problems with PLASTIC HUB

[John Taylor]

Hi Igor,
Sorry to hear you're having trouble.  Firstly, could I ask that  
questions like this go to the PLASTIC mailing list rather than apps  
since we don't want to spam people who aren't interested in PLASTIC  
bug reports.  All the people who can help with this are listening on  
that list.

With regard to the Hub not being cached and redownloading, I think  
this is probably a bug in Java Web Start.  I've seen this behaviour  
with other applications and it might be related to the time on the  
server and the time on your desktop (your desktop thinks that there's  
a new version on the server even when there isn't).  Sometimes just  
changing the timestamps of the the files on the server is enough to  
stop it.

The bug you report is more perplexing.  The fact that the hub gets  
chance to write the .plastic file means that the app does at least  
start running.  You're a bit of a pioneer running Java 6 on Linux -  
I'm running it on Windows (with no problems), but I don't think we've  
tested on Java 6/Linux yet.  I'll see if I can reproduce the problem,  
but in the meantime if you could enable the Java console in your  
webstart set up, you might be able to get some debug output to send me.

Can I ask which applications you are trying to connect with PLASTIC?   
If one of them is either Aladin or Topcat then you don't need to run  
the standalone Hub, as both of these applications have one embedded.

See you,

John


On 24 Feb 2007, at 11:36, Igor Chilingarian wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Today I have faced a very annoying problem with the PLASTIC HUB. It  
> doesn't work with the recent Java WebStart from Sun on Linux:
>
> % java -version
> java version "1.6.0"
> Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0-b105)
> Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.6.0-b105, mixed mode)
>
> % javaws
> Java(TM) Web Start 1.6.0
> Usage:  javaws [run-options] <jnlp-file>
>         javaws [control-options]
>
> I'm trying to start it using Java WebStart for this URL:
> http://software.astrogrid.org/jnlp/plastic-hub/plastic-hub.jnlp
>
> At first, it keeps silence for some time, trying to download 3.5  
> Megabytes of something (probably .jar) from 143.210.36.14:80 (even  
> though it is supposed to be cached by JavaWS, and during the first  
> attempt it showed me the progress bar), after that I see the splash  
> screen, then the main window appears for a second, and after that  
> it dies silently, leaving ~/.plastic in my homedir.
>
> If I do not remove ~/.plastic and try again, it behaves correctly,  
> producing an error-message saying that I have to remove this file.
>
> At the same time, if I download "http://software.astrogrid.org/jnlp/ 
> plastic-hub/plastic-hub-2007.1.1-app.jar" and start it as "java - 
> jar plastic-hub-2007.1.1-app.jar", everything works correctly - so  
> my guess it is a sort of java security problem. However since  
> "javaws" doesn't print any debug messages, it is impossible to say  
> what it is exactly.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> With best regards,
> 						Igor
>