Troubleshooting Docsfree Sheetster

Owned by Robert Avery
Oct 24, 2012
4 min read

Sheetster Troubleshooting

Occasionally, issues arise. Often, these problems are easily resolved taking some simple troubleshooting steps.

Sheetster problems typically fall into one of the following categories:

  • Installation and Licensing
  • Java and the Classpath
  • Application Server Startup and Services
  • Administration Console
  • JSP/Servlet and Web Page
  • Spreadsheet Handling

Screencast of a successful installation: what it *should* look like (linux).

Diagram of Sheetster Architecture: on how it all fits together.

 

Installation and Licensing Problems

Sheetster Server requires a valid license key from Extentech to load the WorkBookServlet that provides Spreadsheet Web Services.  In other words, without a valid license key, Sheetster web application will run normally, and you will be able to login and browse documents, but Sheetster will not load or work with Spreadsheets.

You should have received a key during installation if you chose "generate key", or by email if you downloaded the product from the Extentech download page.

If successfully installed, the license key will be put into the /Sheetster.lic file alongside the Sheetster.jar.

Please check this file for a valid license key and restart the Server.

If you continue to have problems, please contact Extentech Support.

If you have problems during installation, try reinstalling using the default values during the installation process.

If you are able to successfully install the server and are able to browse to the web application, but are unable to load any spreadsheets, then you may have a problem with your license key.

Please check your e360.lic file in the Sheetster installation directory. If there is a license key in the file, compare it or replace it with any license keys sent from Extentech.

On Linux and Unix systems you can install the software from a console window by using the following commandline parameter:

bash install.bin -i console

If you continue to have issues, please contact Extentech Support.

Application Server Startup and Services Init

If the /ServerLauncher/Sheetster Server or Administration Console executables will not run, check the contents of admin.err and admin.out, as well as any logfiles in the /logs directory.

On slower computers, the server may attempt to restart itself in an infinite loop. This can be fixed by increasing the "Global Settings/Global Settings/pulsechecker_interval" setting to at least 15000 to give the server enough time to startup before it is restarted by the monitor.

You can output verbose server information to the console using the "Global Settings/Global Settings/DEBUG" setting to "true" and restarting the server. You will now have verbose console output to assist in your troubleshooting efforts.

If you continue to have issues, please contact Extentech Support.

JSP Compilation and File Not Found Errors

If you are able to start the server successfully, but get ClassFormatErrors when opening a JSP page, there is a problem with your JSP compilation.  It is possible that none of your web application pages will load, which is indicative of a classpath issue or a compiler problem.

Please check the server settings in the Administration Console:

compilerCMD

and

compiler

If you continue to have issues, please contact Extentech Support.

Administration Console Errors

The e360 Administration Console is a customizable rich Java Swing application which gives you unlimited options for layout and configuration.

The basic problems associated with the Administration Console are when attempting to login and/or start a local server instance.

One important point is that you cannot login to a server if you do not share the same server key. This key is stored in the file:

/resources/server.properties

This file must be kept secure at the OS level.

If you continue to have issues or security questions, please contact Extentech Support.

JSP/Servlet and Web Page Errors

JSP and Servlet errors come in two flavors: compile-time and run-time.

Compilation errors result in detailed logfile details that can be viewed in the browser. Browser compilation errors will report that Compilation failed and a stack trace of the problem code is shown.

In secure deployments, you can configure the browser display to not output the Java code in a compilation error result.

Runtime errors are typically displayed in the browser as stack traces and show the line of Java code that caused the error result.

Runtime errors often take the form of:

  • SQLExceptions
  • NullPointerExceptions
  • ArrayIndexOutofBoundsException
If you continue to have issues, please contact Extentech Support.

MySQL Connection Timeouts

If your log files complain about MySQL connections timing out, please be sure to check the following MySQL driver commandline options:
characterEncoding=UTF-8&zeroDateTimeBehavior=round&tinyInt1isBit=false&autoReconnect=trueThis would be entered in the luminet.script like so:
INSERT INTO LUMINET_JDBC_CONNECTIONS VALUES(105,1,'','E360','org.gjt.mm.mysql.Driver','jdbc:mysql://db.yourcompany.com/dbname?characterEncoding=UTF-8&zeroDateTimeBehavior=round&tinyInt1isBit=false&autoReconnect=true','username','passwd','Sheetster connection','')




Administrative Console Error Messages:

2008-12-12 14:50:34:0968 FATAL ERROR LOADING: /workbook/* unresolved.
2008-12-12 14:50:34:0968 Unexpected problem loading servlet: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: base/PluginSharing while trying to load com.extentech.ExtenXLS.ESS.WorkBookServlet

This error is caused by a class compilation mismatch (version of java used to compile the plugin class). To fix, replace the files in WEB-INF/plugins/base/*.class with classfiles compiled with the same version of Java (ie: 1.6).