IS THERE A LIMIT TO HOW MANY PROJECTS CAN BE PUBLISHED?

[Guest]

I recently published 10 projects (on the same day) from RH 8 to the Robo Server 8. I was able to view the projects in the Web Admin Utility and using our URL. I tried to publish more projects the next morning and I receive a "published successfully" msg in the client but have no idea where they can be found because they do not show up in the Web Admin Utility nor when using the URL. The 10 projects are still there but anything published after the first 10 do not show up.  I checked the SSL properties, server name and publishing "area" to make sure they were the same as the first 10 and found no differences.  Any ideas?  Please help, we are desperately trying to get up and running.

Thanks,

Chrissy  

[johndaigle]

Hi, Chrissy.

I'm pretty sure there is no limit to the number of projects you may publish. As to the projects not showing up in the Web Admin > Projects list, there are two things you might want to check:

1. Make sure there are no non-alphanumeric characters in your filenames or folder names? I have found this to definitely be a problem. There may be a lot of files to check, but it only takes one to mess up everything! Adobe's Tulika Garg notes that especially the characters < (less than), > (greater than), " (quote), & (ampersand), ‘ (apostrophe) must be avoided. These characters can be replaced with an underscore "_".

2. As a way to identify the problematic filenames, you might search your Tomcat log files for one prefixed with "stdout_" like this: "stdout_20091210.log"

Your Web or IT admin can find your Tomcat log files on the server along this path:
C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 6.0\logs

From some of my clients, I have found that the & (ampersand) is frequently the culprit.

Hope this helps.

John Daigle

Adobe Certified RoboHelp and Captivate Instructor

www.showmethedemo.com

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi Chrissy.

Like John I'd be surprised if there was a limit. In addition to what John had to offer you may want to check the server's output directory to if your project is actually there but just not showing in the System Administrator. I have a blog post that explains where this is.

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[tuls_garg]

Hi Chrissy,

There is no upper limit to number of projects that can be published to RoboHelp server. But we do recommend some settings in tomcat to enable hosting large number of projects. I have talked about these settings in one of my earlier posts: http://forums.adobe.com/message/2315575#2315575

In case you have latest patch applied for RoboHTML 8 then you need not worry about the special characters in your file names because that issue has been fixed in latest RoboHTML 8 patch.

But as John and Colum correctly mentioned, best way to troubleshoot this issue is to look at tomcat logs. So if you can provide me your tomcat logs, I can take a look at them.

Tulika.

RoboHelp Server Team.

[Guest]

Hi Tulika,

I was able to get the tomcat logs from my system administrator and I have attached them to this msg.  If you could take a look at them and tell me anything that would help us that would be great.  He also provided me with the tomcat settings and told me that the output folder on the server does contain the three projects and the assoc files that I published successfully in the client but did not show up using the URL or in the Web Admin.

Thanks,

Chrissy

[Guest]

Hi Tulika,

I was able to get the tomcat logs from my system administrator and I have

attached them to this msg.  If you could take a look at them and tell me

anything that would help us that would be great.  He also provided me with

the tomcat settings and told me that the output folder on the server does

contain the three projects and the assoc files that I published

successfully in the client but did not show up using the URL or in the Web

Admin.

Hi Chrissy,

There is no upper limit to number of projects that can be published to

RoboHelp server. But we do recommend some settings in tomcat to enable

hosting large number of projects. I have talked about these settings in

one of my earlier posts: http://forums.adobe.com/message/2315575#2315575

In case you have latest patch applied for RoboHTML 8 then you need not

worry about the special characters in your file names because that issue

has been fixed in latest RoboHTML 8 patch.

But as John and Colum correctly mentioned, best way to troubleshoot this

issue is to look at tomcat logs. So if you can provide me your tomcat

logs, I can take a look at them.

Tulika.

RoboHelp Server Team.

[tuls_garg]

Hi Chrissy,

Your logs suggest that actually the problem is with topic file names in some of your projects. As John correctly mentioned, the characters < (less than), > (greater than), " (quote), & (ampersand) should be avoided in your project name and topic file names.As per your logs, one of your projects which has a ppf file named administrative.ppf, has some topic file names with any of these special characters.

But in case you have RoboHTML patch 8.0.2 applied, you should not face this issue and then you should be able to publish your projects even if they have topic with file names having any of these characters. Can you check if you have the latest patch applied on RoboHTML?

Tulika.

[Guest]

Hi Tulika,

Thank you for taking the time to look at our tomcat logs and identify one of the potential problems we could be having. We did in fact have the 8.0.2 patch applied to our system so is it possible that there is something else that could be wrong.  These forums are my only source of resolution at this point so I appreciate any information you can provide.  Do you know if there is anyone that could actually come and help us get our system up and running correctly? We are located in San Diego, CA.

Thanks,

Chrissy

[tuls_garg]

Hi Chrissy,

Did you republish after applying the patch? To fix the special character issue, you would have to republish your output to RoboHelp Server after applying the patch.

To confirm if you have got the right patch applied, you can verify the version number of "<RoboHTML Install location>/RoboHTML/PolarisProjectFile.dll" file. To do so, right clicking on the file and viewing the properties dialog and check out the version tab.

To have some one look into your installation, I guess you would have to contact Adobe support.

Tulika.

[tuls_garg]

And I would also strongly recommend that you increase the heap space of Tomcat if you wish to publish a large number of projects on server.

Tulika.

[Guest]

Hi Tulika,

Please take a look at our .dll properties and let me know if this is the correct patch.

Thanks for your time,

Chrissy

[johndaigle]

Because of the time difference, Tulika may not be able to reply right away so I thought I'd let you know that the version number in your screenshot is the same as on my system that does have the patch installed. So, it would appear you have the right version. You can also click on Help > About RoboHelp HTML and the first item that scrolls by shoud read Adobe RoboHelp 8.0.2.208

Also, regarding Tulika's comment about the Heap Space, take a look at this thread which has more details and a screenshot.

http://forums.adobe.com/message/2315575#2315575

It's reply #2.

Thanks
John

Adobe Certified RoboHelp and Captivate Instructor

www.showmethedemo.com

[Guest]

John,

Thanks for the response.  I did see 8.0.2.208 scroll by when I went to Help>About RoboHelp HTML so now I am at a complete loss.  My systems administrator deleted the projects from the server that I published two weeks ago, increased the heap space and had already applied the patch and we are still unable to publish successfully.  Today I published four projects and they all had a published successfully msg in the client and only one showed up in the web admin utility and none of them showed up using the URL.  I don't understand what we are doing wrong.   We have checked topic names for special characters (although as Tulika said it shouldn't be an issue since we applied the patch), we have checked SSL properties, and no success.  Not sure what to do at this point.  Any advice?

Chrissy

[johndaigle]

Hi, Chrissy. Sorry you're still having problems.

I understand that the patch was *supposed* to fix many filename problems. Also, I understand you have checked your "topic names". But, I must say that during the last couple of months when others have had this problem where projects are missing in the Web Admin dialog, it invariably turns out to be a filename problem! BTW, this was even after they had checked and *thought* they had checked everything only to find out they missed one.

So either the fix didn't fix or perhaps there were some older files somehow left on the server that the re-publishing didn't touch (wild guess)?

Tulika said:

Your logs suggest that actually the problem is with topic file names in some of your projects. As John correctly mentioned, the characters < (less than), > (greater than), " (quote), & (ampersand) should be avoided in your project name and topic file names. As per your logs, one of your projects which has a ppf file named administrative.ppf, has some topic file names with any of these special characters.

You will find the administrative.ppf in the root of the !SSL! folder of your project.

I'm not nearly as good as Tulika at this, but I've look at your logs and Tulika is most certainly right. So I wonder if you could test this theory by double-checking your project naming, in particular, the Administrative project, in particular a filename or folder called "P_Procedures" and make sure there are only alphanumeric characters such as:

> < " *  & ? ; :, ) ( ! @ # $ % + or spaces

If you locate such a file or foldername, go to your RoboHelp project and rename it (usually by replacing the illegal characters with an underscore) and then delete the project on the server and republish to the server to get the corrected content there. The particular log file we are talking about are the ones titled stdout_(date).log.

Let us know.

Thanks

john

John Daigle
Adobe Certified RoboHelp and Captivate Instructor

www.showmethedemo.com

[tuls_garg]

Hi Chrissy,

Sorry to hear that republishing after applying the patch didn't work for you. To the best of my knowledge it should have worked.

We need to try some basic troubleshooting steps and I am sure we should be able to find the exact probelm.

1) The first step is the one which has been comprehensively explained by John (even I couldn't have put it that well ) i.e about the special characters in the file names.

If you are still absolutely sure that there are no such file names, you can share your new tomcat log files (the once after you published your new set of four projects) with me and also your administrative.ppf file.

2) One more thing that you can try side by side is what Colum suggested, look for server directory where projects are supposed to be published and see if the projects are actually present there.

Projects directory are :

• Public Webhelp Projects are supposed to be published to "<RHS Install Dir>/robo/server/<area-name>/projects/<project-name>"
• Public FlashHelp Projects are supposed to be published to "<RHS Install Dir>/robo/server/<area-name>/projects_fhpro/<project-name>"
• Protected Webhelp Projects are supposed to be published to "<RHS Install Dir>/robo/secure_server/<area-name>/projects/<project-name>"
• ProtectedFlashHelp Projects are supposed to be published to "<RHS Install Dir>/robo/secure_server/<area-name>/projects_fhpro/<project-name>"

Regards

Tulika.

[Guest]

Thank you all for your help.  I will be passing this information on to my systems administrator and hope that we can get this issue resolved.  I know we are so close to getting our help system up and running. 

Chrissy