[Geoserver-devel] reminder: 2.6-beta preflight testing issues

Hi,

I must admit that I have not been reading the RUNNING.txt file lately. It seems to be good stuff and reading it would resolve most startup problems. However, there is place for some improvements:

  1. RUNNING.txt should mention that user must unzip the archive anywhere else but not into “Program Files” or “Program Files(x86)”

  2. Ideally startup.bat should check if GEOSERVER_HOME or GEOSERVER_DATA_DIR points to \Program Files.… and throw an error. Now startup.bat is actually echoing a bad example:

if exist “%GEOSERVER_HOME%\data_dir” goto setDataDir

echo No valid GeoServer data directory could be located.

echo Please set the GEOSERVER_DATA_DIR environment variable.

echo.

echo Set this environment variable via the following command:

echo set GEOSERVER_DATA_DIR=[path to data_dir]

echo Example:

echo set GEOSERVER_DATA_DIR=C:\Program Files\GeoServer\data_dir

    • Currently running startup.bat when JAVA_HOME is not set prints

Welcome to GeoServer!

The JAVA_HOME environment variable is not defined.

This environment variable is needed to run this program.

Set this environment variable via the following command:

set JAVA_HOME=[path to Java]

Example:

set JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk6

I would suggest an improved message:

Welcome to GeoServer!

The JAVA_HOME environment variable is not defined.

This environment variable is needed to run this program.

Set this environment variable by removing the comment “rem”

from line 10 of the startup.bat file and edit the line to

point to a valid jre version.

Geoserver requires jre or jdk version 1.7 or higher.

Example:

set JAVA_HOME=c:\Program Files\java\jre7

New message refers to modified startup.jar which would have “set JAVA_HOME” line commented out like this:

cls

echo Welcome to GeoServer!

echo.

set error=0

rem Remove comment “rem” from the next row for setting JAVA_HOME

rem set JAVA_HOME=c:\Program Files\java\jre7

rem JAVA_HOME not defined

if “%JAVA_HOME%” == “” goto noJava

  1. It would be good if we could print some understandable message for users if JAVA_HOME points to unsupported jre version. However, I do not know Windows bat files well enough for suggesting how to do it. Now users may not understand what goes wrong if startup.bat points to jre6 because the launch error happen later and the message is like this:

Welcome to GeoServer!

JAVA_HOME: c:\Program Files\java\jre6

The GEOSERVER_HOME environment variable is not defined.

Temporarily setting GEOSERVER_HOME to the following directory:

C:\geoserver\geoserver-2.6-beta

The GEOSERVER_DATA_DIR environment variable is not defined correctly.

Temporarily setting GEOSERVER_DATA_DIR to the following directory:

C:\geoserver\geoserver-2.6-beta\data_dir

Please wait while loading GeoServer…

2014-08-14 11:32:13.673::INFO: Logging to STDERR via org.mortbay.log.StdErrLog

2014-08-14 11:32:14.757::WARN: Deprecated configuration used for C:\geoserver\geoserver-2.6-beta/web

apps

2014-08-14 11:32:14.776::INFO: jetty-6.1.8

2014-08-14 11:32:14.883::WARN: failed org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext@…4031…{/geoserver,file

:/C:/geoserver/geoserver-2.6-beta/webapps/geoserver/}

java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: org/geoserver/GeoserverInitStartupListener : Unsupported maj

or.minor version 51.0

-Jukka-

···

Rahkonen Jukka wrote:

Hi,

Add to the list the problem with installing from “Platform Independent Binary” on Windows. There are 2 issues:

  • installation into Program Files does not work → document it for the users

  • batch file tries to find jre from JAVA_HOME environment variable but it is usually not set and startup fails → document that users must explicitly set JAVA_HOME by editing startup.bat or consider better using automatic jre recognition, see http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gis.geoserver.devel/26609

-Jukka Rahkonen-

Jody Garnett wrote:

A quick pass through email resulted in the following:

I thought some progress had been made on the use of OL3 …

Website: A reminder that we no longer need to upload the src archive, and it no longer linked to from the release_26 template. I set up templates for release_25 and release_26 allowing us to maintain links to previous source forge source downloads.

Jody Garnett