CSPC losing connectivity

[Michael Percival]

Hello,

I installed a CSPC Virtual appliance last week, and now that I am setting it up and running discoveries and collections, I am running into an issue.  After a few hours, something happens on the server, and I am unable to run jobs, or configure anything in the web interface.  An error box pops up, and it is just a red X with OK.  When I go to server properties, all the IP information is gone, but if I ssh to the appliance and do a show ipconfig, it shows everything is connected.  It's as if the connectivity between the web interface and the server is disconnecting.  Is there anything I can run on the server to troubleshoot this?  We built the server from an OVA downloaded from Cisco's website, and it automatically setup all the vmware settings.

Thanks,

Mike

[Lynden Price]

Hi Mike,

When the error box pops up, you are correct in saying that the web interface is no longer able to communicate with the server. This usually happens when the CSPC services stop or restart, or if there is an issue with Tomcat.

If you SSH into the server and run the command:

sudo service cspc restart

it will stop and start the CSPC service.

As for why it's shutting down in the first place, I'd recommend running a continuous ping on the collector to determine the circumstances where it fails. There could be an IP conflict with another server that is being powered on and off.

Thanks,

Lynden

[Michael Percival]

Whenever it happens, I still can ssh to the server, and the web interface is still accessible, just that I can't really do anything.  Our vmware person noticed that the network adapter on the virtual machine is setup as flexible, as opposed to E1000 or VMXNET.  What is the recommendation from Cisco about changing vmware settings, or installing vmware tools?

[Lynden Price]

I see. The reason you can seem to still use the web interface is because it is cached, the connection has actually been severed. It sounds like Tomcat is going down for some reason. The network adapter shouldn't matter, especially if you can still SSH in. You can play around with the settings if you think that will help.

If you SSH into the Linux side of the server (using the "collectorlogin" username) then you can tcpdump and listen on port 8001 to see if the web service is going down.

[Michael Percival]

Can you provide me with the syntax to perform a tcpdump?  I'm not a linux person, and am unsure the command to do this.  The collector continues to drop multiple times a day.  Resetting the tomcat service using the command you provided fixes it, but I shouldn't have to go in multiple times a day and reset it.  Thanks.

[Lynden Price]

tcpdump port 8001

should show you what you need. Just leave it up for a while and try to catch it when it goes down.

Thanks,

Lynden

[Michael Percival]

It returns no suitable device found.

[Michael Percival]

Any other suggestions how to get this command to work, or how to fix this issue?  When I am using the collector, I have to reset this service multiple times in order to get discoveries and inventory collections to work.  Thank you.

[Lynden Price]

Hi Michael,

try:

netstat -tulpn

It should display the processes and ports.

You can post a screenshot of what you see here once it goes down.

Thanks,

Lynden

[Michael Percival]

Having connectivity issues and this is the output.

[Lynden Price]

Hi Michael,

If you run the service cspc restart command, does the output look differently? I can see there at the server on 8001 but I don't see the program listed in the pid column.

Thanks,

Lynden

[Michael Percival]

Looks the same.

[Lynden Price]

Could you send me a screenshot or some more details about how the VM was set up? Is it possible you used the ISO instead of the OVA? The only other thing that comes to mind is that the server is shutting down Tomcat silently because it is running out of memory.

[Michael Percival]

We used the OVA.  This is the one we downloaded from Cisco - SNTC-CSPC2.5.2.1-OVF10.ova.  Attached is a screenshot on how it setup the virtual machine.

[Lynden Price]

Is there anything in particular you're doing when it goes down? Do you have any recurring discoveries or inventories scheduled, and what are the intervals of those?