Reggie Problem

[Lakshmi Nayak]

Hello
I am new to RMI / Jini.
I am getting following exception in starting Reggie. I checked the other mail about this topic but that does not solve my problem. Some RMI/Activation/Jini Guru please help !!

Tue Oct 09 17:36:08 GMT+05:30 2001:ExecGroup-0:err:Exception in starting Activat
ionGroupInit:
Tue Oct 09 17:36:08 GMT+05:30 2001:ExecGroup-0:err:java.rmi.activation.Activatio
nException: exception creating group; nested exception is:
java.lang.NullPointerException
Tue Oct 09 17:36:08 GMT+05:30 2001:ExecGroup-0:err:java.lang.NullPointerExceptio
n
Tue Oct 09 17:36:08 GMT+05:30 2001:ExecGroup-0:err: at java.lang.Class.forNa
me0(Native Method)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:08 GMT+05:30 2001:ExecGroup-0:err: at java.lang.Class.forNa
me(Class.java:199)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:08 GMT+05:30 2001:ExecGroup-0:err: at sun.rmi.server.Loader
Handler.loadClass(LoaderHandler.java:264)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:08 GMT+05:30 2001:ExecGroup-0:err: at sun.rmi.server.Loader
Handler.loadClass(LoaderHandler.java:246)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:08 GMT+05:30 2001:ExecGroup-0:err: at sun.rmi.server.Loader
Handler.loadClass(LoaderHandler.java:119)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:08 GMT+05:30 2001:ExecGroup-0:err: at java.rmi.server.RMICl
assLoader.loadClass(RMIClassLoader.java:97)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:08 GMT+05:30 2001:ExecGroup-0:err: at java.rmi.activation.A
ctivationGroup.createGroup(ActivationGroup.java:283)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:08 GMT+05:30 2001:ExecGroup-0:err: at sun.rmi.server.Activa
tionGroupInit.main(ActivationGroupInit.java:58)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:38 GMT+05:30 2001:RMI:RMI TCP Connection(4)-lakshmi/192.164.22.
54:[192.164.22.54] exception: java.rmi.activation.ActivationException: timeout c
reating child process
Tue Oct 09 17:36:38 GMT+05:30 2001:RMI:RMI TCP Connection(4)-lakshmi/192.164.22.
54: at sun.rmi.server.Activation$GroupEntry.getInstantiator(Compiled Code)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:38 GMT+05:30 2001:RMI:RMI TCP Connection(4)-lakshmi/192.164.22.
54: at sun.rmi.server.Activation$GroupEntry.activate(Compiled Code)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:38 GMT+05:30 2001:RMI:RMI TCP Connection(4)-lakshmi/192.164.22.
54: at sun.rmi.server.Activation$ActivatorImpl.activate(Activation.java:252)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:38 GMT+05:30 2001:RMI:RMI TCP Connection(4)-lakshmi/192.164.22.
54: at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:38 GMT+05:30 2001:RMI:RMI TCP Connection(4)-lakshmi/192.164.22.
54: at sun.rmi.server.UnicastServerRef.dispatch(Compiled Code)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:38 GMT+05:30 2001:RMI:RMI TCP Connection(4)-lakshmi/192.164.22.
54: at sun.rmi.transport.Transport$1.run(Transport.java:126)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:38 GMT+05:30 2001:RMI:RMI TCP Connection(4)-lakshmi/192.164.22.
54: at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:38 GMT+05:30 2001:RMI:RMI TCP Connection(4)-lakshmi/192.164.22.
54: at sun.rmi.transport.Transport.serviceCall(Transport.java:123)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:38 GMT+05:30 2001:RMI:RMI TCP Connection(4)-lakshmi/192.164.22.
54: at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport.handleMessages(Compiled Code)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:38 GMT+05:30 2001:RMI:RMI TCP Connection(4)-lakshmi/192.164.22.
54: at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$ConnectionHandler.run(TCPTransport
.java:607)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:38 GMT+05:30 2001:RMI:RMI TCP Connection(4)-lakshmi/192.164.22.
54: at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:479)
Tue Oct 09 17:36:38 GMT+05:30 2001:RMI:RMI TCP Connection(4)-lakshmi/192.164.22.
54:[192.164.22.54: sun.rmi.server.Activation$ActivationSystemImpl[0:0:0, 4]: pub
lic abstract void java.rmi.activation.ActivationSystem.unregisterGroup(java.rmi.
activation.ActivationGroupID) throws java.rmi.activation.ActivationException,jav
a.rmi.activation.UnknownGroupException,java.rmi.RemoteException]
rmid: unable to restart service
rmid: exception occurred: timeout creating child process
java.rmi.activation.ActivationException: timeout creating child process
at sun.rmi.server.Activation$GroupEntry.getInstantiator(Compiled Code)
at sun.rmi.server.Activation$GroupEntry.activate(Compiled Code)
at sun.rmi.server.Activation$GroupEntry.restartServices(Compiled Code)
at sun.rmi.server.Activation$GroupEntry$RestartThread.run(Activation.jav
a:1297)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:479)
Thanks in advance
Regards,
Lakshmi

[Muhammad Ali]

Reggie is quite difficult to work with. I am forwarding my response in another post.

[Muhammad Ali]

We did test our software on a network but all the machines were running Windows 98. However, nothing except Java and JINI were used for development. Thus, as far as the development point is concerned, theoretically our software did run on all sorts of machines. We didn't have enough facilities in our institute to use Sun Solaris, Linux or Gx machines.
First of all, make sure you have the complete and latest JINI Kit from the Sun site. Secondly, make sure of one more thing that you have the latest version of Java JDK (ie 1.3) and there are no mix ups of ver 1.2 and 1.3. One of the problems we faced was because I installed Netscape 6 (that came with JDK 1.3) on my machine over an existing JDK 1.2 and the DLLs / files got mixed up.
Another helpful hint is to install the JINI packages in c:\files. The default location that's discussed in examples / documentation. Its helpful because the SERVICES software uses this as default and you need not worry about setting this.
I am also assuming that all your machines have been assigned an IP address. If that's not the case, you need to do some more settings.
The minimum you need to run is RMID, HTTP and Reggie. Remember, RMID is a re-activatable service. This means that, once RMID is started and Reggie is started on top of it, RMID remembers this setting. Next time and onwards, when you run RMID, it automatically runs Reggie itself and no explicit mentioning is required. If you run reggie, you will get two copies of Reggi in the same RMID - something you didn't want. The state of RMID is saved in a "log" file and deleting that log folder makes things come back to normal. We didn't know this in the beginning and thus faced several instances of head ache.
Its better to start JINI from its GUI in the first try. Assuming that you are using c:\files, the following command is helpful:
java -cp c:\files\jini1_1\lib\jini-ext.jar;c:\files\jini1_1\lib\jini-examples.jar com.sun.jini.example.launcher.StartService
This is written in a single line as one command. Its better to save this in a bat file and run it. Hopefully, this will start the SERVICES gui. Now, click on File -> Open and browse to JINI1_1/ example/ launcher and select one of the properties file (according to your OS).
In the RUN panel, click on RMID and after some time on Web Server; you may need to change the prot of the webserver (the default one is 8081). Next from the Reggie tab, write the IP of the machine in Codebase where hostname is written. Go back to the Run panel and run reggie also.
If after some time you see no errors, go to LookupBrowser tab, and change the codebase machine name to your machine's IP. And from the Run panel click on LookupBrowser. If the app runs, then every thing is fine.
You will almost never have problem in running HTTP server. The problem is always with Reggie / RMID. Remember the RMID point that it automatically starts Reggie (if you successfully start Reggie once). So, if RMID doesn't start in future the problem might be with reggie.
Almost all the problems in the case of JINI are because of INCOMPATIBILITY of files (always try a reinstall) and a few of the are because of setting machine's IP address. A few problems arise because of incorrect execution policy. For my case, the default one worked but it didn't with Windows 2000. I don't know whether this is helpful or not. It depends on the amount of KHAWARI you have already done.
Some links that were very usable for us were: http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/products/jini/execpolicy.html http://www.enete.com/download/index.html#_nuggets_ (very very helpful)
Do tell me if some specific error messages are still there. Together we may find the solution.

Thanks.
Ali.

[Michael Ernest]

Another angle: are you starting rmid with the appropriate options? I found this note about rmid along my own travels with Jini:
rmid -J-Dsun.rmi.activation.execPolicy=none
Using this line, a lot of "unrelated" Jini issues went away for me.
------------------
Michael Ernest, co-author of: The Complete Java 2 Certification Study Guide

[Poul Dahl]

Hi,
Another tip:
Make sure the rmid launched is the correct version.
I you, like myself, have several jdk's around and on several OS's, make sure to launch it correctly.
The following is a good production practise:
rmid -J-Djava.security.policy=/home/myhome/java.policy
Don't use the execPolicy=none in prod.
The java.policy could for dev. purposes be:
grant {
permission java.security.AllPermission;
};
cheers