IBM Business Monitor 8.0.1.1 and the Dispatcher

As per my previous posts, I've just started to dabble with Oracle 11g R2 as my database for IBM Business Monitor, instead of using DB2 which is my default position.

The installation had been relatively smooth, but I then had an issue with the Cognos Dispatcher which, I was sure, was Oracle-related.

Think again ….

I was seeing: -

127.0.0.1:9097 31198 2013-03-26 12:00:54.796 +0 pogoStartup na na 0 Thread-54 DISP 6235 1 Audit.Other.dispatcher.DISP.pogo pogo com.cognos.pogo.contentmanager.coordinator.ActiveCMControl Failure <messages><message><messageString>DPR-DPR-1035 Dispatcher detected an error.</messageString></message><message><messageString>DPR-DPR-1004 Expecting a BI Bus XML response but got:   </messageString></message></messages> DPR-CMI-4007 Unable to perform an active Content Manager election on the local IP node. For more information, see the dispatcher and Content Manager detailed logs. Ensure that the local Content Manager service is started.DPR-DPR-1004 Expecting a BI Bus XML response but got: com.cognos.pogo.bibus.CommandExecutionException: DPR-DPR-1004 Expecting a BI Bus XML response but got: at com.cognos.pogo.bibus.BIBusCommand.handleDefaultException(BIBusCommand.java:294) at 

in the cogserver.log after building a new BAM 8011 environment against Oracle 11g R2.

Whilst poking about in cogstartup.xml, I realised that the Dispatcher was sitting on port 9097 rather than 9081: -

$ cat ../configuration/cogstartup.xml | grep bam8011.uk.ibm.com

    <crn:value xsi:type="xsd:anyURI">http://bam8011.uk.ibm.com:9097/p2pd/servlet/dispatch</crn:value>

      <crn:item xsi:type="xsd:anyURI" order="0">http://bam8011.uk.ibm.com:9097/p2pd/servlet/dispatch/ext</crn:item>

    <crn:value xsi:type="cfg:localURI">http://bam8011.uk.ibm.com:9097/p2pd/servlet/dispatch</crn:value>

    <crn:value xsi:type="cfg:localURI">http://bam8011.uk.ibm.com:9097/p2pd/servlet/dispatch</crn:value>

    <crn:value xsi:type="xsd:anyURI">http://bam8011.uk.ibm.com:9097/p2pd/servlet/dispatch</crn:value>

      <crn:item xsi:type="xsd:anyURI">http://bam8011.uk.ibm.com:9097/p2pd/servlet</crn:item>

          <crn:item xsi:type="xsd:string">bam8011.uk.ibm.com:9097</crn:item>

Given that Monitor/Cognos can't currently access the Dispatcher on an HTTPS port, I'd previously handled this by adding a Virtual Host alias to default_host for port 9081.

Therefore, you can guess the problem ....

Yep, whilst I could access port 9097: -

$ telnet bam8011.uk.ibm.com 9097

I was then getting: -

SRVE0255E: A WebGroup/Virtual Host to handle /p2pd has not been defined.

SRVE0255E: A WebGroup/Virtual Host to handle bam8011.uk.ibm.com:9043 has not been defined.

when I tried to access the Dispatcher via a browser.

Once I added a new alias for 9097, and restarted the Support cluster, I got further forward, but was then seeing: -

Failure SecureErrorId: 2013-03-26-14:23:03.321-#1  Original Error: DPR-ERR-2088 The requested Server Group '' does not exist.  Handler trace back: [the_dispatcher] com.cognos.pogo.handlers.performance.PerformanceIndicationHandler [the_dispatcher] com.cognos.pogo.handlers.logic.ChainHandler [service_lookup] com.cognos.pogo.handlers.engine.ServiceLookupHandler [load_balancer] com.cognos.pogo.handlers.logic.ChainHandler [lb_forwarder] com.cognos.p2plb.clerver.LoadBalanceHandler

Thinking semi-laterally, I re-generated and re-propagated the Plugin, and got even further forward: -

 

Once I restarted the IHS server, I was in like Flynn

 

Note that this allows me to access the Dispatched on an HTTPS port ( 9443 in my case ), *BUT* the non-HTTPS port ( now 9097 rather than 9081 ) is required because of a current issue with Monitor/Cognos.

*UPDATE 27/03/2013* I've just completed a new, clean, installation of Monitor 8.0.1.1, and, quelle surprise, my Dispatcher is back on port 9081, rather than 9097. I'm not too sure what happened; I can only assume that something was hogging 9081 when I did the previous install, meaning that port 9097 was allocated instead. I can't explain it but ....