Troubleshooting Archibus Smart Client authentication

In general, if your web browser can connect to a server, the Smart Client should also be able to connect to that server from the same computer.

That applies to HTTPS/TLS, proxy server, reverse proxy server, and Windows authentication.

The Windows operating system contains built-in tools for configuring Internet connection. If you use these built-in tools, all programs built on the .NET framework -- including the Archibus Smart Client -- will use these settings.

Confirm the per-User Settings

You may be able to connect the Smart Client to Web Central perfectly under one account (say the administrator account that you installed with) but not be able to connect under another (say the non-administrator account the CAD specialist is using). In this case, check the proxy settings for the second account, as proxy server setting can change for different users.

Also realize that even within the same user account, you can invoke different settings if you run the Smart Client as a non-admin user, and if you run the Smart Client using administrator privileges in that same account.

You can review the proxy settings with this command line utility:

netsh winhttp show proxy

Try the IP Address

If you sign on to the Smart Client using a server machine name (e.g. http:/mywebcserver:8080/archibus/ ), and you fail to connect to Web Central via the proxy server, try connecting using the server machine's IP address (e.g. http://10.1.2.4:8080/archibus/ ). If this test is successful, check how your proxy server is configured with respect to DNS resolution.

Review the Network Trace

Enable network tracing to review the requests and responses and search them for error.

One way to trace network events is to use netsh to enable tracing.

netsh trace start capture=yes

Try your connections. When you are finished, use:

netsh trace stop

The command will tell you the location of the event trace log (etl) file. You can review this file using the Event Viewer, which is accessible via the Windows Control Panel under Administrative Tools. See:

Some administrators prefer to use an opensource network protocol analyzer WireShark (www.wireshark.org) because they find that it is easier-to-use than netsh.

You can also enable tracing in System.Net namespace of the Smart Client. See: