Troubleshoot a Hub installation

The following sections seek to provide guidance if specific issues are experienced either during the install or when verifying that the installation has been successful.

Message Broker connectivity

To verify the connectivity between the Web Server and the Message Broker check that the RabbitMQ Management Console is accessible through a web browser.

There could be several reasons that connectivity fails:

  • Verify Network Connectivity – Ensure that all relevant devices are connected to the same network and are able to communicate.
  • Firewall – Check that the firewalls on the servers themselves or within the network are not preventing communication.

The RabbitMQ Management Console communicates, by default, on port 15672. The message broker queues use a different port, 5672, by default. The firewall should be checked for TCP access on all ports. This is especially true of the IT organization has specified non-default ports.

Database connectivity

The Test connection to proceed button within the installer checks the following:

  • If the database exists:
    • That it can be connected to.
    • That the account has the rights to read, write and edit the database.
  • If the database does not exist:
    • That the account has the right to create the database.

If these requirements cannot be met, the installation will stop.

There are a number of checks that can be performed when a connection cannot be made to a SQL Server over the LAN:

  • Verify Network Connectivity – Ensure that all relevant devices are connected to the same network and are able to communicate.
  • SQL Credentials – Verify the SQL credentials and that the user has appropriate permissions on the SQL Server.
  • Firewall – Check that the firewalls on the servers themselves or within the network are not preventing communication.
  • SQL Browser Service – Ensure the SQL Browser Service on the SQL Server is enabled to allow for a SQL Instance to be found. For SQL Server Express this service is typically disabled by default.
  • Enabling TCP/IP Connectivity – Where remote connectivity is required for SQL, check that TCP/IP connectivity is enabled for the SQL Instance. Microsoft provide articles specific to each version of SQL that provide instructions to Enable the TCP/IP Network Protocol for SQL Server.

If when running the installer the installation process fails with database errors, see below, then test that the Web Server has a SQL connectivity to the database. This could be due to any of the reasons potentially listed above.

Another potential reason for failure is that the account used to create the databases within the installer has insufficient privileges to create the databases.

Finally, if the installation is a re-installation after a removal of the software. Then if the same database names have been used, the databases need to be cleared of any old data before re-installing.

Web server

During the installation process the installer will check that all prerequisites are installed. It is recommended that if the prerequisites are not installed, that the installer is canceled, the prerequisites installed, and the installer process restarted.

For further information, see Prerequisites.

Starting the IMS website

After completing the installation, if an ‘HTTP Error 500.19 on 0x8007000d’ displays when starting the IMS website, you will need to repair or reinstall the .NET Core component .NET Core 3.1.2 Windows Server Hosting. The file for this component is dotnet-hosting-3.1.2-win.exe.

File service

If the File service fails to locate the imagery for IMS and Hub then this is caused by an uninstallation and reinstallation of the Blue Prism products. This issue will not occur for first-time installations.

During the removal process, the databases are not removed and so if the reinstallation uses the same database names then the original paths to the file services and URLs will still be used.

To overcome this, after the removal process has been run, either delete or clean the databases so that any previous paths have been deleted or use alternatives database names during the reinstallation.

Windows Authentication

The account running the installation must have the relevant SQL Server permissions to carry out the installation – membership in either the sysadmin or dbcreator fixed server roles.

If during the installation process it was chosen to use Windows Authentication, it is recommended that a Windows service account is established with the necessary permissions to execute the tasks and operate during normal operation.

This service account will need not only the ability to perform the SQL database creation process, see Minimum SQL permissions, and ownership over the IIS Application Pools.

By default, the Application Pools are created with the identity ‘ApplicationPoolIdentity’. After the installer has completed the established service account will need to be allocated permissions to manage the Application Pools.

If there are issues with the Audit Service, make sure that the Windows Service Account has access to the Audit Service Listener as well as the Audit Database.

Not able to configure SMTP settings in Hub

If you are unable to configure SMTP settings in Hub this is normally related to the startup order of the services.

The web server must start up after the RabbitMQ services have all started. If the web server services start before the RabbitMQ service is ready, then going into the SMTP settings in Hub will result in a ‘something went wrong’ message.