topic Some Alfresco Share proxy requests fail with 500 http status code, although Alfresco repository returns successfull http response (200) in Alfresco Forum

Some Alfresco Share proxy requests fail with 500 http status code, although Alfresco repository returns successfull http response (200)

jego — Thu, 31 Jan 2019 09:02:45 GMT

I have upgraded a customer from 5.1.4 to 5.2.4 Alfresco Enterprise.After migrating the source code and installing the new Alfresco installation via installer, we have Alfresco Share itself is running, but certain requests to the alfresco repository via Share proxy SOMETIMES work and SOMETIMES fail.W

Re: Some Alfresco Share proxy requests fail with 500 http status code, although Alfresco repository returns successfull http response (200)

anghelutar — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 18:43:32 GMT

I believe we might have hit the same problem, using external authentication.

Works fine on another environment - same version - with saml module enabled.

roxana

Re: Some Alfresco Share proxy requests fail with 500 http status code, although Alfresco repository returns successfull http response (200)

afaust — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 10:03:51 GMT

I finally have some time after DevCon to look through the longer questions / posts on this plattform again (and Roxana also had contacted me about this issue this week).

I have not seen similar behaviour before myself. I too consider the missing rethrow of the RuntimeException case a programming mistake, though the only consequence of this is a missing "error" log entry and missing stacktrace information about the real exception - the response to the client will look exactly the same as for the other catch-clauses.

I'd personally patch that rethrow into the specific version of webscripts used in 5.2.4, run with that and then check the stacktrace. Alternative - in a dirtier approach - I'd use remote debugging with a breakpoint in that catch clause.

Since I don't see any TRACE output from the copyResponseStreamOutput method, I expect the RuntimeException to be triggered in that method, though I can see no readily apparent errors / relevant corner cases in that code.

Re: Some Alfresco Share proxy requests fail with 500 http status code, although Alfresco repository returns successfull http response (200)

afaust — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 13:36:55 GMT

Ok - the cause is a stupid NullPointerException that Alfresco has introduced in Share code for one of the 5.2 Service Packs. The bug did not exist in the latest 5.2 Community code. The bug only affects any proxy URLs that do not include a URL query (so no ? in the URL). The bug is located in line 85 of SlingshotRemoteClient. Whenever the url.getQuery() returns null, the proxy request will fail.

Re: Some Alfresco Share proxy requests fail with 500 http status code, although Alfresco repository returns successfull http response (200)

afaust — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 13:56:31 GMT

It is actually a known issue and already fixed for the next 5.2.X service pack: MNT-19933

Still unclear though how this was not caught in testing with dozens of requests issued by the browser failing and access logs showing 500er errors...

Re: Some Alfresco Share proxy requests fail with 500 http status code, although Alfresco repository returns successfull http response (200)

afaust — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 14:00:56 GMT

One reason it may not have been caught in testing is that SSO was not being used. When SSO is not enabled, the proxy should actually append an "alf_ticket=sdfghj" query fragment to the URL, so the specific condition for the NullPointerException does not trigger.

Re: Some Alfresco Share proxy requests fail with 500 http status code, although Alfresco repository returns successfull http response (200)

jego — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 14:15:37 GMT

Axel, you are great. Thanks for finding the root cause of the issue. I owe you a beer!!

I had patched the class with my own version to log the error correctly, but in this case the error was not happening anymore, so I was not sure what really happened...

Thank you!

Re: Some Alfresco Share proxy requests fail with 500 http status code, although Alfresco repository returns successfull http response (200)

anghelutar — Fri, 08 Feb 2019 00:57:16 GMT

Possible solution until the hotfix is out (tested): go back to 5.2.3.