Ambari Server: Check /var/log/ambari-server/ambari-server.[log|out] for errors.
Ambari Agent: Check /var/log/ambari-agent/ambari-agent.[log|out] for errors.
Note that if Ambari Agent has any output in /var/log/ambari-agent/ambari-agent.out, it is indicative of a significant problem.
Services fail to start up
Nagios alerts don't show up in Ambari Web
Install Wizard fails during Install phase
Install Wizard failed with warning during Start/Test phase
Installing a new cluster on top of an existing cluster
When installing a Hadoop cluster via Ambari on hosts that already have Hadoop bits installed (including an existing cluster deployed via Ambari), perform the following:
HTTP error 400 – Bad Request – during REST call (POST, PUT, DELETE) to Ambari server
Ambari Server now expects an additional HTTP header called "X-Requested-By" for all non-GET calls. The value can be set to anything. For example:
curl -i -H 'X-Requested-By: mycompany' -X POST -d '>' --user admin:admin http://hadoop1.mycompany.com:8080/api/v1/clusters/cluster1
Note that there are some issues with Ambari current release 1.2.5 in case you have spaces in baseDN/managerDN. Please take a look at: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ambari-3006. The fix will be available in 1.4.1 release of Ambari. In case you are running into issues and cant get rid of spaces in the managerDN/baseDN - keep reading.
I have created a jar with the patch applied on top of branch-1.2.5. The jar is posted at http://people.apache.org/~mahadev/ambari/ambari-server-1.2.5.17.jar.
Download the above jar and follow the following steps for fixing the issue:
ambari-server stop
cp /usr/lib/ambari-server/ambari-server-1.2.5.17.jar
ambari-server start
This should fix the issue with spaces in LDAP dn names.