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PAW webpage constantly refreshing after logging in

Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2017 8:43 am
by kschepens
Hi,

Installed PAW 2.0.24 on Windows 2016.

After logging in, the welcome page is constantly refreshing, so we can't do anything inside the application.
Admin tool page works fine, all services are either running or completed.
Tried in IE, Chrome and Firefox, all three show the same behaviour.
Cleared chache in all three browsers.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Greetz,

Kris

Re: PAW webpage constantly refreshing after logging in

Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2017 11:02 am
by Steve Rowe
We've had this issue as well...

From memory it relates to not all of the PAW services starting and being "unpacked" properly before you use PAW for the first time leading to corruption of the internal DB that PAW authenticates against. This leads the log-in screen to get stuck in loop authenticating against a DB it can't access.

You'll need to reinstall PAW and once it is started look at the "task manager" inside docker and make sure all the services are started and running at 0% before logging in for the first.

I think....

Re: PAW webpage constantly refreshing after logging in

Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2017 11:41 am
by kschepens
Hi Steve,

Thanks for your answer.

With reinstalling paw, do you mean running the Start script again and choose 'y' on the question to install the paw docker images again?

Also, what do you mean with task manager inside docker?

Thanks again,

Kris

Re: PAW webpage constantly refreshing after logging in

Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2017 4:07 pm
by dr.nybble
We are aware of the problem and are working to address it.

First, ensure that all of your containers are running (in particular Mongo). Sometimes on slower Windows systems, timeouts in certain Windows calls can cause a container to not start.

If this is a new installation you can just zap the BSS database (note this is DESTRUCTIVE do not do this on an established PAW)

scripts/paw.ps1 stop
scripts/paw.ps1 rm bss
scripts/paw.ps1

Now, as Steve says, watch performance in Windows Task Manager, wait for CPU activity to stop. Then all services are up, running and available.

The root cause of this problem is if you log on for the first time when not all services are available. The user gets "half-initialized" and you get into this looping situation because you don't have rights to some objects in the system.

Re: PAW webpage constantly refreshing after logging in

Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2017 4:21 pm
by codingCPA
I actually encountered this issue as well, and this was not the only stability issue we saw related to the new Windows PAW build. We decided to go back to running the Linux Workspace images in a nested vm instead of the window images in docker ee for windows server 2016. We haven't had any stability issues after that.

My personal opinion is that the new PAW windows build is not stable, and was not ready for wide release when they put it out in July. Even if issues like this can be fixed with fresh installs, that's not a risk I even want to expose myself to. I'm going to end up waiting for some later releases until I try running PAW in windows again. I'm not into beta testing software for free.

You can try just updating the images by choosing 'y' after starting the script, but I don't believe that is going to fix your issue.

I'm not sure what Steve means when he says "task manager" inside docker, but if you launch a powershell within the server and type the following:

docker container stats

You will get a live listing of active containers, and their cpu and memory usage.

Re: PAW webpage constantly refreshing after logging in

Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2017 4:22 pm
by Steve Rowe
codingCPA wrote: Fri Sep 08, 2017 4:21 pm I'm not sure what Steve means when he says "task manager" inside docker, but if you launch a powershell within the server and type the following:

docker container stats

You will get a live listing of active containers, and their cpu and memory usage.
Thanks, exactly what I meant!

Re: PAW webpage constantly refreshing after logging in

Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2017 8:45 am
by kschepens
Hi,

I recreated the bss database, then waited till all CPU activity falls back, then waited for half an hour extra before logging in, but still the page keeps refreshing constantly.

Anything else I can try?

Thanks!

Kris

Re: PAW webpage constantly refreshing after logging in

Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2017 2:55 pm
by codingCPA
That's what I figured was going to happen to you unfortunately. I wasn't able to find any way to get this up again or any guidance on what else from the corrupted db might be persisting even after a db rebuild. To get things back up we were forced to revert to a weekly backup of that server before the PAW install and restart the install process. Concerns about build stability eventually led us to completely abandon the windows docker environment.

We were able to get this back up after starting over with the rebuilt server image, but we aren't confident enough to move the configuration over to production. Whether or not that's something you want to do is your decision. If you have server backups available, I would suggest starting over. Hopefully this isn't on your production environment.

Re: PAW webpage constantly refreshing after logging in

Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2017 3:12 pm
by dr.nybble
Sorry, I didn't catch that you were using PAW Windows 24.
We have switched to using Docker named volumes in this version (to work around a Docker bug, but it is a better idea to use them anyway).

paw.ps1 stop
docker volume rm paw_bss
paw.ps1

Re: PAW webpage constantly refreshing after logging in

Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2017 1:53 pm
by kschepens
Got it working at this moment. First I executed this:

Run the docker command to stop the BSS database: "docker stop bss"
Run the docker command to delete the entries in the bss database: "docker rm -v bss"

The I used the restore.ps1 script to restore a backup from a previous PAW version (2.0.21). When the restore was done, I waited till CPU activity dropped and then I was able to login to PAW and the page is no longer refreshing constantly.
Strange however that restoring the backup did not restore the reports I made in version 2.0.21, but for now this is not a disaster as it were just a few reports and I can easily recreate them.

Hope it will keep working now...