Cannot Activate Changes in WLS Console due to Request Entity Too Large (Doc ID 2636713.1)

Last updated on FEBRUARY 28, 2024

Applies to:

Symptoms

When operating on the WLS console in production mode, changes are distributed to the managed servers when clicking on the Active Changes button. That action can be considered a transaction and it will be complete once the changes have been propagated to all the managed servers, however, multiple situations could prevent this operation to finish successfully. If a timeout was configured, a timeout exception could occur, if no, most probably the server will be affected by STUCK threads.
We understand that multiple reasons could explain this behavior, but this article refers to a particular case, where the log file shows as main tip the "Request Entity Too Large" message.
This situation was found in an SOA domain with multiple managed servers, where no change could be applied successfully and the WLS Console displayed these messages:

• Error An error occurred during activation of changes, please see the log for details.
• Error Timed out waiting for completion: Activate State: STATE_DISTRIBUTING Target Servers States: <SERVER> STATE_FAILED

The last message shows the list of servers where this change failed, which seems to be a good tip to keep on digging.
The admin server log file gave more details to understand this situation:

Even when there were multiple managed servers on this domain, the message referred to specific managed servers, from here, the failed-servers.
Somehow that failed-server would be unable to process a large message via POST method or the limit assigned to this server, should be extended to match the real needs of it.

Cause

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