Don’t Restart That Server!
Especially if you’re running Java apps with JCE 1.2.1. It seems that JCE 1.2.1 “expired” last Wednesday (7/27) and applications using Sun’s Cryptography / JCE 1.2.1 will simply no longer start. I’m telling everyone this because it cost me 3 hours of my life that I will never get back. Three hours for a 3 minute fix.
There is nothing like spending huge dollars on a Business Intelligence package then finding out (after the 3 hours of troubleshooting with the integrator) that the application vendor knew of the looming problem and didn’t bother to include the fix to a new (< 6 weeks) client. This is why open source software is gaining ground. If as an application user I have to go find out about updates from the distributor of the core technologies instead of the packager I gave tens of K’s we want to know why we paid them the tens of K’s in the first place. Seems a logical question to a growing body of corporate administrators.
Anyway, if you’re running something might check that you’re running JCE 1.2.2 ( jre/lib/jce1_2_2.jar ) before restarting. If not the restart is an opportune time to update… since Sun isn’t giving you a choice.