Blackboard quick fixes
From Syscore
Contents |
Quick Fixes
Most reoccurring problems that involve blackboard “hanging” or “freezing” or the application crashing after some amount of up time, come from one of two sources.
First, Tomcat/Java has some known memory leaks that can cause blackboard to hang. Second, network glitches can cause the server to lose connection to its database in such a way that it cannot reconnect properly.
The easiest solution to both these problems is simply to follow an ordered reboot sequence. First, reboot the Database server, and then reboot the Application server. While this is not always necessary, it often a much better fix then lesser service resets/restarts. If this does not fix the problem, it would be best to contact Blackboard technical support.
Restart problem 2/22/06
Sometimes after restarting the server, blackboard will not come up. If so, try the following.
- wait at least 3 minutes
- stop the bb-tomcat and bb-collab services
- wait at least 1 minute
- restart both
- give blackboard 5 minutes to start (yes, 5 minutes... something is not right )
This should be fixed sometime in march 06
Auto restarts 3/2007
Since moving to a load balanced system Last month, I've been able to set up a job that restarts each app servers java/tomcat engine. This has mostly prevented the Java memory leak hangs and such that were a problem before. There are some weird timing isuses I needed to deal with to make the jobs work correctly. They are run via the task scheduler so look there for details.
Blackboard pauses 5/2007
Blackboard has been hanging or pausing. Users are getting a webpage that never loads. The only time I've been able to reproduce this problem, I was able to trace it to queries that were being run at new media. They have created URL's to run these queries so the potential exists for DOS attacks just by clicking a button on a hidden webpage. If Blackboard hangs, the procedure is to call John Fritz, Bob Armstrong, or Jeffery Berman and find out if anyone is running any blackboard database queries. Then document the outage on the wikki.
