EPIC: Abort Metacat Startup if Misconfigured and/or Critical Resources are Inaccessible

[artntek]

This is now an Epic
(and is also related to epic 1611) (MB 11/6/23: related, but not part of, epic 1611. Was related because original intent was to check site properties directory was writeable. That has been completed)

As a metacat admin, I do NOT want metacat to start up in a semi-functional mode if it's misconfigured and/or doesn't have access to critical resources. Instead, I want startup to be aborted, with clear and helpful log messages showing why, so I know how to fix the problem.

Issues Related to this Epic:

• Abort Metacat Startup if metacat-site.properties is not found and can't be created #1669
• Abort Metacat Startup if Solr version incorrect #1667
• Abort Metacat Startup if PostgreSQL not accessible (k8s only) #1668

---

NOTE: be careful what we add here! Sometimes, we want to allow Metacat to start with
incomplete dependencies, since these are configured later through the admin interface --
e.g. database connection & solr for non-k8s deployments

============================================

ALL DONE IN PR #1633

Acceptance Criteria

• Metacat startup is aborted if metacat-site.properties is not found AND /var/metacat is not writeable by the metacat user (details below).
• Logs contain clear messaging about what caused the aborted startup
• Logs contain clear information to help the reader fix the problem

============================================

Details:

1. On startup, metacat tries to load the site properties from the default location (/var/metacat/config/metacat-site.properties)
2. If it doesn't exist, metacat tries to create a new, empty file at this same location. If it succeeds, all is well
3. However, there’s an edge case where that doesn't work (because /var/ isn't writeable, for example). If this happens, there are clear errors in the logs:

(catalina.out):

metacat 20230524-18:51:16: [ERROR]: PropertiesWrapper.initSitePropertiesFilePath(): 
a general I/O error occurred while trying to create directory hierarchy or actual 
file for site properties at: /var/metacat/config/metacat-site.properties; see 
exception message for details [edu.ucsb.nceas.metacat.properties.PropertiesWrapper:logAndThrow:482]
java.nio.file.AccessDeniedException: /var/metacat
(+ stack trace…)

(and localhost..log):

javax.servlet.ServletException: Service problem while intializing MetaCat Servlet: 
PropertiesWrapper.initSitePropertiesFilePath(): a general I/O error occurred while 
trying to create directory hierarchy or actual file for site properties at: 
/var/metacat/config/metacat-site.properties; see exception message for details : /var/metacat
(+ stack trace…)

…but the metacat app continues to limp along and throw NullPointerExceptions whenever something makes a call to PropertyService.

also see google doc

[artntek]

• SOLR is running, port is accessible -- DONE: added solr startup check. Refactored to make props available #1656
• SOLR is correct version - not yet done