I have seen SEVERE logs related to invalid SAML XML in my CloudBees CI instance

1 minute readKnowledge base

Issue

I have seen lately the below stack traces in my CloudBees CI logs and I am worried that it can affect my users' login.

SEVERE n.s.u.j.s.x.LoggingErrorHandler#fatalError: XML Parsing Error
SEVERE o.o.s.m.r.i.AbstractReloadingMetadataResolver#unmarshallMetadata: Metadata Resolver FilesystemMetadataResolver org.opensaml.saml.metadata.resolver.impl.FilesystemMetadataResolver: Unable to unmarshall metadata: net.shibboleth.utilities.java.support.xml.XMLParserException: Unable to parse inputstream, it contained invalid XML
SEVERE o.o.s.m.r.i.AbstractReloadingMetadataResolver#refresh: Metadata Resolver FilesystemMetadataResolver org.opensaml.saml.metadata.resolver.impl.FilesystemMetadataResolver: Error occurred while attempting to refresh metadata from '/var/jenkins_home/saml-sp-metadata.xml'
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException; lineNumber: 1; columnNumber: 1; Premature end of file.
[...]
Caused: net.shibboleth.utilities.java.support.xml.XMLParserException: Unable to parse inputstream, it contained invalid XML
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Environment

Resolution

Those aforementioned logs are indicating a corruption in the file called saml-sp-metadata.xml. At first glance, it should not cause any disturbance at the users' login unless some change in the metadata is introduced.

To get rid of those logs, rename the file $JENKINS_HOME/saml-sp-metadata.xml to $JENKINS_HOME/saml-sp-metadata.backup.xml (or similar, just to keep the file as a backup), then navigate in the UI under Manage Jenkins → Security → Security Realm and click on the link called Service Provider Metadata as shown in the screenshot below. This should regenerate the file $JENKINS_HOME/saml-sp-metadata.xml from scratch.

Service Provide Metadata link

Tested product/plugin versions

This article is part of our Knowledge Base and is provided for guidance-based purposes only. The solutions or workarounds described here are not officially supported by CloudBees and may not be applicable in all environments. Use at your own discretion, and test changes in a safe environment before applying them to production systems.