Cannot start the Weblogic Admin Server

Well its been a while i written a blog, thought i will share some knowledge to the world and hope it will help someone. Well let me come to fixing the issue

Situation: 

Couldn't start the web logic admin server, it fails with a error message 

<WebLogicServer> <BEA-000386> <Server subsystem failed. Reason: java.lang.AssertionError: weblogic.management.provider.EditFailedException:

java.lang.AssertionError: weblogic.management.provider.EditFailedException:

You could find lot of blogs which will ask you to change the web logic mode to development (in config.xml & setdomainENV.cmd/sh)and change all the passwords to clear text.

Well in some cases(not always), even after changing the mode to development and changing the passwords to clear text you might find the error message as below,

Caused By: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: In production mode, it's not allowed to set a clear text value to the property: CredentialEncrypted of EmbeddedLDAPMBean

Getting more interesting huh..the catch is the "Pending" directory typically located under $DOMAIN_HOME/pending holds a config.xml file that includes swapped credentials in comparison with the current config.xml file.

Solution:

1.Navigate into $DOMAIN_HOME and rename the pending directory

2. Open the config.xml file and locate every encrypted entry in order to manually encrypt the entries. 

3.Use WebLogic Encrypt API to cypher both username and password: 

4.Once the entries are encrypted, i.e. you have the credentials ready to replace them, open the .xml files and carry on with the update.

 Thats all folks, enjoy troubleshooting....