Troubleshooting
Problem
In a stable and working environment, with no apparent changes, applications on IBM WebSphere Application Server may suddenly stop working. Looking into the Application Server log files, one may see messages like: SRTServletReq E SRVE0120E: IO Error java.net.SocketException: Connection reset and parsePostData: post body contains less bytes than specified by content-length Note: At least one other person has indicated that they found a slightly different message for this same kind of issue, specifically: Connection reset by peer: socket write error.
Cause
Your environment might have some "intrusion prevention" software that is terminating the connections.
Resolving The Problem
IPTraces may show that connections are being reset immediately after the client (browser) sends a POST request to the web server (or directly to the Application Server), and before the data associated with the POST is delivered to the Application Server for routing to the Application.
Check to see if your environment has anything that tries to prevent intrusions, such as an appliance called "Proventia Network Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) - provided by IBM Internet Security Systems (IBM ISS)
The purpose of this appliance is to monitor systems traffic for "suspicious" patterns. These might be interpreted as intrusion attempts (for example: from a virus, worm, or hacker) and are immediately terminated.
A change or update to your intrusion prevention product may have occurred to exclude the specific pattern of information that exists in your requests. If this is the case, review and modify the updated rule (or rules) that are causing the connections to be terminated.
Related Information
Historical Number
36104.379.000
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Document Information
Modified date:
15 June 2018
UID
swg21266611