OPAC is down; can't ssh to web server

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Article Type: General
Product: Aleph
Product Version: 19.01

Description:
We have a separate Web server. We have switched to production (but not for the OPAC yet). The OPAC was functioning, but has stopped. The following error displays in firefox:

'Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, aleph@alephweb and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Apache/2.0.61 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.0.61 OpenSSL/0.9.8g mod_perl/2.0.2 Perl/v5.8.8 Server at wwwserver.abc.edu Port 8991'

Also cannot ssh to wwwserver.abc.edu

wwwserver.abc.edu is a Solaris 10 Zone named AlephWeb that resides on the AlephApp server. We halted and booted the zone using the command ‘zoneadm -z AlephWeb’ halt and ‘zoneadm -z AlephWeb boot’ respectively whil connected to AlephApp from root. Rebooting the zone did not fix the issue, same symptoms as above ocurred.
An Ex Libris staff member was troubleshooting problems with Aleph ADAM objects (images) not displaying in the OPAC this morning.
Here is his account of what he was doing:

“I went in this morning to try and create the directories for the ADAM objects on the webserver, to make sure that the objects were not appearing in the Prod WebOPAC because the objects were being stored on a different server.
I was not allowed permissions to create the ADAM directories or files using the aleph or exlibris logins. I logged in as root and tried also, but didn’t have permissions. I tried to change permissions to read/write, but it wouldn’t allow me to, so I logged out.
Then I went later to try and access and was denied access.”

We have switched to production (but not for the OPAC).

From root account on AlephApp am able to connect to AlephWeb zone using the command # zlogin -C AlephWeb and log in with root (however, cannot log in with aleph or exlibris accounts). This message keeps appearing:

Nov 30 13:48:13 AlephWeb java
libpkcs11: /usr/lib/security/pkcs11_softtoken.so unexpected failure in ELF signature verification. System may have been tampered with. See cryptoadm(1M). Skipping this plug-in.

Resolution:
[From site:] With Sun's help we were able to pinpoint what was preventing connections to the OPAC webserver. The permissions to the root directory were not set correctly.

Here were the permssion settings on the root directory before the fix:

# pwd
/
# ls -la
drwx------ 19 root root 512 Dec 2 05:19 .
drwx------ 19 root root 512 Dec 2 05:19 ..

The fix:
# chmod 755 /

Setting after the fix:

bash-3.00# ls -la
drwxr-xr-x 19 root root 512 Dec 2 05:19 .
drwxr-xr-x 19 root root 512 Dec 2 05:19 ..

We rebooted the catalog server and could connect via ssh and login with aleph or exlibris accounts also the OPAC was with us once again.

Article last edited: 10/8/2013