Forum OpenACS Q&A: nsd aborts when restarted after apparently successful openACS installation

i have just installed aolserver, created my postgresql database as nobody, done createlang plpgsql mydbname as superuser, etc, got nsd (aolserver) running, gone through the openACS installation process, registering the admin user details etc and all looked completely successful. The tables were all created in the database, and there were no errors in my postgresql logfile, etc. The aolserver was shut down automatically and i was informed everything would be operational when i retsarted my aolserver.

Unfortunately, when i try to restart aolserver, with:

cd /usr/local/progs/aolserver
./bin/nsd -t /home/nobody/web/vorpal/vorpal.tcl -u nobody -g web

the server starts up, runs flat out for a while, then aborts completely.

Examining the error it says all the modules are loaded successfuly including nsxml etc

There is this warning:

[09/Mar/2003:01:54:31][9418.1024][-main-] Warning: apm_boostrap_load_file skipping /home/nobody/web/vorpal/packages/acs-tcl/tcl/tcl-documentation-tests.tcl because it isn't either a -procs.tcl or -init.tcl file

There are also a lot of the messages as shown below:

[09/Mar/2003:00:53:41][7212.4101][-conn1-] Notice: /home/nobody/web/vorpal/packages/wp-slim/wp-slim.info
NOTICE:  identifier "apm_package_version__version_name_greater" will be truncated to "apm_package_version__version_na"
NOTICE:  identifier "apm_package_version__sortable_version_name" will be truncated to "apm_package_version__sortable_v"

But besides that everything seems to go well, until

[09/Mar/2003:01:54:44][9418.1024][-main-] Debug: Loaded packages/acs-content-repository/tcl/acs-content-repository-init.tcl.
[09/Mar/2003:01:54:44][9418.1024][-main-] Debug: Loading packages/acs-mail/tcl/acs-mail-init.tcl...
[09/Mar/2003:01:54:44][9418.1024][-main-] Notice: Scheduling proc acs_mail_process_queue
[09/Mar/2003:01:54:44][9418.1024][-main-] Notice: acs-mail: ns_uuencode works!!
Aborted

The end of my postgresql log shows that everything was going great until nsd aborted...

2003-03-09 01:54:44 [9424]  DEBUG:  StartTransactionCommand
2003-03-09 01:54:44 [9424]  DEBUG:  query:
    select distinct package_key
    from apm_package_versions
    where enabled_p='t';
2003-03-09 01:54:44 [9424]  DEBUG:  CommitTransactionCommand
2003-03-09 01:54:46 [9426]  DEBUG:  pq_recvbuf: unexpected EOF on client connection
2003-03-09 01:54:46 [7073]  DEBUG:  reaping dead processes
2003-03-09 01:54:46 [7073]  DEBUG:  child process (pid 9426) exited with exit code 0
2003-03-09 01:54:46 [9425]  DEBUG:  pq_recvbuf: unexpected EOF on client connection
2003-03-09 01:54:46 [7073]  DEBUG:  reaping dead processes
2003-03-09 01:54:46 [7073]  DEBUG:  child process (pid 9425) exited with exit code 0
2003-03-09 01:54:46 [9424]  DEBUG:  pq_recvbuf: unexpected EOF on client connection
2003-03-09 01:54:46 [7073]  DEBUG:  reaping dead processes

I am running Mandrake 8.2, using Matts AOLserver distribution:
(AOLserver/3.3.1+ad13 (aolserver3_3_1_ad13)
  CVS Tag:        $Name: nsd_v3_r3_p1 $

PostgreSQL is 7.2

openACS is 4.6

does anyone have any ideas whats goin on here ?!?!?!?!

help!

John

one thing though... even with the larger stacksize, it still fails at the exact same point...

so there is a problem here...

[snip several hundred lines of output at least...so the server is getting a fair bit of initialisation done before it dies]
[09/Mar/2003:23:07:34][30118.1024][-main-] Debug: Loading packages/acs-mail/tcl/acs-mail-init.tcl...
[09/Mar/2003:23:07:34][30118.1024][-main-] Notice: Scheduling proc acs_mail_process_queue
[09/Mar/2003:23:07:34][30118.1024][-main-] Notice: acs-mail: ns_uuencode works!!
Aborted

i notice that there is supposedly some patch for ns_uuencode to make it work with binary files... could it be a problem with that (in spite of the fact that the message above says ns_uuencode works)?

Or, perhaps it is failing on the step immediately after that one...

Could someone please start up their server with -f and -q options and tell me what the server does next, ie immediately after the lines that my server dies on ??

Maybe that will help work out what the problem is.

Im not sure whether it is worth wasting time trying to fix this error or whether it would be better to use the aolserver4 CVS which i just got. It built fine, but I will need to get nspostgres or configure it to work with postgres.so which i will do tomorrow.

If the aol4server CVS is not too hard to get working with openACS maybe that will be the way to go.

Thanks for any help. Im really quiet keen to have a look at the petri-net based openACS workflow package... with a working AOLsrver!

John

Hmm, so now you want the cvs version of beta software to work flawlessly? I seem to be running from cvs just fine, most of the time. Try complaining at the AOLserver list, subscribe at listserv.aol.com.

I got tcl 8.4.2 which is supposed to be a stable release, and i did build it with enable threads, etc. The tcl 8.4 .2 did compile flawlessly and only failed one of its self-tests out of 8000 or so - it was some file handling test or other...

I also compiled tk8.4.2, even though aolserver does not require tk... and tk8.4.2 compiled fine but failed many of its tests... many worked, but there were a lot of failures.

As you say, tcl is supposed to be a mature and stable proudct as well, so i am disappointed with 8.4.2 so far... as the third release in the 8.4 series it should be ok, even if it was only released a few days ago. But i despise tcl anyway so I am not surprised. I will try 8.4.1 anyway.

I have lost the configure commands that I used to build tcl from my history, due to the demented way in which mulitple gnome-terminals mangle one's history, by reading it in when they start, and not writing it until they exit.. ie if you start 2 terminals, do a lot of commands in one, then exit it, it will write your commands into the history file. But if u then exit the 2nd terminal, it will overwrite the history with its version which has none of the commands you just did in the other terminal.... Anyway, I recall that the only additional option i used was to enable threads.

Anyway, the aolserver build actually seemed to go fine. I configured the build with:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/progs/aolserver-cvs --with-tcl=/usr/local/tcl/tcl8.4.2/lib

I made /usr/local/progs/aolserver a link to aolserver-cvs.
Then i installed the nssha and nsxml modules, but no luck.

Regarding the AOLserver build, it was unclear to me whether it was still necessary to apply the patch for ns_uuencode to work with binary files and/or the patch to make aolserver work with the -g flag. The instructions on what to do with the patches from sourceforge are rather unclear... so i am hoping they are no longer needed with AOLserver4

Ill see how i go with tcl8.4.1 and report back.

--------------------------------------------------
On Fri, Jul 26, 2002 at 07:18:49AM -0600, Don Allingham wrote:
<blockquote> I have been fighting the problem for quite a while, and I cannot come up
with a workable solution. Under Mandrake 8.2, I keep getting the
following error:

/usr/bin/python: relocation error: /usr/lib/libimlib-jpeg.so: undefined symbol: _gdk_malloc_image

Things work fine under RedHat, SuSE, debian, any other distribution that
I or anyone else has tested. I can get around the problem by using
LD_PRELOAD, but this isn't a really good solution, as it is not very
portable.

export LD_PRELOAD='/usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so /usr/lib/libgdk_imlib.so.1 /usr/lib/libgdk.so'

I've tried forcing a load of GdkImlib, but this doesn't seem to have an
effect. The first call to any image handling routine, either from python
or from libglade, causes python to abort.

</blockquote>
-------------------------------------------------

undfortunately in my case libtcl8.4.2.so should not need to link to anything else to get TclCompileScript anyway, all it shoudl need is:
: jss: 22:41:30 /usr/local/src/gui/tcl/tcl8.4.2/unix ; ldd /usr/local/tcl/tcl8.4.2/lib/libtcl8.4.so
    libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x400b4000)
    libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x400b7000)
    libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x400ce000)
    libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x400f0000)
    /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x80000000)

So it is still beyond me why TclCompileScript (ie TclCompileScript@tclByteCodeType) cannot be found in libtcl8.4.so itself. the LD_PRELOAD wont work in my case because there is nothing i can preload to define TclCompileScript before it is needed in libtcl8.4.2.so because it should be IN libtcl8.4.2.so !!

If you really despise Tcl, don't like patching things, or want a simple out-of-the-box solution, then the OpenACS toolkit probably isn't a good match for you.  It includes over 170,000 lines of Tcl alone and has all the complexity that implies.

: root: 00:32:36 /root ; strace /usr/local/progs/aolserver/bin/nsd -t /home/nobody/web/vorpal/vorpal.tcl -u nobody -g web 2>&1 | grep -i libtcl
open("/usr/local/tcl/tcl8.4.2/lib/libtcl8.4.so", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("/usr/local/progs/aolserver-cvs/lib/libtcl8.4.so", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/local/tcl/tcl8.4.2/lib/i686/mmx/libtcl8.4.so", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/local/tcl/tcl8.4.2/lib/i686/libtcl8.4.so", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/local/tcl/tcl8.4.2/lib/mmx/libtcl8.4.so", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/local/tcl/tcl8.4.2/lib/libtcl8.4.so", O_RDONLY) = 3
: root: 00:33:36 /root ;

so it does find it in the end!

my humble apologies to all those whose time has been wasted trying to help me overcome the consequences of my own stupidity.

I recompiled tcl8.4.2 after doing a make distclean to clean up the mess caused by calling doing configure for tcl8.4.2 with:
--prefix= /there/should/be/no/space/b4/this/path

and then configuring again with:
--prefix=/much/better/with/no/space/b4/this/path

It still amazes me that this seems to have been the cause of all my problems... i mean, really, is it too much to expect that calling configure a 2nd time with new options should overwrite all products of previous configures with the new results, without having to do a make distclean???

oh well.

I also tried compiling AOLserver4 CVS against tcl8.4.1 and yeah, no problems there either.

A final comment is in order though. I still would not have a working AOLserver were it not for the fact that I was able to scavenge a copy of nsrewrite.so from the build I did of Matts AOLserver distribution. My CVS checkout of AOLserver4 did not come with any code for nsrewrite.so, and the nsrewrite module is NOT available at sorceforge with all the other modules for AOLserver.

Besides that the only very minor problem was that the sample openACS config file at:

https://openacs.org/doc/openacs-4/files/openacs4.tcl.txt

does not mention that openACS also needs AOLserver to load the nsdb module -- so it needs to have the line:

ns_param  nsdb            ${bindir}/nsdb.so

added at the appropriate place.

Sorry again to all those whose time was wasted especially those who took the time to try to help me.

john