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Table of Contents:
Error Log Files
- DSpace log:
[dspace]/log/dspace.log
(usually)[dspace]
is the location where DSpace is installed.
- Tomcat log directory:
[tomcat]/logs
(usually)[tomcat]
is the location where Tomcat is installed.
- (XMLUI Only) Cocoon log:
- DSpace 1.5.1 or previous:
[tomcat]/webapps/<name-of-webapp>/WEB-INF/logs/
- DSpace 1.5.2 or later:
[dspace]/log/cocoon.log
- DSpace 1.5.1 or previous:
Resources
- DSpace Documentation. Obviously this would be the place to start for any installation or configuration problems
- Use the DSpace Community Resource Search engine to simultaneously search the DSpace Wiki, Issue Tracker and mailing lists.
- Search or browse all DSpace mailing lists via Nabble: http://dspace.2283337.n4.nabble.com/
- Search or browse the DSpace Issue Tracker for known/fixed bugs: https://jira.duraspace.org/browse/DS
- DSpace Technical FAQ
General Instructions
Finding the Error Message in your Log Files
- If the expected information simply never appears, leaving a blank browser screen, the problem is likely with either a servlet (for JSPUI) or an XSLT Theme (for XMLUI). The error message should be in either
[dspace]/log/dspace.log
OR[tomcat]/logs/
. For the XMLUI, you may also want to check the Cocoon logs (see above for path) to see if any extra information can be found there. - If you get an "Internal Server Error" message, you will have to check the log files for a full error listing. If your email address is set up in dspace.cfg (
alert.recipient
) as the DSpace Administrator, you should receive an email with this full error listing. If not, move into the DSpace log directory ([dspace]/log
) and view the end of the log file:- (Linux or Mac OSX) Go to the DSpace log directory via the command line and enter:
tail -100 dspace.log
Alternatively, you can open up the dspace.log file in your favorite text editor and look near the bottom of the file for the error message. - (Windows) Go to the DSpace log directory, and open dspace.log in your favorite text editor. Look near the bottom for the error message.
- (Linux or Mac OSX) Go to the DSpace log directory via the command line and enter:
- Usually, the culprit error is in the first five to ten lines of the error stack listing. The error stack starts with a line similar to one of the following:
yyyy-mm-dd time ERROR ...
OR,yyyy-mm-dd time WARN ...
Searching for Fixes to Common Errors
- Use the DSpace Community Resource Search engine to simultaneously search the DSpace Wiki, Issue Tracker and mailing lists (via Google).
- Search or browse all DSpace mailing lists via Nabble: http://dspace.2283337.n4.nabble.com/
- Directly search or browse the DSpace Issue Tracker for known/fixed bugs: https://jira.duraspace.org/browse/DS
- Finally, check the DSpace Technical FAQ for any possible information. Some commonly reported problems have answers there.
Turning on Debugging (optional)
- If you'd like to try and do some debugging yourself, you can change the DSpace logger settings to
DEBUG
which will sometimes provide you with more information about the error. To turn on debugging, visit the[dspace]/config/log4j.properties
file and do the following:- To enable DEBUG logging in the
dspace.log
file, change thelog4j.rootCategory
andlog4j.logger.org.dspace
settings toDEBUG
rather thanINFO
. - (XMLUI Only) To enable DEBUG logging in the
cocoon.log
file, change thelog4j.logger.org.apache.cocoon
setting toDEBUG
rather thanINFO
. - NOTE: You'll need to restart Tomcat after enabling DEBUG mode in the
log4j.properties
file. - WARNING: Make sure to turn off debugging once you are finished. Leaving debugging turned on will cause the log files to grow very large very quickly!
- To enable DEBUG logging in the
Send the error message and describe how you encountered it
- If all else fails, email a description of the error along with the error stack listing to dspace-tech@lists.sourceforge.net. (If you are not a member of this list, you can signup at https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dspace-tech)
- Make sure to include the following in your email:
- Your environment: Operating system, version of DSpace, version of Tomcat, Java, etc.
- NOTE: on DSpace 4.x or above, simply running "
./dspace version
" from the commandline will provide much of this information for you.
- NOTE: on DSpace 4.x or above, simply running "
- The exact steps you took to encounter the error. (We often need to understand how to replicate the error before we can determine what the underlying cause is)
- The error stack that you found in your log file
- Your environment: Operating system, version of DSpace, version of Tomcat, Java, etc.
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