JSF Application on WAS 6.1 when migrated from tomcat5.5 not loading

Question

I'm migration a list of applications from Tomcat to WAS 6.1
I have a JSF application running on Tomcat 5.5.
The same application when hosting on websphere application server 6.1(latest service pack applied in 6.1.0.17 ) is not loading properly.
The application has a login screen that comes when loads. This comes fine in the tomcat server. But in the WAS this not loading. It's not giving any error messages also. What happens in WAS is in the login screen The header section will comes but the login fields ie the user Id and password section won't come.
I tried deploying the same war file from the Tomcat to the WAS server. Still there is no change.
Initially my WAS server version was 6.1.0.2, and then I had an issue with JSF servlet and context mappings.
After applying the fix pack 6.1.0.17 it was fine.
The application uses the a security filter- form based login in the web.xml
Is there any difference between the form base authentication between tomcat and websphere ?
Here is the section of web.xml for form based authentication
<!--Security filter - form based login -->
<filter>
<filter-name>Security Filter</filter-name>
<filter-class>org.securityfilter.filter.SecurityFilter</filter-class>
<init-param>
<description>Configuration file location (this is the default value)</description>
<param-name>config</param-name>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/securityfilter-config.xml</param-value>
</init-param>
<init-param>
<description>Validate config file if set to true</description>
<param-name>validate</param-name>
<param-value>true</param-value>
</init-param>
<init-param>
<description>change security binding</description>
<param-name>loginSubmitPattern</param-name>
<param-value>login.html</param-value>
</init-param>
</filter>
this is urgent, please help.
Edited by: JSF_exception on Nov 10, 2008 8:31 PM

Answer 1

yes i checked the server logs. it didn't give any messages.
there is no information in the file 'native_stderr.log','SystemOut.log','SystemErr.log','native_stdout.log' files.
In the production server, i noticed an error message in the SystemOut.log file, it gives the following message.
+1/11/08 13:39:33:851 EST] 00000026 SecurityFilte I org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Jdk14Logger info SecurityFilter.doFilter+
+[11/11/08 13:39:33:870 EST] 00000026 WebApp E [Servlet Error]-[Filter [Security Filter]: filter is unavailable.]: java.lang.NullPointerException+
+     at java.lang.Throwable.<init>(Throwable.java:181)+
+     at java.lang.Exception.<init>(Exception.java:29)+
+     at java.lang.RuntimeException.<init>(RuntimeException.java:32)+
+     at java.lang.NullPointerException.<init>(NullPointerException.java:36)+
+     at org.securityfilter.filter.SecurityFilter.doFilter(SecurityFilter.java:151)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.FilterInstanceWrapper.doFilter(FilterInstanceWrapper.java:173)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain.doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:106)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterChain._doFilter(WebAppFilterChain.java:75)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.doFilter(WebAppFilterManager.java:720)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.doFilter(WebAppFilterManager.java:679)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.invokeFilters(WebAppFilterManager.java:686)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.wswebcontainer.filter.WebAppFilterManager.invokeFilters(WebAppFilterManager.java:70)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.extension.DefaultExtensionProcessor.invokeFilters(DefaultExtensionProcessor.java:788)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.extension.DefaultExtensionProcessor.handleRequest(DefaultExtensionProcessor.java:241)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.wswebcontainer.extension.DefaultExtensionProcessor.handleRequest(DefaultExtensionProcessor.java:105)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebApp.handleRequest(WebApp.java:3287)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebGroup.handleRequest(WebGroup.java:246)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.WebContainer.handleRequest(WebContainer.java:615)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.wswebcontainer.WebContainer.handleRequest(WebContainer.java:1418)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.channel.WCChannelLink.ready(WCChannelLink.java:110)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpInboundLink.handleDiscrimination(HttpInboundLink.java:398)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpInboundLink.handleNewInformation(HttpInboundLink.java:298)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.http.channel.inbound.impl.HttpInboundLink.ready(HttpInboundLink.java:254)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.tcp.channel.impl.NewConnectionInitialReadCallback.sendToDiscriminators(NewConnectionInitialReadCallback.java:179)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.tcp.channel.impl.NewConnectionInitialReadCallback.complete(NewConnectionInitialReadCallback.java:109)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.tcp.channel.impl.WorkQueueManager.requestComplete(WorkQueueManager.java:532)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.tcp.channel.impl.WorkQueueManager.attemptIO(WorkQueueManager.java:583)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.tcp.channel.impl.WorkQueueManager.workerRun(WorkQueueManager.java:973)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.tcp.channel.impl.WorkQueueManager$Worker.run(WorkQueueManager.java:1063)+
+     at com.ibm.ws.util.ThreadPool$Worker.run(ThreadPool.java:1473)+
+[11/11/08 13:39:34:037 EST] 00000026 SecurityFilte I org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Jdk14Logger info SecurityFilter.doFilter+
+[11/11/08 13:39:34:103 EST] 00000026 SecurityFilte I org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Jdk14Logger info SecurityFilter.doFilter+
+[11/11/08 13:39:34:183 EST] 00000026 SecurityFilte I org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Jdk14Logger info SecurityFilter.doFilter+
The same application is working on tomcat. So when we move it from tomcat to WAS should we change any settings.
if we are deploying the war file it should work in all the servers right?
Following is my login page..
<%@ page language="java" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html" prefix="h"%>
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core" prefix="f"%>
<%@ taglib uri="http://myfaces.apache.org/tomahawk" prefix="t"%>
<t:htmlTag value="P" >
<h:outputText value="<FORM action='login.html' id='base_form' method='POST'>" escape="false" />
<t:panelGrid columns="2" align="center" footerClass="loginFooter" headerClass="loginHeader" columnClasses="loginColumn1, loginColumn2" styleClass="loginFormPanel">
<f:facet name="header">
<t:outputText value="Please login with your I5DEV system name and password " styleClass="loginDescriptionA" />
</f:facet>
<t:outputText value="Username:" />
<t:inputText value="" id="j_username" forceId="true" />
<t:outputText value="Password:" />
<t:inputSecret value="" id="j_password" forceId="true" />
<f:facet name="footer">
<t:panelGroup>
<t:panelGrid style="width: 100%" rowClasses=",,loginSubmitRow">
<t:outputText value="" />
<t:outputText value="" />
<f:verbatim>
<INPUT value="Login" class="loginSubmit" type="submit" />
</f:verbatim>
</t:panelGrid>
</t:panelGroup>
</f:facet>
</t:panelGrid>
<t:panelGrid align="center">
<t:outputText value="#{requestScope.error}" styleClass="errorMessage" style="display: inline;" rendered="#{!empty requestScope.error}"/>
<h:message for="general_login" id="general_login" errorClass="errorMessage" style="display: inline;"/>
</t:panelGrid>
<h:outputText value="</FORM>" escape="false" />
</t:htmlTag>
<t:panelGrid align="center" columnClasses="warnMessage">
<t:outputText value="NOTE: Providing an incorrect password increments the number of failed sign-on attempts for the user profile, and can result in the profile being disabled." styleClass="warningMessage" />
</t:panelGrid>
<f:verbatim>
<SCRIPT language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
window.onload = function() {
document.getElementById("j_username").focus();
</SCRIPT>
</f:verbatim>
Edited by: JSF_exception on Nov 11, 2008 11:17 AM
Edited by: JSF_exception on Nov 11, 2008 11:22 AM