Troubleshooting 404 errors discovered through dynaTrace

Forum|Forum|12 years ago
March 3, 2014
1 reply
1224 views

I'm using RoboHelp 9.0.2.271 on a Windows 7 64-bit machine to generate a WebHelp project. Everything appears to be fine in the source files and in the output files when I test locally and/or in a build.

I received a message from development that they used something called dynaTrace to test for errors in the build. They sent a list of seven 404 errors logged by the application. The list looks similar the attached screenshot of two (fake) examples.

When I look at the folder where I deliver the output files to development, I see all of the files that are listed under the URI column and the Referrer column, with only a few exceptions for two of the entries. I'm not familiar with troubleshooting the help in this manner and was hoping someone else can shed some light. There are no apparent broken links in the project.

In case these details are helpful, I work exclusively on my hard drive when using RoboHelp. I store the source files through Tortoise SVN. I deliver the output (WebHelp) files to development by copying the contents of my WebHelp folder from my local output folder and pasting them to a location on the network for development to retreive.

Thanks for any help!

WebHelp

This topic has been closed for replies.

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

Can’t make out your screenshot, but a 404 is a page not found – have a look at the pages they’re reporting and see if there is any dead/broken links in them.

D

doctechwriterAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks, Jeff. When I went to the pages listed in the Referrer column (btw - you may be able to click the image in my message to zoom in on it), and then located the files listed in the URI column, something odd happened. When I double clicked the applicable link in the RoboHelp project, everything looked set up correctly. However, some of the images didn't appear correctly when I used the "View Selected Item" (glasses) icon to view them. So then I opened the link again in the project, navigated to the exact same graphic, and then it seemed to reload the image. I'm sure this isn't making much sense. I vaguely remember a bug from years ago that caused this to happen (where after upgrading, certain images lost their links), so maybe that's at play. This is a large, inherited project. They're going to run dynaTrace on the updated files in the morning, so I'll know then if "re-linking" the images fixed the issues. Fingers crossed.

D

doctechwriterAuthor

Participating Frequently

Adding some updates in case any of this rings a bell for anyone. Development did another build last night and ran dynaTrace again. The graphics I re-linked yesterday no longer appear as missing. However, in today's report, additional graphics appeared to be missing (that didn't show up in yesterday's report). One was in a topic that was impacted yesterday for a different graphic (which didn't appear as an issue yesterday). Another one was in a different topic that was not impacted before. Again, when I open RoboHelp and look at the topics and images, they appear to be linked properly. I am not familiar with how dynaTrace actually tests for missing files. RoboHelp shows no broken links or missing images. Not sure yet if it makes a difference, but most of these "missing" images are located within expanding hotspots.

I did find some info on the one file that showed up yesterday and today. The /test/testhelp/contentlist.xml file is missing from the /test-samplesite/test/whskin_mbars.htm referring page. From what I understand, this file is only needed when DUCC is used in a project. We are not using DUCC in this project.

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/914941

If anyone has any insights, let me know. Thanks for listening.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded