by doing the following:

  1. Allocate more memory to the minimum and maximum java heap size.

    1. In the admin console, select Servers/server types/WebSphere Application servers --> server1.

    2. Select Server Infrastructure/Java and Process Management/Process Definition.

    3. Select Java Virtual Machine.

    4. Set the initial heap size to 512 MB and the maximum heap size to 1024 MB.

    5. Select OK and then Save.

    6. Restart WAS.

  2. While WebSphere Application Sever is stopped, add some performance tuning properties for embedded TAM.

    1. In the config/cells/CELLNAME directory, edit the amwas.amjacc.template.properties file by adding the following properties to it: 

      com.tivoli.pd.as.jacc.DBRefresh=0 com.tivoli.pd.as.jacc.AuthTableRemoteMode=yes com.tivoli.pd.as.rbpf.NoUncheckedRoles=true

      This helps when embedded TAM is re-configured

    2. Because embedded TAM is already configured, we can update the generated configuration files with the above properties. For each WAS instance in the ND (dmgr, NAs and servers), go to the profiles/NAME/etc/tam directory and do the following.For each file that ends in amjacc.properties, add the 3 properties above: 

      com.tivoli.pd.as.jacc.DBRefresh=0 com.tivoli.pd.as.jacc.AuthTableRemoteMode=yes com.tivoli.pd.as.rbpf.NoUncheckedRoles=true

      For each file that ends in pdperm.properties, update the appsvr-dbrefresh property to be: 

      appsvr-dbrefresh=0

      For each file that ends in authztable.pdperm.properties, update the appsvr-mode property to be: 

      appsvr-mode=remote

  3. Restart the cell.



 

Related concepts


Troubleshooting and support

 

Related tasks


Troubleshooting security configurations

 

Related


Access problems after enabling security