[Building Sakai] strange runtime error

[Glenn R. Golden]

Etudes is getting a strange new error.  One (of 4) app server (at a time) will go into a period where it produces a large number of bug reports.  This has been happening for a few weeks (only!) and on all 4 app servers, but not too often and never on more than one at a time.

At first, I thought we had our files open limit set too low, and it does seem that when this is happening, the JVM is using a larger number of files than when it is not happening.  We have raised the limit from 1024 (default) to 4096, but the problem has not gone away.

One clue I am seeing is in the mod_jk.log.  (Our requests come into apache, and go over ajp to tomcat).  We seem to see a steady stream of these messages when the app server is having this trouble, and not at other times.

[Mon Apr 26 18:19:11.733 2010] [25466:3624277344] [warn] map_uri_to_worker_ext::jk_uri_worker_map.c (962): Uri * is invalid. Uri must start with /
[Mon Apr 26 18:19:11.734 2010] [25466:3624277344] [warn] map_uri_to_worker_ext::jk_uri_worker_map.c (962): Uri * is invalid. Uri must start with /

Does anyone know that this means?

BTW, our Sakai code is vintage 2.3.x.  The  error messages we get are like this:

org.sakaiproject.tool.api.ToolException
   at org.sakaiproject.cheftool.ToolServlet.doGet(ToolServlet.java:208)
caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
   at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
   at org.sakaiproject.cheftool.PagedResourceActionII.prepPage(PagedResourceActionII.java:239)
   at org.sakaiproject.announcement.tool.AnnouncementAction.buildMainPanelContext(AnnouncementAction.java:868)


org.sakaiproject.tool.api.ToolException
   at org.sakaiproject.cheftool.ToolServlet.doGet(ToolServlet.java:208)
caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
   at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
   at org.sakaiproject.message.tool.SynopticMessageAction.buildMainPanelContext(SynopticMessageAction.java:317)


org.sakaiproject.tool.api.ToolException
   at org.sakaiproject.cheftool.ToolServlet.doGet(ToolServlet.java:208)
caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
   at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
   at org.sakaiproject.announcement.tool.AnnouncementAction.buildMainPanelContext(AnnouncementAction.java:770)


Thanks!

- Glenn

Glenn R. Golden
Chief Architect, Etudes, Inc.
ggolden at etudes.org