topic Re: "Unable to register the ArcGIS Server with the Web Adaptor. Please make sure that the server machine is running..." in ArcGIS Enterprise Questions

"Unable to register the ArcGIS Server with the Web Adaptor. Please make sure that the server machine is running..."

ZheHe — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 04:58:25 GMT

Note: The variable names shown in the format <variable> are fake values for security purposes. All others are their actual values.

I just finished doing fresh installs of ArcGIS Server, Portal, and Web Adaptor on our Ubuntu 16.04 LTS server machine. All 3 installs were done at version 10.5.1. I'm now trying to configure Web Adaptor for both the Server and Portal, but I'm getting stuck on the configurewebadaptor.sh script command, which is giving me the following error message (I get the same error message if I use the web GUI too):

"Unable to register the ArcGIS Server with the Web Adaptor. Please make sure that the server machine is running and that the account specified has administrative privileges to the site."

I'm running the following command on the host machine "<hostname>" through an SSH session:

./configurewebadaptor.sh -m server -w http://localhost/server/webadaptor -g http://<apple>.<banana>.<tld>:6080 -a false -u admin -p <abc123>

Everything that I'm passing to the script is valid. I've configured a Tomcat server to run on the host machine on port 80 & 443 to serve up the "arcgis.war" file to both "/server" and "/portal", and I can access "/server" at http://<apple>.<banana>.<tld>/server/webadaptor, although it gives me the "The web adaptor configuration URL has to be accessed from the machine hosting the web adaptor" splash screen, hence why I pass the URL with domain "localhost" in the command above.

The host machine's /etc/hosts file is as follows:

127.0.0.1 localhost

<host_IP> <apple>.<banana>.<tld> <hostname>

Similarly, http://<apple>.<banana>.<tld>:6080 is a valid, running ArcGIS Server instance, with a default admin account set up with the username "admin" and password "<abc123>".

Where's the problem?

Re: "Unable to register the ArcGIS Server with the Web Adaptor. Please make sure that the server machine is running..."

PhilipMcNeilly — Mon, 21 Aug 2017 11:01:14 GMT

Hello Zhe,

There is no need to try and navigate to the http://webadaptorhost.domain.com/server/webadaptor configuration page if using the command line configuration tool. As the page states, it will only be accessible via localhost. In situations where there is no GUI, you would utilize the configuration script to do the web adaptor configuration for you.

When you execute the script it should follow the form:

ConfigureWebAdaptor.bat -m server -w http://webadaptorhost.domain.com/webadaptorname/webadaptor -g http://gisserver.domain.com:6080 -u siteadmin -p secret -a false

Once this script has been completed successfully, no further web adaptor configuration is necessary and you should be able to access Server's Rest endpoint from the url http://webadaptorhost.domain.com/server/rest

Re: "Unable to register the ArcGIS Server with the Web Adaptor. Please make sure that the server machine is running..."

ZheHe — Mon, 21 Aug 2017 16:00:44 GMT

We were finally able to get this to work on Friday. The problem was as follows:

During its install / configure process, Web Adaptor attempts to create and write to a new directory called ".webadaptor" inside the Tomcat user's home folder, which in our case was /opt/var. The Ubuntu user that we were using to perform the install had admin privileges but would've needed root access to create this folder, so the folder never got created. Then during the configure process Web Adaptor threw the above unhelpful red herring error message when trying to access this non-existent folder.

We eventually fixed the problem by manually creating the /opt/tomcat/.webadaptor folder, giving the Ubuntu user "tomcat" ownership over said folder, then uninstalling and re-installing Web Adaptor and running the configure command again.

This ".webadaptor" requirement is not currently mentioned anywhere in the Esri documentation, and I recommended to the support staff with whom I was working last week that it should not only be added to the install documentation but also highly emphasized, as it's a show-stopper.

Re: "Unable to register the ArcGIS Server with the Web Adaptor. Please make sure that the server machine is running..."

SunbeamRahman1 — Tue, 09 Jan 2018 10:24:42 GMT

Thanks. Creating '.webadaptor' folder saved my day.

Re: "Unable to register the ArcGIS Server with the Web Adaptor. Please make sure that the server machine is running..."

KirkChesla — Fri, 25 May 2018 15:12:05 GMT

I agree we had this happened to us last year as well and forgot about with our latest install of 10.6 on RHEL 7.

ESRI should update there documentation for this or at least create a technical article addressing the issue.

Re: "Unable to register the ArcGIS Server with the Web Adaptor. Please make sure that the server machine is running..."

SarahNoakes1 — Thu, 23 Aug 2018 12:14:07 GMT

I have also had this error message when the site is in read-only mode.

Re: "Unable to register the ArcGIS Server with the Web Adaptor. Please make sure that the server machine is running..."

CliffIngham — Fri, 26 Oct 2018 17:47:54 GMT

This tripped me up for the better part of a day. For Ubuntu, adding /usr/share/tomcat8/.webadaptor solved the problem for me as well.

Re: "Unable to register the ArcGIS Server with the Web Adaptor. Please make sure that the server machine is running..."

FilipeArão — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 14:13:04 GMT

I have the same problem, but with WebAdaptor 10.8.1 and Tomcat9. Anyone help me?