Why is WLST not recognizing the user/password in the key and config file in connect() call? - weblogic

Question

I'm trying to connect to an admin server in WLST using config and key files. There are no error messages but I am prompted for a username and password. These files were created (by another developer who is long gone[1]) with the storeUserConfig() command. My call to connect looks something like this: connect(userConfigFile=configFile, userKeyFile=keyFile, url='t3://somehost:7031')).
Is there some restriction in using these files, such as it can only be used on the host where created, or it needs access to the domain's boot.properties file?
Note: I'm trying to connect to an admin server on a different host and non-standard port (e.g. not 7001). The server I am running WLST on and the remote host are the same version of Weblogic.
Some of the things I have tried:
verified that these files appear correct, the key file being binary data and the config file having a line for "weblogic.management.username={AES}..." and "weblogic.management.password={AES}...".
verified that there is a server on the specified port by entering a known login and password that is successful
specified the admin server in the connect parameter
turn on debug(true); the only output is <wlst-debug> connect : Will check if userConfig and userKeyFile should be used to connect to the server and another line giving the path to the userConfig file
turn on Python logging in jython with -Dpython.verbose=debug; nothing relevant to decryption operation
Munging the key or the config files generates no error messages and behaviour as above
[1]: These files are still used today by other existing WLST scripts. However, these scripts are so convoluted and deliberately obfuscated that they are very difficult to reverse-engineer how connect() is being called.

Answer 1

You do not need to access to the domain's boot.properties file. You just need to make sure the configFile and keyFile pointing to the right files. FYI, here is one of the commands we are using:connect(userConfigFile='./user.secure',userKeyFile='./key.secure',url='t3://somehost:7001')

Answer 2

Have you check the network connectity that might be having a firewall in between that troubling you, check the traceroute from the script machine to the Remote machine. Recently I have faced simalar issue. once the routing table updated with allow the WL admin server port everything got set.
Hope this could helps you!

Answer 3

I had this problem too. In a script, I exported the Linux variables userConfigFile and userKeyFile. Then I connected by running:
url='t3://localhost:7002'
userConfigFile='$userConfigFile'
userKeyFile='$userKeyFile'
connect(userConfigFile=$userConfigFile, userKeyFile=#userKeyFile, url=url)
That all worked in a script, but would not work interactively. I changed to doing the following:
url='t3://localhost:7002'
userConfigFile='/users/me/weblogic-2014/weblogic-admin-WebLogicConfig.properties'
userKeyFile='/users/me/weblogic-2014/weblogic-admin-WebLogicKey.properties'
connect(userConfigFile=userConfigFile, userKeyFile=userKeyFile, url=url)
And that worked interactively.