Hi Community, We are facing our ArcGIS Portal issues when electric power outage suddenly and host machine shutdown. After restarting windows, We cannot access our Portal but when we check the services, and the service for portal shown still running. Below is sample log message for portal. Error before starting configuration observer. A JSONObject text must begin with '{' at character 1 of Failed to start the portal. The observer's beforeStart() function returned a failure. We suspect a malformed or corrupted JSON configuration file, but we’re unsure which file is causing this. We have not made any recent manual changes to JSON files. We would like assistance identifying and resolving the problem without losing our current Portal configuration and content. Thanks,

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Error: Could not access any ArcGIS Enterprise portal machines. Please contact your system administrator.

GisMan

Hi Community,

We are facing our ArcGIS Portal issues when electric power outage suddenly and host machine shutdown. After restarting windows, We cannot access our Portal but when we check the services, and the service for portal shown still running. Below is sample log message for portal.

Portal Issues.jpg

<Msg time="2025-04-28T10:13:09,295" type="SEVERE" code="217003" source="Portal" process="5560" thread="1" methodName="" machine="GIS.xyz.xyz" user="" elapsed="0.0" requestID="">Error before starting configuration observer. A JSONObject text must begin with '{' at character 1 of</Msg> <Msg time="2025-04-28T10:13:09,295" type="SEVERE" code="217075" source="Portal" process="5560" thread="1" methodName="" machine="GIS.xyz.xyz" user="" elapsed="0.0" requestID="">Failed to start the portal. The observer's beforeStart() function returned a failure.</Msg>

We suspect a malformed or corrupted JSON configuration file, but we’re unsure which file is causing this. We have not made any recent manual changes to JSON files. We would like assistance identifying and resolving the problem without losing our current Portal configuration and content.

Thanks,

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PLadd

Are all services running in Windows Services?

Can you get to Portal Admin? (domain/portal/portaladmin). If yes, assuming you are using federation, go to Federation, Servers and click Validate. Hopefully it validates. If not, you might have to reconnect.

Can you go to domain:6443/arcgis/admin? Then go to system > webadaptors > longmeaninglessnumber. Is the web adaptor registered?

GisMan

Hi @PLadd,

All services are running in Windows Services but we cannot see java.exe for arcgis portal in Task Manager like this photo Portal java Issues.jpg

We cannot access Portal Admin with both Web adaptor and Internal.(https://gis.mydomain.com/portal/portaladmin OR https://gis.mydomain.com:7443/arcgis/admin)

ryanuthoff

Do you have snapshots of your machine? Or at least a WebGISDR backup? That might be your quickest solution at this point to get you back up and running.

Alternatively, you can try and do a repair of the Portal installation (go to Control Panel and click "change", and then the dialog box will give you an option to repair it.). I was installing a Portal patch and during the installation, the machine became unresponsive and I had to do a restart which corrupted Portal. Doing a repair fixed it and I did not lose any of my content. But I can't guarantee it'll maintain any custom Portal configuration you might have.

Oiligriv

Hi, check inside these folders if there are files that are empty at 0 kilobytes, one file is in c:\arcgisportal\content\items\accountresource
another in
c:\programfiles\arcgis\portal\framework\runtime\tomcat
if I remember correctly it should be the server.xml file

Virgilio

OzanCanT

Hi @GisMan,

As you said, probably one or two of the config files may be corrupted due to the system outage.

Potential corruption locations:

Go to the "C:\arcgisportal\content\items\portal\properties.json" (Default Path) and confirm the file is not empty or corrupted
Go to the "C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Portal\framework\runtime\tomcat\conf" (Default Path), open "server.xml" with a text editor, and confirm the server.xml file is not empty or corrupted.

If one of these config files is corrupted, you could find a working Portal with the same version and replace the same config files with the one in the non-working Portal. (Make sure the service is not running when doing this, and make sure the SSL certificate entry in the server.xml file is valid)

Hope this helps!

GisMan

Hi @OzanCanT

Thanks for your reply!

When checking properties.json and server.xml, these files still exist and not corrupted. The problem is postgres.exe, java.exe and javaw.exe not running when checking in Task Manager. Any ideas how to solve about this problem.

GisMan

Hi @Oiligriv

Thanks for your reply!

OzanCanT

Hi @GisMan ,

Are you sure that the accountSettings file is not corrupted? To check, go to <Portal Content Directory>/arcgisportal/content/items/accountresources/0123456789ABCDEF/accountSettings from the Portal machine. The file has to be non-empty. Also, there is another accountSettings file inside the config folder in the same directory; you can check it too and ensure that the file simply contains a set of brackets {}

If you locate any corruption in these files, you can replace them from the template which found in "<installation folder>\Portal\framework\template\content.zip".

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