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Testing and Troubleshooting Your xReporter Installation

Testing and troubleshooting your xReporter installation can be a tricky process because there are a lot of different things that have to be working properly in order for the overall xReporter installtion to function properly. Fortunately, the biggest challenge is in getting it operational the first time because there can be individual components that are not quite configured or installed properly. In this section, we have tried to outline a process for incrementally testing your xReporter installation that will, hopefully, give you a clue as to what is wrong. However, at this stage we recommend that if you encounter problems, you login to the OpenCoral forum - and make a post describing what you are seeing.

For all of the following tests, we assume that you have a running version of tomcat 6 and phoenix. If you find that one or both of them is not running, you should look in either the /usr/local/tomcat6/logs or the /usr/local/phoenix/logs directory for error messages that would suggest the source of this problem.

Testing Tomcat and Cocoon

On the machine on which Tomcat is running, open a browser and point it to http://localhost:8080. You should see the Tomcat welcome page. If you do not get that page, check the file /usr/local/tomcat6/logs/catalina.out for clues.

Once you have confirmed that Tomcat is running, point the browser to http://localhost:8080/cocoon. You should now see the Cocoon welcome page. If you do not you can check the main cocoon log in /usr/local/tomcat6/webapps/cocoon/WEB-INF/logs/cocoon.log to see if it lists any clues.

Testing Phoenix

It is actually hard to test if Phoenix is running properly until you try to exercise it with xReporter. However, it is useful to check the main Phoenix log for any errors or problems. That file is /usr/local/phoenix/logs/phoenix.log. If the end of that log file contains something like:

INFO    2007-12-03 07:48:02.470 [Phoenix.] (): 13 Blocks to process for phase
"startup". Order of processing = [connectionprovider, authorisationmanager,
datasource, idgenerator, expressionmanager, datatypemanager, resourcemanager,
userentrystore, reportmanager, usermanager, blocktester, reportstore,
httpconnector].

it is likely that phoenix started properly

Initial Testing of xReporter

Now we will try to make our initial tests of xReporter. To do that, point your browser to http://localhost:8080/cocoon/xreporter/en-US/datasources. This should show you the xReporter login page. If it does, enter the Coral login name and Remote Coral password for a valid Coral user.

If you do not see the login page, what do you see or what error message do you get?

If you successfully login, you will be taken to a page that shows you a single datasource named Coral (with a description of "Production Coral Data"). If you do not see that page what error do you see? Note: if you see an error that indicates "No data sources", you likely have a database problem. Login to the OpenCoral forum - and make a post regarding your problems.

If you select the Coral data source, you should see either a few reports or a maybe 20-25 reports depending on your roles. All users should see reports named "My activities", "My accounting", "My current equipment", and "My reservations". If you see these reports, select the "My activities" and enter properties (primarily a Begin date and and End date) that should result in activities.

Does that report return data? If so, can you click one of the Excel buttons at the left side of the page and get it to create an Excel file? If so, it appears as if your xReporter installation if running properly .... at least locally. If not, login to the OpenCoral forum - and make a post with the details of your problem.

Testing SSL (AKA https) Access to xReporter

Once you know that xReporter is functional when run on the machine on which it is installed, it is now time to determine whether it can be accessed by a SSL-encrypted session from another machine.

To test this, open a browser on a different machine that the one on which xReporter is running. Point this browser to https://my_xreporter_machine.my_domain.edu/cocoon/xreporter/en-US/datasources. You will likely receive a warning that you are connecting to a secure site and be offered the opportunity to examine the certificate. Does the certificate have the details that you expect?

If you get to the xReporter login page, test it as above and post any problems to the OpenCoral forum