Appboard/old/troubleshooting

This page identifies issues that you may encounter when running AppBoard/enPortal, and recommends possible solutions where applicable.


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This page addresses troubleshooting issues on the AppBoard server. For any issues that take place in the web browser, see the page for AppBoard client troubleshooting.


Issues With Starting the AppBoard Server

  • Issue: When executing the startup.bat or startup.sh command, AppBoard fails to start successfully and the URL does not return the AppBoard login page in the browser.
  • Resolution: Review the following checklist to see if any of the items are preventing AppBoard from starting:
    • Validate that your server does not have applications already running on the port being used by AppBoard. For detailed instructions on troubleshooting this issue, see Port Conflict JVM Bind Error.
    • Check to see if there is a problem with the AppBoard license file.
      • Make sure there is a file called license.properties in [APPBOARD_HOME]/server/webapps/enportal/WEB-INF/config/license.properties.
      • Open the license.properties file and check the expiration date.
    • Look in the system log files and console output for errors. For more information about the log files, see Log Files.
    • In Windows, if you do not see any error messages in the console, or the console is closing before you can see anything, you can try to run Catalina directly instead of using the startup script. This will sometimes provide additional feedback in the console. To run Catalina directly, do the following:
      • Go to the command line in a console.
      • Navigate to [APPBOARD_HOME]/server/bin
      • Run the following command:
        >catalina.bat run


  • Issue: When running Tomcat under HTTPS, you see the error message in your browser when accessing the login URL: SSL connection error. Unable to make a secure connection to the server. This may be a problem with the server, or it may be requiring a client authentication certificate that you don't have. Error 107 (net::ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR): SSL protocol error.
  • Resolution: Some applications, such as Skype, run on port 443. Check to make sure you do not have any other applications running on port 443 prior to starting Tomcat with the startup command


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When starting AppBoard, always allow enough time for the Tomcat process to fully start up before accessing the login URL in a browser. This may take 1-2 minutes. When re-starting the system, always allow sufficient time for the system to stop before running the start command.


  • Issue: When attempting to start the server, you receive the following message in the Tomcat console: Product is not licensed. Obtain a license.properties file from your product distributor and place in the config folder.
  • Possible Causes:
    • The license file is expired. View the license file in a text editor and examine the expiration date. The file is located in /server/webapps/enportal/WEB-INF/config/license.properties.
    • Due to a clerical mismatch, the directory where you placed the license.properties file (/server/webapps/enportal/WEB-INF/config/) is not under the same filesystem as where you started the application (/server/bin/). This is often caused by confusion due to having multiple versions of enPortal/AppBoard installed on the same server.
    • The license may have been corrupted through FTP transfer or editing. Try re-saving the original license file and re-trying. I have attached the file if you want to try this.
    • (less common) The date on the server is set forward to a date later than the license expiration date.

Memory Issues

  • Issue: Your system is experiencing lags or performance issues
  • Issue: You received the error message “Out of heap space”
  • Resolution: Review the following checklist to see where performance can be improved:
    • Consider any latency that exists between the client and the AppBoard server. Run AppBoard in a browser on the server and evaluate whether it performs better than from other locations.
    • Allocate more memory to AppBoard. For more information on allocating additional memory, see Memory Configuration.


  • Issue: You received one of the following error messages:
    "Error occurred during initialization of VM"
    "Could not reserve enough space for object heap"
    "Error: Could not create the Java Virtual Machine."
    "Error: A fatal excepion has occurred. Program will exit."
  • Resolution: You may not have too much memory allocated to the Java VM for your operating system. For example, you will get this error if you use the default Java Virtual Machine maximum heap size (-Xmx1536m) when running on a 32-bit Windows system. Lower the maximum heap size to an amount that can be handled by the operating system (for example, -Xmx1024m). For more information on this setting, see Memory Configuration.


  • Issue: You received the following error message:
    "Can't load AMD 64-bit .dll on a IA 32-bit platform"
  • Resolution: You are running the 64-bit Tomcat executable on a 32-bit Windows system. For example, you will get this error if you use the default installation on a 32-bit system. Perform the following steps to fix this issue:
    1. Navigate to [APPBOARD_HOME]/server/bin/windows-x86
    2. Copy the 32-bit Tomcat files from the /windows-x86 folder up one level to the /bin folder:
      1. tcnative-1.dll
      2. tomcat7.exe

Viewing the Console Output

A helpful technique for troubleshooting Windows server issues in AppBoard is being able to save the console output to a file. This is helpful for the following scenarios:

  • You want to examine the console output, but the console is closing down quickly when an error occurs
  • You want to submit the console output to technical support for review


Perform the following steps to start up AppBoard and save the console output to a file:

  1. Create a temporary folder, such as c:\tempdir
  2. Go to the command line in a console.
  3. Navigate to [APPBOARD_HOME]/server/bin
  4. Run the following command:
    >catalina.bat run > c:\tempdir\consoleOutput.txt


Data Sources

  • Issue:: Java cannot manage '00-00-00 00:00:00' in MySQL datetime fields. Even if this kind of datetime value is not supported within MySQL operations, values are allowed in general and used by some implementations as default for empty datetime values. The issue can result in many messages in Appboard error.log.
  • Resolution: Convert the zero values to NULL values within the data-source. Example url: jdbc:mysql://yourserver:3306/yourdatabase?zeroDateTimeBehavior=convertToNull