Troubleshooting GUI tools

Try these if you have experiencing difficulties with the Pentaho GUI tools. Before you continue, make sure you have the latest stable versions of the tools (i.e. not a Milestone or Beta version).

It won't start, it crashes, or it runs slowly

Check your version of Java. See the Performance tuning section for details and instructions.

It won't start, or it takes a long time to start

This section applies if you cannot successfully start one of the Pentaho GUI tools.

File permissions

Most of the tools are launched via shell scripts. There are two main ways to run them.

You can manually run them through a shell interpreter, such as sh, e.g.

$ sh spoon.sh

If you wish to launch them more directly, they need to have executable permissions, e.g.

$ chmod +x spoon.sh
$ ./spoon.sh

Check working directory

Report Designer and Metadata Editor in Pentaho 3.0 and earlier might fail to run if you try to execute them directly. If you do so within a terminal, you might see an error like this:

Unable to access jarfile launcher/launcher-1.0.0.jar

Similarly, Schema Workbench might complain that it can't connect to databases because it can't find the required drivers.

These problems occur because those applications need to have their working directory set to the directory where they are installed. The easiest way to get around this is first change to the directory where the tool is installed before executing.

Assuming that you have Report Designer installed in /home/user/pentaho/report-designer/

$ cd /home/user/pentaho/report-designer/
$ sh startdesigner_linux.sh

Assuming that you have Metadata Editor installed in /home/user/pentaho/metadata/

$ cd /home/user/pentaho/metadata/
$ sh metaeditor.sh

On a Desktop Entry Specification compliant desktop environment (GNOME, KDE, XFCE, ...) you can make a desktop icon or panel launcher that sets the working directory/path before launching the app. Some environments provide this option through their GUI launcher creation/editing tool. For others, you might have to open the .desktop file in a text editor and add the line manually, e.g.

Path=/home/user/pentaho/report-designer/

Replace the part after the equals sign with the path to the installation directory of the tool in question.

Resources

• Bug report for Report Designer
• Bug report for Metadata Editor
• Bug report for Schema Workbench

Bypass the executable

The Pentaho Design Studio is normally run via a binary executable, which is run with the command, "PentahoDesignStudio" This can fail under various circumstances. Bypassing the executable might help:

$ java -jar startup.jar

Architecture and version

Some of the GUI tools contain Eclipse libraries compiled for a 32-bit architecture. They will not run with a 64-bit JDK.

This issue doesn't affect the Pentaho server, so we recommend that you keep separate development and production environments. The Pentaho server and PDI command line tools (pan, kitchen, etc.) will work properly in 64-bit mode.

Design Studio

Your options are:

• manually install the Pentaho action-sequence-plugin into a 64-bit version of Eclipse
• run Design Studio with a 32-bit JDK

Spoon and Metadata Editor

In the tool sets for Pentaho 3.0 and earlier, PDI's Spoon GUI and the Metadata Editor would only run reliably with a 32-bit JDK.

They require tweaking to force them to run in 32-bit mode. Open spoon.sh (Spoon) and metaeditor.sh (Metadata Editor) in a text editor. You will see the following:

Linux)
    ARCH=`uname -m`

Linux)
    ARCH=i686

ERROR 04-03 15:57:51,156 - Spoon - Fatal error : java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: no swt-gtk-3346 or swt-gtk in swt.library.path, java.library.path or the jar file
ERROR 04-03 15:57:51,157 - Spoon - java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: no swt-gtk-3346 or swt-gtk in swt.library.path, java.library.path or the jar file
        at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Library.loadLibrary(Unknown Source)
        at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Library.loadLibrary(Unknown Source)
        at org.eclipse.swt.internal.C.<clinit>(Unknown Source)
        at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Converter.wcsToMbcs(Unknown Source)
        at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Converter.wcsToMbcs(Unknown Source)
        at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.<clinit>(Unknown Source)
        at org.pentaho.di.ui.spoon.Spoon.main(Spoon.java:378)

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
        at org.pentaho.di.ui.spoon.Spoon.main(Spoon.java:420)

There have been some bugs regarding Sun Java 1.6, so if in doubt use version 1.5. Avoid using a non-Sun JVM.

Resources

• I just installed Eclipse on Linux, but it does not start. What is the problem?

Valid network connection

Some parts of the suite assume a valid network connection (for data sources, version checking, etc.). The BI Server and Report Designer give you the option to automatically check for updates on start. Report Designer 3.5 automatically tries to connect to all data sources defined in the open report file.

If connectivity is not present or is blocked (e.g. by a proxy that requires authentication), the application may take a very long time (up to half an hour) to start or look like it's frozen. In reality, it's waiting for a network response that will never come, and eventually it times out.

To permanently disable version checking, you can delete the pentaho-versionchecker.jar file. You can also disable version checking in pentaho.xml (BI Server) or $HOME/.Report/applicationSettings.xml (Report Designer Classic).

Report Designer 3.6 introduced an offline mode to tackle this problem.

Resources

• 1.x version checker
• 2.x version checker

"No more handles [gtk_init_check() failed]"

This can happen with Design Studio and Data Integration, which are based on Eclipse. To quote from the Eclipse 4.3.0 Release Notes:

This SWT error is caused by one of the following reasons:

• Connection failure to the X server.
• Insufficient memory for the Manual Test View process.

To resolve this issue, complete the following steps:

• Set the DISPLAY environment variable to the local host name or IP address (for example, export DISPLAY=:0.0).
• Correct the host name and port number in /etc/hosts.
• Start the X server.
• Increase the file descriptor limit.

If you are running over an SSH connection, you'll have to enable X11 forwarding (the -X or -Y flag).

Report Designer opens, but the window is empty

This can happen due to a bug in Sun Java 1.5, especially if you are running a compositing window manager such as Compiz (called "Desktop Effects" in GNOME). If you don't want to switch to a non-compositing window manager (e.g. Metacity), you can try this:

1. install the package libXp (Fedora) or libxp (Debian/Ubuntu)
2. set an environment variable:

   AWT_TOOLKIT="MToolkit"

   You can place it at the beginning of the start script for Report Designer. If you want to set it generally, you can place it in /etc/profile or ~/.profile:

   export AWT_TOOLKIT="MToolkit"

   Logout then log back in for it to take effect.

Can't connect to data source

See our guide to testing database connections.