Pentaho Server issues

Use these fixes for common Pentaho Server issues.

In this article

• Publishing a domain fails

• Library conflicts

• Accented characters in report parameters

• Duplicate vfs-provider.xml files

• Tomcat logs show memory leak warnings

• JTDS Windows domain authentication

• Enable JavaScriptAction (XAction)

• Amazon S3 authentication from the server

Publishing a domain to the Pentaho Server fails

If publishing a domain fails, confirm these statements are true:

• The Pentaho Server is running.

• Your user has the administrator role. The default is admin.

• The Web Publish URL and Domain Name have no leading slashes.

• The Web Publish URL and Domain Name have no trailing slashes.

Library conflicts

The Pentaho Server uses many third-party libraries.

Incompatible versions in the application server’s global lib folder can cause startup and runtime issues.

Pick library versions that match your environment.

These JARs are known to cause issues:

• commons-collections-3.2.jar (from Pentaho)

• jettison-1.01.jar (from Pentaho)

Report parameters with accented characters

If you run a report with accented characters in parameters, you might see:

This parameter value is of an invalid value.

Add UTF-8 URI encoding to Tomcat connectors.

1

Stop Tomcat

sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat stop

2

Update server.xml

Open /tomcat/server/conf/server.xml.

For each Connector element, add URIEncoding="UTF-8".

<Connector URIEncoding="UTF-8" port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
           connectionTimeout="20000"
           redirectPort="8443" />

3

Restart Tomcat

sudo /etc/init.d/tomcat start

VFS provider.xml duplicates

The vfs-provider.xml file can exist in multiple application JARs.

Multiple copies can cause classpath errors.

Merge the files into one canonical version.

Tomcat logs report memory leaks

When you shut down Tomcat, you might see SEVERE warnings like these:

Dec 17, 2010 10:18:19 AM org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader clearReferencesJdbc
SEVERE: The web application [/pentaho] registered the JBDC driver [mondrian.olap4j.MondrianOlap4jDriver] but failed to unregister it when the web application was stopped. To prevent a memory leak, the JDBC Driver has been forcibly unregistered.
Dec 17, 2010 10:18:19 AM org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader clearReferencesThreads
SEVERE: The web application [/pentaho] appears to have started a thread named [HSQLDB Timer @49cf9f] but has failed to stop it. This is very likely to create a memory leak.
Dec 17, 2010 10:18:19 AM org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader clearReferencesThreads
SEVERE: The web application [/pentaho] appears to have started a thread named [MySQL Statement Cancellation Timer] but has failed to stop it. This is very likely to create a memory leak.
Dec 17, 2010 10:18:19 AM org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader clearThreadLocalMap
SEVERE: The web application [/pentaho] created a ThreadLocal with key of type [java.lang.InheritableThreadLocal] (value [java.lang.InheritableThreadLocal@a1320e]) and a value of type [org.pentaho.platform.engine.security.session.TrustedSystemStartupSession] (value [org.pentaho.platform.engine.security.session.TrustedSystemStartupSession@111089b]) but failed to remove it when the web application was stopped. This is very likely to create a memory leak.

These messages can matter during restarts or redeployments.

Restart Tomcat instead of redeploying the web application.

Windows domains will not authenticate when using the JTDS driver

With the JTDS JDBC driver, Windows DOMAIN\user syntax does not work in the URL.

Append the domain at the end of the URL with a semicolon.

jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://svn-devel.example.com:1533/reportsInProgress;domain=testdomain

Unable to run XAction when using the JavaScript component

JavaScriptAction runs arbitrary JavaScript code on the Pentaho Server.

Pentaho disables it by default.

Enable JavaScriptAction only if you understand the risk.

1

Stop the server

Stop the Pentaho Server if it is running.

2

Edit plugins.properties

Go to:

/tomcat/webapps/pentaho/WEB-INF/classes/org/pentaho/platform/engine/services/runtime

Open plugins.properties.

3

Uncomment JavaScriptAction entries

Remove the leading # from these lines:

# org.pentaho.component.JavascriptRule = !org.pentaho.platform.plugin.action.javascript.JavascriptRule
# JavascriptRule = org.pentaho.platform.plugin.action.javascript.JavascriptRule
# org.pentaho.plugin.javascript.JavascriptRule = !org.pentaho.platform.plugin.action.javascript.JavascriptRule

4

Restart the server

Restart the Pentaho Server.

PDI cannot access Amazon S3

When you access Amazon S3 from the Pentaho Server using the Amazon CLI, you might see authentication errors.

This often happens when the Pentaho Server and the PDI client run on different machines.

Use the same AWS service account for:

• Your Amazon CLI access to S3

• Your Pentaho Server login