Problem

The Axway VA Admin Service on Windows fails to start with an error similar to the following image:

Resolution

This is known to happen when the key for the admin service (adminserver.key) is encrypted but the passphrase is set incorrectly and therefore Apache is unable to start. The solution is to check the passphrase stored in the apachepassphrase tool by opening a Command Prompt started as Administrator and navigating to <install dir>\Apache\bin (default: C:\Program Files\Axway\VA\Apache\bin) then running apachepassphrase to see if it outputs the correct passphrase for the key. If what is shown in the output is not the key's passphrase, then run apachepassphrase -set "<passphrase>" and try again to start the service. For keys created by the UI, the default passphrase would be the VA server passphrase. That's the same one used to stop/start the VES service. When using special characters, make sure they are quoted so that they are not being wrongly interpreted by the Command Prompt.

If this does not solve the issue, you can get debug output from Apache by running these Apache debug commands, also via a Command Prompt running as Administrator in the <install dir>\Apache\bin directory:

• Parse config and dump output: httpd -S -f %programdata%\Axway\VA\apache\conf\httpd.conf
• Check syntax of Apache config: httpd -t -f %programdata%\Axway\VA\apache\conf\httpd.conf
• Start the Apache service in debug mode: httpd -X -f %programdata%\Axway\VA\apache\conf\httpd.conf

You should also examine the Apache logs located in %ProgramData%\Axway\VA\apache\logs for relevant errors.