ERROR: Failed to bind Launcher to port

Hi,

Recently we did a R12 cloning and faced an error when starting the forms.
The fix seemed trivial at the end but fixing it let me understand few things, which you may already be aware of.
But for those who do not know, this may be a good read

Issue: Forms fails to start with error "Failed to bind Launcher to port 9020"

Troubleshooting:
As our forms was congigured to run in SOCKET mode, we used the adformsrvctl.sh to start the forms.
On checking the socket.log we found the below error recorded

FORMS CONNECTION ACTIVITY LOG FILE
Developer:Forms/LogRecord
[Sun Dec  2 05:30:11 2012 EST]::Server Start-up Data:
        Server Log Filename: /apps/local/D3P/inst/apps/D3P_c-2/logs/ora/10.1.2/forms/socket.log
        Server Hostname: c-2
        Server Port: 9020
        Server Pool: 1
        Server Process Id: 27370
[Sun Dec  2 05:30:11 2012 EST]::ERROR: Failed to bind Launcher to port 9020

We did the initial checks to see if the port 9020 was in use by any other process on the host but found none.
As our environment was multi-tiered we tried starting the forms on another host but found the same issue.
This made us clear that the issue was with our configuration and not at hosting level

In order to try another option we wanted to start the forms on another port say 9040. Hence to accomplish this we edited the appsweb.cfg pointed by the variable $FORMS_WEB_CONFIG_FILE to reflect the new port.
But again when we started the forms service we got the same error and ironically in the log files we found that the forms was starting with the same old port 9020.

This prompted us to think that forms when starting in socket mode was not reading $FORMS_WEB_CONFIG_FILE to take the port number

Fix:
The issue got fixed when we checked the /etc/hosts and found that there was no entry added in it for the load balancer to point to the same host itself.
After making the required changes to the file /etc/hosts and reverting the port to 9020 in $FORMS_WEB_CONFIG_FILE, the forms server started on port 9020

For Eg:
127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain
173.38.5.72 c-2 c-2.abc.com
173.38.5.72 www-d3p www-d3p.abc.com

This entry is required in /etc/hosts as the load balancer will not detect the port to be up and running until the process is really started on that port.
Hence when starting the forms without the entry in /etc/hosts the request was hitting the load balancer but as the load balancer had not detected anything running on port 9020 it was unable to route the connection.

After adding this entry in the /etc/hosts when starting the forms, the start process was able to resolve www-d3p by bypassing the load balancer and reaching the host itself.

Afterthoughts:
After we were able to resolve the issue and also know the root cause for it. It was still striking us why did the forms server not start with the port 9040 even after editing $FORMS_WEB_CONFIG_FILE
Further reading of scripts revealed the below things

Forms in Socket Mode

1. The script adformsrvctl.sh has the port number and servername hardcoded in it and these values are used to start the forms server and it does not read the $FORMS_WEB_CONFIG_FILE. Incase you want to start the forms on another port, manually change port number in adformsrvctl.sh

2. The script adformsrvctl.sh sources the below env files while starting the forms server
   $APPL_TOP/APPS<CONTEXT_NAME>.env
   $ORA_CONFIG_HOME/10.1.2/forms/server/socket.env

3. $FORMS_WEB_CONFIG_FILE is used to set parameters for the client forms session during runtime. Incase you make any changes to the $FORMS_WEB_CONFIG_FILE then you need not bounce the forms service but just relaunch the forms session for changes to take effect

Forms in Servlet Mode

1. The script adformsctl.sh is used to start forms in SERVLET mode

2. The script adformsctl.sh sources the below env files while starting the forms server
   $APPL_TOP/APPS<CONTEXT_NAME>.env
   $ORA_CONFIG_HOME/10.1.3/<CONTEXT_NAME>.env
   $ORA_CONFIG_HOME/10.1.2/forms/server/default.env

3. The forms service starts using the parameters in the $FORMS_WEB_CONFIG_FILE to start and also at  runtime by the client forms. Incase you want to start the forms on another port, make a change to the $FORMS_WEB_CONFIG_FILE and bounce the services

4. If a change is made to $FORMS_WEB_CONFIG_FILE then forms need to be bounced for it to take effect at forms server and client forms level as well


-- Tanveer