Domain secret mismatch

One or more WebLogic Server instances in my domain will not start and the Domain status or the pod log reports errors like this:

Domain secret mismatch. The domain secret in DOMAIN_HOME/security/SerializedSystemIni.dat where DOMAIN_HOME=$DOMAIN_HOME does not match the domain secret found by the introspector job. WebLogic requires that all WebLogic Servers in the same domain share the same domain secret.

When you see these kinds of errors, it means that the WebLogic domain directory’s security configuration files have changed in an incompatible way between when the operator scanned the domain directory, which occurs during the “introspection” phase, and when the server instance attempted to start.

To understand the “incompatible domain security configuration” type of failure, it’s important to review the contents of the WebLogic domain directory. Each WebLogic domain directory contains a security subdirectory that contains a file called SerializedSystemIni.dat. This file contains security data to bootstrap the WebLogic domain, including a domain-specific encryption key.

During introspection, the operator generates a Kubernetes Job that runs a pod in the domain’s Kubernetes Namespace and with the same Kubernetes ServiceAccount that will be used later to run the Administration Server. This pod has access to the Kubernetes secret referenced by weblogicCredentialsSecret and encrypts these values with the domain-specific encryption key so that the secured value can be injected in to the boot.properties files when starting server instances.

When the domain directory is changed such that the domain-specific encryption key is different, the boot.properties entries generated during introspection will now be invalid.

This can happen in a variety of ways, depending on the domain home source type.

Domain in Image

Rolling to an image containing new or unrelated domain directory

The error occurs while rolling pods have containers based on a new container image that contains an entirely new or unrelated domain directory.

The problem is that WebLogic cannot support server instances being part of the same WebLogic domain if the server instances do not all share the same domain-specific encryption key. Additionally, operator introspection currently happens only when starting servers following a total shutdown. Therefore, the boot.properites files generated from introspecting the image containing the original domain directory will be invalid when used with a container started with the updated container image containing the new or unrelated domain directory.

The solution is to follow either the recommended CI/CD guidelines so that the original and new container images contain domain directories with consistent domain-specific encryption keys and bootstrapping security details, or to perform a total shutdown of the domain so that introspection reoccurs as servers are restarted.

Full domain shutdown and restart

The error occurs while starting servers after a full domain shutdown.

If your development model generates new container images with new and unrelated domain directories and then tags those images with the same tag, then different Kubernetes worker nodes may have different images under the same tag in their individual, local container repositories.

The simplest solution is to set imagePullPolicy to Always; however, the better solution would be to design your development pipeline to generate new container image tags on every build and to never reuse an existing tag.

Domain on PV

Completely replacing the domain directory

The error occurs while starting servers when the domain directory change was made while other servers were still running.

If completely replacing the domain directory, then you must stop all running servers.

Because all servers will already be stopped, there is no requirement that the new contents of the domain directory be related to the previous contents of the domain directory. When starting servers again, the operator will perform its introspection of the domain directory. However, you may want to preserve the domain directory security configuration including the domain-specific encryption key and, in that case, you should follow a similar pattern as is described in the CI/CD guidelines for the domain in a container image model to preserve the original security-related domain directory files.