Reviewing Other Configuration Issues

This topic describes configuration settings you should check that pertain to your application server, kernel and device driver settings, and your operating system patch level.

Related Topics
Collecting Logs and Core Files
Java Activation Error on the ENOVIA Live Collaboration Server
mx_err_pid.log for Windows

Application Server Settings

Most application servers have some performance tuning parameters available, some of which are highly recommended. For example, WebLogic has an execute thread count that is used when trying to ensure that a pool of threads is available to process servlet requests as the overhead of creating new threads within the application server can be expensive. Config.xml has: 

   <Server ExternalDNSName="acme.net"
      ListenAddress="acme.net" Machine="MyMachine"
      Name="myserver" ServerVersion="7.0.1.0"
      StdoutDebugEnabled="true" StdoutEnabled="true"
      StdoutSeverityLevel="64" WeblogicPluginEnabled="true" 
      XMLEntityCache="XMLCacheMBean_myserver">
   <COM Name="myserver"/>
   <ExecuteQueue Name="default" ThreadCount="15"/>

Other application servers have an equivalent to this setting.

Settings are viewed or changed using the WebLogic Administration Console, as shown below. The console requires an administrator userid/password to log on.

To view and change WebLogic settings, use the WebLogic Server Console, as shown above:

  1. Select Servers from the left pane.
  2. Select the Live Collaboration Server from the left pane.
  3. Select the Configuration tab from the right pane.
  4. Select the Tuning tab from the right pane.
  5. On WebLogic 7.x, the Accept Backlog parameter is found on the Tuning tab from the Connections tab.

WebSphere Settings

WebSphere typically uses the IBM HTTP Web server, an Apache-based server that has the equivalent of WebLogic's acceptBacklog parameter, which is the MaxConnectBacklog parameter.

To configure the MaxConnectBacklog parameter, use the Administrative Console, as shown below:

  1. Choose Nodes > YOUR DOMAIN > Application Servers > YOUR SERVER > Web Container > HTTP Transports > YOUR PORT.
  2. From this panel, you can modify the MaxConnectBacklog parameter. However, the default of 511 is usually sufficient. If WebSphere is running on Windows with Microsoft's IIS server as its Web server, the equivalent of WebLogic's acceptBacklog parameter is ListenBackLog, which has a default value of 25. IIS reads this value from the registry entry, as shown below: 
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\InetInfo\Parameters\
ListenBackLog

    Change the value to 250, and restart IIS.

  3. Additionally, if the settings listed below appear on your Administrative Console, check that their values are at least equal to the minimum values. If not found on your console, ignore them.
    WebSphere Settings from IBM HTTP Server's httpd.conf Category Minimum Value
    ListenBackLog Warning 
    >= 511
    (default)
    MaxClients (Unix Only) Critical 
    >= 150
    (default)
    ThreadPerChild (Windows only) Critical 
    >= 50
    (default)
    Maximum Pool size Critical 
    >= 30
    (default)

Operating System Patches

Bugs in operating systems can take a long time to diagnose. Therefore, a check for patch levels is highly recommended.

The table below shows a list of commands that retrieve the operating system patches on supported Unix platforms. On Windows, simply type winver at a command prompt. Piping the output from the Unix patch list to a file is advisable since this can be sent to ENOVIA Support for further diagnosis.

Unix Platform Category
AIX 
istfix; smit

Use smit only if patches were originally installed using smit; if not, use istfix.
Solaris 
showrev -p

Kernel and Device Driver Settings

As described in Collecting Logs and Core Files, kernel settings can be extremely important. File descriptors are another problem source, though typically for earlier versions of Solaris since most Unix platforms have fairly large default values. Windows does not have this problem (except when portable code uses file descriptors for winsock IO).

To find the maximum number of file descriptors available:


  • In ksh, use ulimit -n.
  • In csh, use limit descriptors.

Some parameters have an affect on performance, including TCP settings on Solaris, as shown below.

Solaris TCP Parameter Description Suggested Value
tcp_close_wait_interval

On high connection rates, if netstat shows many sockets in the CLOSE_WAIT or FIN_WAIT_2 state

 60000
tcp_fin_wait_2_flush_interval

Checks the fin wait interval (some versions of solaris can be 10 times the normal value).

 67500

Use the following command to get a parameter from the table: 

ndd -get /dev/tcp PARAMETER

Use the following command to set a parameter in a table: 

ndd -set /dev/tcp PARAMETER