The Spotfire Server Config Tool fails to launch via Command line and via GUI

Keywords: Spotfire, Config, Tool, fails, java, exception, occurred, cannot, parse, pattern, signer, information, does, not, match

Problem:

A customer's Spotfire Server Config Tool failed to launch via the Windows UI, with error 'A Java Exception has occurred'. Attempting to run "config list-configs" from the Windows command line (and config commands with other parameters) resulted in the below errors:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Cannot parse pattern '%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} [%thread] %-5level %logger{36} - %msg%n'
...
Caused by: java.lang.SecurityException: class "org.apache.logging.log4j.core.pattern.RepeatPatternConverter"'s signer information does not match signer information of other classes in the same package

The tools.log log file did not give any clue as to the cause of this broken-ness.

Solution:

It turns out this issue was caused by a problematic jar driver file in the custom Data Sources folder: C:\tibco\tss\12.0.0\tomcat\custom-ext. If you experience this scenario, try temporarily removing all files from this folder on your Spotfire server. If the Config Tool starts working again then put back driver files one at a time until it breaks again. Then you know the offending file and you can work with the vendor to procure a better driver file.