Question

All plugins except this one are disabled. PublishContrib is installed.

I get various errors.

InstalledPlugins reports no errors. Nothing is written in /tmp. There is no warn.txt and setting DEBUG =1 produces no debug.txt. There is nothing in the Apache error_log.

What should I try next?

Environment

-- ShaughanLavine - 21 Feb 2007

Answer

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Hmmm. where to begin.

• in the BibtexPlugin, the debug mode is hard coded in the .pm file. line 45. Setting DEBUG in a topic won't work (This should probably be changed)
• The bibtool warnings are a bit strange. I would expect a file path instead of a TWiki-style Web.Topic format.
• If turning the debug mode on doesn't provide any better clues, the next step is to turn on the sandbox trace functionality. Add the following line
  

  $sandbox->{TRACE} = 1;

  after the sandbox is created (line 88 or so). This will output the system commands to the apache log file. From there, it should be possible to debug what is going on.

The first priority should be figuring out why bibtool returns such odd path names in the warning.

-- ScottHoge - 22 Feb 2007

Thanks for replying so fast. I had a lot of meetings and classes today, and I will again tomorrow, so I'm a bit slower.

Here are the results of setting TRACE were huge (437.2 K).

-- ShaughanLavine - 23 Feb 2007

Since, as ScottHoge , suggested by e-mail, the main thing is to find out what commands render.sh is executing and the error_log was so absurdly huge, I removed the early sandbox->{TRACE} = 1; and instead bracketed each command of the form ($result, ... $cmdTemplate ... ; with sandbox->{TRACE} = 1; and sandbox->{TRACE} = 0; in BibtexPlugin.pm. I also added echo $cmd1 and echo $cmd2 immediately below eval $cmd1 and eval $cmd2, respectively, in render.sh.

Here is what was going on:

ShaughanLavine@ShaughanTablet /srv/www/twiki
$ /usr/local/bin/bibtool.exe /srv/www/twiki/pub/TWiki/BibtexPlugin/sample.bib

*** BibTool WARNING: File /srv/www/twiki/pub/TWiki/BibtexPlugin/sample.bib not f
ound.

ShaughanLavine@ShaughanTablet /srv/www/twiki
$ /usr/local/bin/bibtool.exe pub/TWiki/BibtexPlugin/sample.bib

@Article{         wein.more.ea:pr.2003,
  author        = {Weinberg, R. F. and Moresi, L. and van der Borgh, P.},
  category      = {C1},
  journal       = {Precambrian Res},
  pages         = {219-239},
  title         = {Timing of deformation in the Norseman-Wiluna Belt, Yilgarn
                  Craton, Western Australia},
  volume        = {120 (3-4)},
  year          = {2003}
}

<snip>

The shell was not interpreting absolute paths correctly, only relative paths, in executing bibtool. I recompiled bibtool and that error disappeared. DOH! I would delete all the attachments, since they are no longer relevant, but I don't have the appropriate (rename) privileges.

I'm now getting the following error:

Cannot write output citations file (/dev/null: No such file or directory)
Uncaught exception: Sys_error("c:/texmf/miktex/bin/bibtex.exe -terse -min-crossrefs=1000 .\\bib2htmld5057d > /dev/null 2>&1: No such file or directory")

Here is the command:

/usr/local/bin/bibtool.exe -r /srv/www/twiki/pub/TWiki/BibtexPlugin/bibtoolrsc /srv/www/twiki/pub/TWiki/BibtexPlugin/sample.bib | c:/localtexmf/miktex/bin/bib2bib.exe -q -oc /dev/null -c 'author:"Moresi"' | c:/localtexmf/miktex/bin/bibtex2html.exe -c 'c:/texmf/miktex/bin/bibtex.exe -terse -min-crossrefs=1000' -nodoc -nobibsource -noheader -nofooter -q -dl --use-keys -d -r --no-abstract --no-keywords

The first two parts of that command, that is,

/usr/local/bin/bibtool.exe -r /srv/www/twiki/pub/TWiki/BibtexPlugin/bibtoolrsc /srv/www/twiki/pub/TWiki/BibtexPlugin/sample.bib | c:/localtexmf/miktex/bin/bib2bib.exe -q -oc /dev/null -c 'author:"Moresi"'

Cannot write output citations file (/dev/null: No such file or directory)

If I change /dev/null to /tmp/foo, the command works. But /dev/null is, otherwise, working just fine:

ShaughanLavine@ShaughanTablet /srv/www/twikihttp://twiki.org/cgi-bin/edit/Support/BibtexPluginCygwin?t=1172335550
(edit) BibtexPluginCygwin < Support < TWiki
$ ls > /dev/null

ShaughanLavine@ShaughanTablet /srv/www/twiki

If I replace /dev/null by /tmp/foo in render.sh, I then get the error:

Uncaught exception: Sys_error("c:/texmf/miktex/bin/bibtex.exe -terse -min-crossrefs=1000 .\\bib2htmlfb72de > /dev/null 2>&1: No such file or directory")

The bibtex.exe I am using is part of my MikTex TeX for windows installation. Since I'm stumped by the occurrence of /dev/null, the only thing I can try now is to add a Cygwin installation of TeX to my system, so I can use that. OK. I did that, and now everything works.

None of the problems I had is likely to be of general interest, but Scott's hints about how to get debugging info probably will be.

-- ShaughanLavine - 24 Feb 2007

I'm glad to hear you figured it out.

In addition to how to track down what commands are actually executing in the background, I think an additional take-away point is that Windows versions of software and Cygwin versions often have difficulty playing well together. It's generally best to throw all your chips into one bowl or the other.

-- ScottHoge - 25 Feb 2007