ServletVelocityResourceListener receives an error - _unstyled init.vm does not map to a servlet context

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Resolution: Inactive
• Affects Version/s: 6.0.6 GA
• Fix Version/s: None
• Component/s: Fault Tolerance, Fault Tolerance > Clustering Framework
• Labels: None
• Environment: LR 6.0.3, Solaris 10, SPARC, Java 6, Tomcat 6 (Liferay CE Bundle) clustered, MySQL
• Branch Version/s:
  6.0.x

We have set up a SPARC box with 2 separate tomcat instances (liferay bundle) clustered together. Everything was going good when all of the sudden we receive this error which renders the liferay setup unusable and thus has to be restarted:

2010-08-20 04:02:39,902 <TP-Processor12> ERROR [ServletVelocityResourceListener:74] - SERVLET_CONTEXT/html/themes/_unstyled/templates/init.vm is not valid because does not map to a servlet context
2010-08-20 04:02:39,913 <TP-Processor12> ERROR [velocity:151] - ResourceManager : unable to find resource 'SERVLET_CONTEXT/html/themes/_unstyled/templates/init.vm' in any resource loader.
2010-08-20 04:02:39,922 <TP-Processor12> ERROR [velocity:151] - #parse(): cannot find template 'SERVLET_CONTEXT/html/themes/unstyled/templates/init.vm', called at seg-default-theme_SERVLET_CONTEXT/templa
tes/portal_normal.vm[line 6, column 1]
2010-08-20 04:02:39,931 <TP-Processor12> ERROR [IncludeTag:227] - Current URL /web/guest generates exception: Unable to find resource 'SERVLET_CONTEXT/html/themes/_unstyled/templates/init.vm'
2010-08-20 04:02:39,952 <TP-Processor12> ERROR [IncludeTag:154] - org.apache.velocity.exception.ResourceNotFoundException: Unable to find resource 'SERVLET_CONTEXT/html/themes/_unstyled/templates/init.vm'
at org.apache.velocity.runtime.resource.ResourceManagerImpl.loadResource(ResourceManagerImpl.java:483)
at org.apache.velocity.runtime.resource.ResourceManagerImpl.getResource(ResourceManagerImpl.java:354)
at org.apache.velocity.runtime.RuntimeInstance.getTemplate(RuntimeInstance.java:1400)
at org.apache.velocity.runtime.directive.Parse.render(Parse.java:198)
at org.apache.velocity.runtime.parser.node.ASTDirective.render(ASTDirective.java:175)
at org.apache.velocity.runtime.parser.node.SimpleNode.render(SimpleNode.java:336)
at org.apache.velocity.Template.merge(Template.java:328)
at org.apache.velocity.Template.merge(Template.java:235)
at org.apache.velocity.app.VelocityEngine.mergeTemplate(VelocityEngine.java:381)
at com.liferay.portal.velocity.VelocityEngineImpl.mergeTemplate(VelocityEngineImpl.java:155)
at com.liferay.portal.velocity.VelocityEngineImpl.mergeTemplate(VelocityEngineImpl.java:165)
at com.liferay.portal.kernel.velocity.VelocityEngineUtil.mergeTemplate(VelocityEngineUtil.java:71)
at com.liferay.taglib.util.ThemeUtil.includeVM(ThemeUtil.java:316)
at com.liferay.taglib.util.ThemeUtil.include(ThemeUtil.java:72)
at com.liferay.taglib.theme.IncludeTag.include(IncludeTag.java:38)
at com.liferay.taglib.util.IncludeTag._doInclude(IncludeTag.java:219)
at com.liferay.taglib.util.IncludeTag.doEndTag(IncludeTag.java:58)
at org.apache.jsp.html.common.themes.portal_jsp._jspx_meth_liferay_002dtheme_005finclude_005f1(portal_jsp.java:823)
at org.apache.jsp.html.common.themes.portal_jsp._jspx_meth_c_005fotherwise_005f0(portal_jsp.java:795)
at org.apache.jsp.html.common.themes.portal_jsp._jspService(portal_jsp.java:731)

Could anyone shed some light on this issue? A work around?

Thanks.

[Marco Beelen (Inactive)]

I started to notice these error's on our server as well.
The appear to start without any reason, and the template, which calls 'parse init' has been used by the Liferay instance prior to these error's showing up.

[Marco Beelen (Inactive)]

Although our opinion isn't final yet, it appears that these errors started to appear after we added the option: emptySessionPath="true" to the HTTP-connector of our Tomcat-server. We added that option for some ICEFaces problems with PortletSessions.
Prior to adding that configuration option, we never noticed this problem.
I removed that config option and am testing our server without.

We haven't notived the problem yet, but since it 'appears' without an know cause, it's hard to determine whether this solves our problem.

[Marco Beelen (Inactive)]

I registered a similar issue (http://issues.liferay.com/browse/LPS-12683) and did some further investigation.
I documented the cause for our problem as a comment at that issue:
http://issues.liferay.com/browse/LPS-12683?focusedCommentId=108258&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels%3Acomment-tabpanel#action_108258

I hope the original reporter of this issue can verify the cause of this issue and respond on his findings.

[Balazs Zsoldos (Inactive)]

The same happens sometimes after a start on 6.0.5 bundled with Glassfish

[Gaurang (Inactive)]

I have started facing this one too, is there a workaround?

[Corne]

See this topic for a workaround
https://www.liferay.com/community/forums/-/message_boards/message/4929360

[Baptiste Grenier (Inactive)]

Hi, I am facing the same issue on a 6.0.5 bundled with Tomcat (no HA), I just wanted to clearly state that it is not specific to clustered environment.

The last hot deploy didn't fail and the portlet wasn't "incorrect". (But it effectively happened after a hot deploy, but 3 hours later...)

[Pablo Tatann (Inactive)]

Same problem here, first it was on my development machine, but now it's on our test environnement too, so it's getting quite annoying, and we fear it will appear in production environnement too

[Denis Signoretto]

The same problem during development 6.0.5 GA (tomcat 6.0.26 - blundled). Uninstalling my custom theme plugin the problem disappear.

[Giovanni Ganassin (Inactive)]

have the same issue - @Denis: try typing http://yourhost:8080/web/test - it resolve the problem too without having to unistall/reinstall the theme.

[Loïc Dumont (Inactive)]

Same problem here in production: Liferay CE 6.0.5 / Tomcat 6.0.26, no clustering

Restarting tomcat resolved the problem

[Giovanni Ganassin (Inactive)]

@Loic you don't need to restart: if your Liferay has an user called "whatevah"... just invoke his public page url (http://yourhost:8080/web/whatevah) and the prob will be fixed! Much faster then a restart isn't it? ;P

[Blaine Boule (Inactive)]

We too are experiencing this error. Liferay 5.2.3. Tomcat and JBoss deployments. This usually happens after a set or portlets are deployed (even if portlets had no changes, just the act of deploying). We are seeing this in local builds, Development servers and our QA.

A restart of the server solves the issue - this error is very random and hard to reproduce, but our customers do not like to see it. It would be great if the LR team would step up and solve this issue.

[Kristoffer Onias]

Hello All,
Thank you for filing this issue and thank you for the detailed comments. I apologize this has been an ongoing issue for you all. I'm trying to gather as much information as possible since this issue is described as random. Would you happen to know if this still occurs on any other operating system other than Solaris? It appears that clustering is not necessary for this issue to be reproduced.
To narrow down any confounding factors, can this bug be reproduced on a clean 6.0.5 CE?

Thanks!

[Loïc Dumont (Inactive)]

I'm now having the same problem in test and production (respectively unclustered and clustered). What may be interesting is that the problem is only on one instance (company) of our portal.

This happen after deployment of new versions of multiple portlets including our theme.

Liferay 6.0.5 CE / Tomcat / Debian 5

@Giovanni I was not able to fix the problem as you said... I always get the blank page, I have to restart the server.

[Loïc Dumont (Inactive)]

I want to add that on my new project using Liferay 6.0.6 CE, I've never get the problem.

[Alexey Kakunin]

I can confirm - it happens on both - 6.0.5 & 6.0.6 unclustered wit using tomcat and ubuntu/centos as operation systems. This error happens after redeployment of portlet/theme in case (looks like) is somebody accessed Liferay during the moment - then portlet/theme is undeployed - but not deployed back.

[Denis Signoretto]

@Kristoffer Onias

It happen also on Liferay 6.0.5 / Tomcat (bundle) / Windows XP 32bt

[Mercer Traieste (Inactive)]

I also confirm that the issue appears when someone refreshes a page during deployment of a war with theme or portlets. Once the deployment is complete, refreshing the page raises the issue. Deployed portlets and servlets work ok (they receive the request ok), but rendering of the page fails with this error.

We have 3 different environments, all experiencing the issue. The only fix found is server restart (both Tomcat and Glassfish).

System(s): liferay 6.0.5 (and older 6.x builds) on Tomcat and Glassfish, Windows XP, Windows 7 64 bit, CentOs 64 bit, Mysql 5.1

We have not tried 6.0.6

[Mercer Traieste (Inactive)]

To be more specific: refresh during deployment will result in page being generated ok (with portlets being deployed missing from the page, if the case), but once deployment ended, refresh will give a blank page, with noted error in logs.

It seems any refresh will raise the issue (including control panel).

[Denis Signoretto]

@Mercer

I can confirm the same behaviour. In particular when I redeploy a portlets module (war) and I also have custom theme module already deployed. (e.g. try with Liferay ide that frequently refresh and synch contexts building your own theme and your own portlet).

[Blaine Boule (Inactive)]

@Kristoffer Onias

We see this error on 5.2.3 running tomcat or JBoss on WindowsXP 32bit, Windows7 64 bit (developer boxes - no cluster) and also see this in our Dev/QA environment (Redhat 4 - node clusters).

A similar issue occurs, in line with what Mercer said, if we deploy a set of portlets and those portlets are accessed by a user during the deployment process, those portlets become unavailable. This requires either a restart or a redeploy to fix that issue. For us, this is different than the issue outline in this thread.

We can work around this, but the Blank Page issue is quite concerning for use, our QA and Production instances are clustered 4 nodes and its painful to restart all of them for this issue. We had looked at upgrading to 6.0.x to correct the issue, but it appears to be present there too.

[Pablo Tatann (Inactive)]

@Kristoffer Onias

Hello and thanks for your interest !
The bug appears both on our development machines (LR 6.0.5 CE bundled with Tomcat 6.0.26 on Windows 7 32-bit) and integration and production servers (LR 6.0.5 CE bundled with Tomcat 6.0.26 on OpenSUSE 10.2 64-bit)

Interesting fact, like Denis, it doesn't appear on a clean development environment, it only appears if we deploy another theme than "classic-theme" (even if it's a copy of "classic-theme"). So basically I guess the problem only appears (for us) when we have a theme deployed as a webapp and we try to deploy another webapp (some portlets in our case).

Hope this can help

[Loïc Dumont (Inactive)]

Based on Giovanni's comment (http://issues.liferay.com/browse/LPS-12202?focusedCommentId=128620&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#comment-128620), I can now reload the context without restarting tomcat.

It seems that if you display a page with an other theme, you can then go back to your page with your custom theme. In my case http://localhost/web/test did the trick.

Thanks Giovanni

[David Coleman (Inactive)]

This is surely the same issue as http://issues.liferay.com/browse/LPS-12683 ? I see today that a solution design was specified.

[Greg Gendron (Inactive)]

We see the issue on 6.0.10 EE with JBoss 5.1AS. Is there any progress on this issue?

[Kuldeep Bhati (Inactive)]

Any update on this issue?

[Kieran Brady (Inactive)]

We also see this on the 6.0.6 CE Tomcat Bundle on Windows 7 Enterprise/SQL Server 2005 using Liferay IDE to deploy our theme.

[Jan Geissler]

Same Issue here.
6.0.6 CE Tomcat Bundle on Windows 7 Enterprise/SQL Server 2000 using Liferay IDE to deploy our theme
Sometimes only a remove and redeploy of the theme helps out, as for after a restart of the server, the error ist still appearing.

[Kevin Beesley (Inactive)]

I apologize for not replying earlier, but we hadn't been experiencing any issues after my original post until now. Now we are on a different server environment (linux instead of solaris) and we started experiencing the issue. I can confirm that going to another page with a different theme on it fixes the issue. In our case, we went to the control panel (which still had the default control panel theme on it) and then we went back to the page experiencing the issue and it was displaying properly at that point. The problem seems to occur any time (randomly) and not just during deployment of new themes/portlets.

I cannot say how the problem is produced but I can confirm that the workaround to getting it working again does work.

We are on 6.0.6 CE Tomcat Bundle (not clustered), Apache 2.2, Ubuntu 10.04.

[frinux (Inactive)]

Finding a workaround out is one thing, but fixing the issue is much more important.

[CPS Team 42 (Inactive)]

Hello,
Been having the same problem on our project too and we think we have the reason why:

We noticed that the classic theme that ships with Liferay is not affected by the bug. In fact, in order to reproduce the bug, all you have to do is trigger the portlet and theme reloading for the portal and visit a page where one portlet is deployed. If the timing is as the theme is undeployed (to be redeployed), the error happens and all subsequent page refreshes come up with the described error message.

Now, what we think is happening is that the custom theme lives under its own Servlet Context while the "classic" theme lives under the "ROOT" context. After reloading a page with a portlet but without the theme, the portal must lose the reference to the custom theme context and so cannot link to the required "init.vm" (/ROOT/html/themes/_unstyled/init.vm) which triggers the error.

Now, a possible temporary fix is to copy the "init.vm" inside your custom theme _diffs directory and point to it using the following code:

#parse ("$fullTemplatesPath/init.vm")

That way, the custom theme can be reloading even after losing its context.

It's only a temporary fix since it creates a dependence on the current "init.vm" that ships with the Liferay Portal version you are using but it can probably help some folks out while Liferay addresses this issue.

Cheers.

[Bob Tiernay (Inactive)]

Any idea on how when this might be fixed? This is a big problem that effects a lot of developers. It renders liferay unpredictable

[Solo]

I have the same issue: Linux. Oracle 10.x. Java 1.5 Upgrade Liferay Portal Community Edition 5.1.1 to Liferay Portal Community Edition 6.0.6 ( liferay-portal-6.0.6-20110225 ).

[Juan Calero (Inactive)]

I have this issue in two different projects. In both cases it started appearing when we deployed and used a custom theme.
It happens when hot deploying a portlet WAR to liferay.
Liferay versions 6.05 and 6.0.6. Using standard bundle with Tomcat over Windows platform. Also using the Maven SDK.

[neelam bhandari (Inactive)]

I am facing this similar issue .Any solution yet ?

[Josh Hibschman (Inactive)]

Over a year after this ticket opened, we're still facing this issue. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[Josh Hibschman (Inactive)]

This workaround was successful for me (we have a gradle/ant process that wars and deploys the template):

• Clean out your server:
  rm -rf liferay-portal-6.0-ee-sp1/tomcat-6.0.29/webapps/YOUR_WEBAPPS;
  rm -rf liferay-portal-6.0-ee-sp1/deploy/*;
  rm -rf liferay-portal-6.0-ee-sp1/tomcat-6.0.29/temp/*;
  rm -rf liferay-portal-6.0-ee-sp1/tomcat-6.0.29/work/Catalina/localhost/YOUR_WEBAPPS;

• Startup your server (you will see the theme not found message)
• War up and deploy your template, portlets, webapps, hit your website and make sure things look good
• Shut down server
• Restart server (this time it should see your template and load it)
• Rebuild and deploy your template war and hit the site
• Redeploy and verify you are not receiving init.vm missing message

[Josh Hibschman (Inactive)]

Further, it seems that problem only manifests if the server starts up and can't find your template. Subsequent startups after Tomcat has the template will not manifest the problem.

[Edward Gonzales (Inactive)]

Hello! We are in the process of removing the "General" component all together. Please help us by removing "General" from the component field and applying a relevant component. Thanks in advance for your help. formercomponentgeneral03202013EG