Monday, December 17, 2007

Tomcat java.net.BindException: Cannot assign requested address

I had a very strange error today when I tried to startup tomcat on some linux box that used to work. Since google was no help I figured I should document this somewhere.

Tomcat startup gave the notorious java.net.BindException: Cannot assign requested address. This usually means that another process is listening on the same port on this machine. I started with ps -ef grep java to make sure that no other tomcat process was running on the machine. Nothing.

I suspected that maybe some other web server was holding the port, but netstat -an showed that nothing binds this address. Moreover, telnet localhost 80 showed that no one is listening.

Looking at the server.xml I found out that the connector was binding to the hostname "demoserver" on port 80.

<Connector className="org.apache.coyote.tomcat4.CoyoteConnector"
address="demoserver" port="80" 
minProcessors="5" maxProcessors="75"
enableLookups="true" redirectPort="8443"
acceptCount="100" debug="0" connectionTimeout="20000"
useURIValidationHack="false" disableUploadTimeout="true" />

trying to ping demoserver gave me errors, but nslookup demoserver gave me the right ip address.

After a few minutes I noticed that some clown added demoserver to /etc/hosts with the wrong ip address. Fixing /etc/hosts to have the right ip address for demoserver made tomcat work smooth and nice.
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26 comments:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 21, 2008 at 5:14 PM

    Great tip. This helped me solve the exact same problem.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJanuary 6, 2009 at 12:05 PM

    Thanks a lot, had the exact same problem.

    ReplyDelete
  3. t@c0January 15, 2009 at 10:41 AM

    This is what I just need.
    Many thanks :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousApril 25, 2009 at 2:36 AM

    You're awesome! Saved me a lot of time and head banging....

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousJune 11, 2009 at 10:44 PM

    Hey I had a similar issue with Weblogic 10 starting the nodemanager - and your comment fixed it - someone had put the wrong ip address of my server in /etc/hosts - thanks!!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. VinayJune 23, 2009 at 10:32 PM

    have same problem but not on linux, its on vista. can i be helped ?

    ReplyDelete
  7. VinayJune 23, 2009 at 10:39 PM

    cheers! had a duplicate and inccorect entry in hosts file for localhost. removed it and it worked fine!

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  8. ShaikhAugust 5, 2009 at 11:53 AM

    Thanks, had the same issue on linux.

    ReplyDelete
  9. darcJanuary 4, 2010 at 2:45 AM

    Same issue here, thanks so much!

    ReplyDelete
  10. AnonymousApril 6, 2010 at 1:55 PM

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  11. AnonymousApril 6, 2010 at 8:59 PM

    Thanks! Also fixed an issue for me (bad entry in the /etc/hosts file), Java app in question was an AR System Plug-in Server. Seems like the same message is used for cases where the TCP port the bind is trying is in use, so the message was just a bit too generic.

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  12. AnonymousMay 18, 2010 at 10:30 PM

    this tip helped me as i noticed that the error msg is related to ip address in case i had to request ip and port open on the LoadBalncer
    thanx

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  13. UnknownMay 28, 2010 at 11:23 AM

    thanks a lot. even we are facing same issue. we added an entry for localhost into /etc/hosts then our server started without any problem

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  14. Pranav G. AminSeptember 27, 2010 at 4:28 PM

    Saved me some time here thank you very much.

    ReplyDelete
  15. stormrider.of.theliNovember 18, 2010 at 6:23 PM

    It works great!!! Thanks a lot my friend!!!

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  16. AnonymousJanuary 5, 2011 at 12:00 PM

    thanks dude
    worked like a charm with glassfish

    ReplyDelete
  17. AnonymousFebruary 28, 2011 at 5:40 PM

    We got a similar error doing an ftp connection with a java application, using sunone appserver 8.2.
    The issue was solved adding the following jvm option to the appserver and restarting it.

    -Dcom.sun.enterprise.server.ss.ASQuickStartup=false

    Hope it will help ...

    Regards.
    Elibm

    ReplyDelete
  18. AnonymousJuly 6, 2011 at 9:42 PM

    You made my day! Big Thx !

    ReplyDelete
  19. Asaf MesikaDecember 25, 2011 at 11:43 AM

    Great article!
    In my case QA guys simply deleted the following mandatory lines in /etc/hosts:
    127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4
    ::1 localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6

    ReplyDelete
  20. Javin @ spring interview questions answersDecember 30, 2011 at 11:42 AM

    Good one short and clear. here is my way of solving Java.net.BindException: Address already in use: JVM_Bind

    ReplyDelete
  21. AnonymousDecember 30, 2011 at 8:41 PM

    Thanks..worked for me...I checked /etc/host but did not find that same IP 127.0.0.1 has two different host

    ReplyDelete
  22. Nir LevyDecember 30, 2011 at 10:10 PM

    Dear all,

    I am happy that after 4 years this post (one of the first I wrote) is still very helpful and all the more relevant.

    Thank you for the comments...

    ReplyDelete
  23. AnonymousJanuary 6, 2012 at 10:33 PM

    Still useful in 2012. Upgrading from Tomcat5 to Tomcat6. Worked all fine in Tomat5, but with Tomcat6 it could not bind to the shutdown port. After finding this post, I noticed that the hosts file contained a typo "i127.0.0.1". This server was running for the last 6 years with that ;)

    ReplyDelete
  24. AnonymousMay 20, 2013 at 12:12 PM

    really works! thanks a lot

    ReplyDelete
  25. AnonymousJuly 23, 2013 at 10:14 AM

    great dude..it worked for me also..saved time

    ReplyDelete
  26. AnonymousOctober 3, 2014 at 8:13 AM

    thanks dude, This post saved me tons of headache

    ReplyDelete

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