T32-2026 - Opening an IDS in the searchbrowse application may fail if the user is member of a large number of groups

Program

This Technote applies to all supported versions of BIOVIA Insight, BIOVIA Insight for Excel, BIOVIA Chemical Registration, and BIOVIA Biological Registration. 

Operating System

All supported operating systems

Background

Several BIOVIA applications use the Pipeline Pilot-based web application “searchbrowse” to retrieve data associated to the application. The BIOVIA Insight home page includes a “Search” link that opens a dialog where the user can select from a list of Integrated Data Sources (IDS) to open and search them. Similarly, Insight for Excel has a “Search“ function that leads to the same IDS selection list. BIOVIA Chemical Registration and Biological Registration feature a “Search and Browse” link on their home pages that opens the application-specific IDS directly.

It has been observed that these program search functions may fail if the user is a member of a large number of groups. Typically, this problem does not occur until the user is a member of approximately 150 groups or more, depending on the length of the group names. Insight and Insight for Excel users typically encounter the error message “Failed to load the list of available data sources”, while users of the registration applications typically see the error “Failed to open data source. Unknown error”. The error is accompanied by an "Error parsing HTTP request header" entry in the Pipeline Pilot log file “javaserver_tomcat_shared.log”.

The cause of the problem is the maximum HTTP request header size of the Apache Tomcat server used in Pipeline Pilot, which is 8192 bytes (8 KiB) by default. The problem occurs when the list of the group names of the user no longer fits in a header of that default size.   

Solution

BIOVIA advises customers who encounter this issue to gradually increase the maximum HTTP request header size of the Apache Tomcat server in 8-KiB increments until the issue no longer occurs. Further increases in the request header size should be chosen with care and applied only when necessary, since larger request header sizes can increase the vulnerability to denial-of-service attacks. However, given that the header size generally remains fairly small, the risk is rather low.

To adjust the maximum HTTP request header size of the Apache Tomcat server in Pipeline Pilot, please follow these steps:

1. Create a backup of the "server.xml" file located in the directory "[PP_install_directory]/apps/scitegic/javaserver/apache/apache-tomcat/conf".
2. Open "server.xml" in a text editor and locate the line: 

Please note that port 9946 is the default value, which may differ on your system if you have set different port values for your Pipeline Pilot server.

3. Add the new value for the maximum HTTP request header size in bytes to this line:

4. Save the modified file and restart the Pipeline Pilot services.

Important: If you change the ports of your Pipeline Pilot installation, this includes a redeployment of the Apache Tomcat server package. This involves overwriting the modified "server.xml" file. You must therefore reapply the change to the "server.xml" file after every change to the Pipeline Pilot ports. For details, please refer to the "Reconfiguring Ports" chapter in the Pipeline Pilot Administration Guide.

How to contact BIOVIA Support

If you have any questions, please contact BIOVIA Support.