Document Library crashes Tomcat

[dc41]

I have a fresh install of 3.4 on a new Debian 6.0 machine, but the Document Library is crashing Tomcat.

The install went just fine, and everything works except the library. I uploaded one file via the web browser and immediately got a "could not connect" error. Checking revealed that the java Tomcat service had stopped and wouldn't restart until I deleted the pid file in the tomcat/temp folder.

After restart the document I uploaded shows up in the "recently modified files" applet, but clicking on it or the document library crashes the server again. I can't find any error messages in the log files. Perhaps I'm not looking in the right place. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

[mikeh]

Could you add a few more concrete details to the problem please? It's a little vague as you've stated it.

At a guess: you're uploading a PDF. That PDF contains metadata that the shipped version of PDFBox chokes on and -unfortunately- takes out the JVM. There are other posts here where people have updated PDFBox to newer versions. In fact, one of our guys is working with the PDFBox source code to track down and guard against this very issue.

Thanks,
Mike

[dc41]

A pdf is exactly what I tried to upload. Sorry about being vague. With no error log I was really shooting in dark and just tried to describe what was happening. I'll delete the pdf with Dashboard, upgrade PDFBox and see if that makes a difference. Started a VBox VM with Ubuntu 10.10 just to see if the linux version makes a difference.

Thanks!

[dc41]

New install on Ubuntu 10.10 works fine with the except of doc previews and pdfs. Any pdf uploaded to the document library crashes tomcat. Also, the doc preview isn't working for word and excel files. Is pdfbox one of the included modules for Alfresco (like OpenOffice) or is it something that needs to be loaded using apt-get?

Do I need to turn something on to get the doc preview to work? A test install two months ago did not display either of these problems. PDF and office docs previewed just fine. I'm scratching my head a little. Searching finds many mentions of the issues. What version of OpenOffice is included in 3.4d? Do I need to upgrade that to get previews working?

[mrogers]

Yes you need Open Office for preview of word and excel.

[alarocca]

pdfbox is a library (jar file). Download the latest version from here:

http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/pdfbox/1.5.0/pdfbox-1.5.0.jar

Then stop Alfresco,
copy the new pdfbox-1.5.0.jar into /alfresco/tomcat/webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF/lib,
delete the old one (shoudl be pdfbox-1.2.1.jar)
restart alfresco

I had the same issue with some pdf files. The new version works properly.

[dc41]

Yes you need Open Office for preview of word and excel.

Isn't an OpenOffice instance installed with Alfresco 3.4d? Do I need to adjust a perimeter somewhere to enable the previewing?

[dc41]

pdfbox is a library (jar file). Download the latest version from here:

http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/pdfbox/1.5.0/pdfbox-1.5.0.jar

Then stop Alfresco,
copy the new pdfbox-1.5.0.jar into /alfresco/tomcat/webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF/lib,
delete the old one (shoudl be pdfbox-1.2.1.jar)
restart alfresco

I had the same issue with some pdf files. The new version works properly.

Couldn't have been easier! Thanks so much the help. I should send you all the coffee and beer money I would have spent while trying to figure this out on my own. Now if I can just get the openoffice preview working.

[dc41]

Couldn't have been easier! Thanks so much the help. I should send you all the coffee and beer money I would have spent while trying to figure this out on my own. Now if I can just get the openoffice preview working.

I spoke too soon.  ops: Now I can't get alfresco to restart. alfresco.log shows the following error:

06:13:44,185 ERROR [org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader] Context initialization failed
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'transformer.PdfBox.TextToPdf' defined in class path resource [alfresco/content-services-context.xml]: Instantiation of bean failed; nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/pdfbox/pdmodel/font/PDSimpleFont
‍‍‍

Do I need to change some setting in content-services-context as well?

[alarocca]

Open pdfbox-1.5.0.jar as a zip file (rename it if need) and check if it was downloaded correctly.

Its size is 3,61 MB and contains 716 files (including the class org/apache/pdfbox/pdmodel/font/PDSimpleFont).

Do not "save as" the link I provided but click it and the right mirror link wil be shown.

I hope to solve your problem and win more virtual beers…  :mrgreen:

Have a nice weekend