Tomcat 7 Liferay 6.2 Strange error regarding corrupt database

Question

18:03:55,526 ERROR [localhost-startStop-1][MainServlet:209] java.lang.IllegalStateException: The database contains changes from a previous upgrade attempt that failed. Please restore the old database and file system and retry the upgrade. A patch may be required if the upgrade failed due to a bug or an unforeseen data permutation that resulted from a corrupt database.
java.lang.IllegalStateException: The database contains changes from a previous upgrade attempt that failed. Please restore the old database and file system and retry the upgrade. A patch may be required if the upgrade failed due to a bug or an unforeseen data permutation that resulted from a corrupt database.
        at com.liferay.portal.tools.DBUpgrader._checkReleaseState(DBUpgrader.java:314)
        at com.liferay.portal.tools.DBUpgrader.upgrade(DBUpgrader.java:136)
        at com.liferay.portal.events.StartupAction.doRun(StartupAction.java:160)
        at com.liferay.portal.events.StartupAction.run(StartupAction.java:68)
        at com.liferay.portal.servlet.MainServlet.processStartupEvents(MainServlet.java:1238)
        at com.liferay.portal.servlet.MainServlet.init(MainServlet.java:206)
        at javax.servlet.GenericServlet.init(GenericServlet.java:160)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.initServlet(StandardWrapper.java:1280)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.loadServlet(StandardWrapper.java:1193)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.load(StandardWrapper.java:1088)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.loadOnStartup(StandardContext.java:5198)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5481)
        at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:901)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:877)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:634)
        at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDescriptor(HostConfig.java:671)
        at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig$DeployDescriptor.run(HostConfig.java:1840)
        at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:441)
        at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303)
        at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138)
        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886)
        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908)
        at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662)
Stopping the server due to unexpected startup errors

I haven't been lucky researching this issue online. Liferay will not start due to this. What exactly do I need to do to resolve it? I'm a bit new to portal development in general, would appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction.

UPDATE: I think that the issue is that liferay is dead-set on using this corrupted Oracle database and its completely ignoring my portal-ext.properties file. I went through the /lib of ROOT and Liferay and manually over-rode the portal.properties files within each .jar and re-packaged them, still no luck! How can I get liferay to use another database if its ignoring portal-ext.properties (I've tried placing it in /ROOT/WEB-INF/classes and directly within /$LIFERAY_HOME yet it still will not load.

Answer 1

You'll find the portal-*.properties files that Liferay uses in the logs that are written during startup process.

Also, check if you have a portal-startup-wizard.properties file in your ${liferay.home} directory. That file is notorious in defining ${liferay.home} to be in a different location (e.g. the location that you first installed Liferay in when the startup wizard ran). If this is the case, you'll still find your original location portal-ext.properties file, because that's actually ${liferay.home}/portal-ext.properties

The log will tell you the exactly used version of (all of these) file(s)

With regard to your corrupted database, you either need to start clean (if you don't need the old data) or restore your backup, then start the upgrade process again. I assume you have a backup?