Appclient - fine from localhost, errors from remote machine

Question

Hi,
I've been trying to solve a rather strange problem, but could not find any
help in the documentation or in this Forum. It's probably just some minor
thing that I am missing, but those are always the most difficult to find... ;-)
I have S1AS7 installed on one of our development servers (Linux).
I created a little EJB and packaged it together with a test servlet and a simple
console application (using Studio 5).
Step 1: Using the servlet, everything works fine; EJBs are created and
modified successfully.
Step 2: Using the local appclient on the dev server to run the console
application: everything works fine, too. EJBs are instantiated and everything
is cool.
Step 3: I packaged the appclient (using package-appclient),
copied it to another machine (also Linux) and extracted it there. I modified
all the paths in asenv.conf and adjusted the host and port in
sun-acc.xml. I use the same J2SDK as on the dev server. The specified
port is reachable from the second machine via telnet (rule out firewalls
and alike). This is the error that I get:
[bernd@bambi2 appclient]$ ./bin/appclient -client /home/bernd/tmp/TestAppClient.jar -mainclass test.app.TextClient -xml /home/bernd/tmp/AC7/appclient/config/sun-acc.xml
Dec 30, 2003 2:05:55 PM com.iplanet.ias.appclient.Main <init>
INFO:
---------AppClient Container--------
Dec 30, 2003 2:05:56 PM com.iplanet.ias.appclient.Main setTagetServerProperties
INFO: ACC001:Using ClientContainer file: [/home/bernd/tmp/AC7/appclient/config/sun-acc.xml].
Dec 30, 2003 2:05:57 PM com.iplanet.ias.appclient.Main <init>
INFO: ACC014: ORB host name: [10.10.0.20]
Dec 30, 2003 2:05:57 PM com.iplanet.ias.appclient.Main <init>
INFO: ACC013: ORB port number: [33550]
Dec 30, 2003 2:06:01 PM com.sun.corba.ee.internal.iiop.ConnectionTable getConnection
WARNING:
com.iplanet.ias.cis.connection.ConnectException: com.iplanet.ias.cis.channel.tcp.TCPNativeException: -5961:TCPBlockingChannel.JNI_ConnectNative: PR_Connect() failed
        at com.iplanet.ias.cis.connection.Connection.<init>(Connection.java:187)
        at com.iplanet.ias.cis.connection.Connection.<init>(Connection.java:102)
        at com.iplanet.ias.cis.connection.Connection.<init>(Connection.java:118)
        at com.iplanet.ias.cis.connection.Connection.<init>(Connection.java:131)
        at com.sun.corba.ee.internal.iiop.ConnectionTable.getConnection(ConnectionTable.java:142)
        at com.sun.corba.ee.internal.iiop.ConnectionTable.getConnection(ConnectionTable.java:76)
        at com.sun.corba.ee.internal.iiop.GIOPImpl.getConnection(GIOPImpl.java:80)
        at com.sun.corba.ee.internal.corba.ClientDelegate.createRequest(ClientDelegate.java:694)
        at com.sun.corba.ee.internal.corba.ClientDelegate.createRequest(ClientDelegate.java:630)
        at com.sun.corba.ee.internal.corba.ClientDelegate.request(ClientDelegate.java:955)
        at org.omg.CORBA.portable.ObjectImpl._request(ObjectImpl.java:431)
        at org.omg.CosNaming._NamingContextExtStub.resolve(_NamingContextExtStub.java:397)
        at com.sun.enterprise.naming.NamingManagerImpl.<init>(NamingManagerImpl.java:125)
        at com.sun.enterprise.appclient.AppContainer.createManagers(AppContainer.java:134)
        at com.sun.enterprise.appclient.AppContainer.preInvoke(AppContainer.java:73)
        at com.iplanet.ias.appclient.Main.<init>(Main.java:339)
        at com.iplanet.ias.appclient.Main.main(Main.java:93)
Caused by: com.iplanet.ias.cis.channel.tcp.TCPNativeException: -5961:TCPBlockingChannel.JNI_ConnectNative: PR_Connect() failed
        at com.iplanet.ias.cis.channel.tcp.TCPBlockingChannel.connectNative(Native Method)
        at com.iplanet.ias.cis.channel.tcp.TCPBlockingChannel.doConnect(TCPBlockingChannel.java:171)
        at com.iplanet.ias.cis.channel.tcp.TCPBlockingChannel.<init>(TCPBlockingChannel.java:54)
        at com.iplanet.ias.cis.channel.tcp.TCPChannelFactory.createChannel(TCPChannelFactory.java:97)
        at com.iplanet.ias.cis.channel.ChannelManager.createChannel(ChannelManager.java:58)
        at com.iplanet.ias.cis.connection.Connection.<init>(Connection.java:162)
        ... 16 more
Dec 30, 2003 2:06:01 PM com.iplanet.ias.appclient.Main <init>
WARNING: ACC003: Application threw an exception.
javax.naming.NamingException: Serial Context failure
        at com.sun.enterprise.naming.NamingManagerImpl.<init>(NamingManagerImpl.java:138)
        at com.sun.enterprise.appclient.AppContainer.createManagers(AppContainer.java:134)
        at com.sun.enterprise.appclient.AppContainer.preInvoke(AppContainer.java:73)
        at com.iplanet.ias.appclient.Main.<init>(Main.java:339)
        at com.iplanet.ias.appclient.Main.main(Main.java:93)
Dec 30, 2003 2:06:01 PM com.iplanet.ias.appclient.Main <init>
WARNING: ACC010: Make sure the server port is not disabled and that you are looking up a valid nameI would appreciate any help or hint to solve this problem - or to
find more debugging information; I'm sure it works somehow...
Greetings,
Bernd.

Answer 1

Hi Bernd ;-)
gotta give myself the answer (and keep it here for later reference). This is what I needed to do in order to make it work:
1) Package the appclient.jar as described in the manual and unpack it on the remote host.
2) Package the SDK that the Appserver is using (/usr/java/j2sdk1.4.1_04 in my case) and also unpack the directory tree somewhere on the remote host.
On the remote host (where appclient.jar was unpacked):
3) Adjust the paths in conf/asenv.conf and make sure to specify the SDK copied from the Appserver's host in the variable AS_JAVA.
4) In bin/appclient replace %CONFIG_HOME% with the config path, remove the if-block after that line ("environment set by tools") and add :/path/to/j2ee.jar to the JVM_CLASSPATH variable.
5) Edit config/sun-acc.xml: Replace %%%SERVER_ROOT%%% with the path where appclient is installed and (in my case) make sure to use IP addresses for %%%SERVER_NAME%%% in the following line:
<target-server name="%%%SERVER_NAME%%%" address="%%%SERVER_NAME%%%" port="%%%ORB_LISTENER1_PORT%%%"/>Sounds weird and far-fetched, but it works now. :-)
Bernd.