Tomcat 4.1.24 returns random 500 error messages

Question

hi all,
i've got a big problem with my tomcat 4.1.24 in connection with apache 2.0.46 on windows 2000 server.
when surfing through the website tomcat returns after some pages an internal server error:
"...500 The server encountered an internal error that prevented it from fulfilling this request."
But not all users get this error! when restarting the server it works (for a certain time)
Please help me! we want to go live!
b.r. dajoke

Answer 1

Still smells like a recourse leak, even more so now that you know it works better if Tomcat isn't running in-process with Apache (which would reduce the memory space available to Tomcat).
Check whether you have database connections you're not closing, objects that are left to swing in the wind with no reference to them, etc.
We encountered something similar once and that was the problem.
The system would always hang without apparent reason on or about the same amount of time after startup. Turned out someone had forgotten to close a database connection and Oracle was refusing access until they timed out (with the timeout set to something like half an hour, and sessions lasting maybe 5 minutes). First the sysadmins tried installing more Oracle licenses, this increased the time between hangs (surprise surprise).
When I came in and suggested they look at their database access code they were I think planning to format and reinstall an HP9000 machine in the hope that might do something.