Admin Server Fails to Start in Development or Production Mode After Regenerating SerializedSystemIni.dat File in WebLogic Server (Doc ID 2303170.1)

Last updated on NOVEMBER 14, 2022

Applies to:

Symptoms

Using Oracle WebLogic Server and having difficulties starting the Admin Server due to a login isssue. In the midst of troubleshooting, it was decided to replace all the encrypted text values specified between <credential-encrypted> tags to clear text values in the config.xml file to test the start up. This still fails, and this exception is seen in the Admin Server log file:

<Critical> <WebLogicServer> <BEA-000386> <Server subsystem failed. Reason: java.lang.AssertionError: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException

As a next step, the domain mode was changed back to development mode by setting the <production-mode> tag to false in config.xml and in the setDomainEnv.sh file. Upon doing this, the Admin Server starts but after accessing the Admin Console, attempting to change back the domain mode to production, the restart fails again. This time, the following error is seen:

<Warning> <Management> <BEA-141191> <The prepare phase of the configuration update failed with an exception. weblogic.descriptor.DescriptorException: Unmarshaller failed

At this point, the Admin Server is not starting and seems to be stuck in this inconsistent state.

Changes

After circling back to diagnose this issue properly, it was found that before seeing these errors, <Note 1602857.1>, "How to Recover SerializedSystemIni.dat File?" was followed.

Cause

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