[xwiki-users] A lot of Problems with XWIKI
We have managed to setup xwiki to work in our UNIX environment. However, we faced a lot of problems with xwiki during runtime. (1) Running xwiki in tomcat - The java process of tomcat can never be shutdown properly without using 'hard' killing, i.e. kill -HUP <process id>. I have searched the web and found that the cause is actually quartz library holding on to a process and thus preventing the tomcat jvm from shutting down. See here http://jira.opensymphony.com/browse/QUARTZ-204 . The problem is upgrading quartz to 1.6 doesn't resolve the problem and attempting to update the two properties as recommended into the quartz.properties file will cause tomcat startup failure. This is quite frustrating, so any input on how to resolve this problem is much appreciated. Of course, the main motivation for this is to ensure proper startup and shutdown so that this process can be automated. If we have to manually execute 'kill', the automation of this tomcat process will be problematic. (2) Everytime after a fresh restart of tomcat, when I hit the first page of my installed xwiki, I almost always get a connection reset error. But the second hit will be ok. I wonder why? Any answers to this? (3) The WYSIWYG support is a nightmare. Everytime after an edit (even a mere clicking on the WYSIWYG link without edit will cause similar problems), all the formatting that used to work suddenly don't and user have to manually reformat it. How to make WYSIWYG rendering consistent? (4) Customization of user registration field - we spend hours trying to figure out how to customize the fields which we would like to have in our registration page. Only managed to get the attributes added into the XWiki.XWikiUsers object. But how to link this to stats/user profile edit page? Any ideas? Also it seem like after an attribute is added to the XWikiUsers object, it can't be removed. Any ideas on how to remove it? Documentation on customization of user registration page is just a one liner which is totally useless to anyone who want to customize it. It should be improved. (5) When using Oracle as backend, search functions cannot work. Exception like this occurred when user perform search: Exception while searching documents with sql from VisitStats as obj where obj.cookie=? and obj.endDate > ? order by obj.endDate desc Wrapped Exception: could not execute query Any way to get this search function working? (6) Every now and then, log file will throws exceptions like this: java.sql.SQLException: ORA-00932: inconsistent datatypes: expected - got CLOB Any idea what is the cause of it and how to resolve it? All in all, xwiki presents a great opportunity that meets many organization knowledge management needs (esp. in my organization). But until all these problems are being resolved, I am amazed by the large number of user web sites that used xwiki in a production environment. In my limited experience with xwiki thus far (closed to 3 months of working on it), the support requirements of xwiki would be such a big problems that it will make anyone think twice to adopt it as enterprise knowledge management system. I certainly is reconsidering other wiki consequently of all these problems. My company uses mediawiki as well. While don't have the nice authentications and authorizations features like xwiki (which we like to have), it is extremely stable and easy to use. --- Jenson GOH (Mr) :: Manager (IT), CORS, Registrar's Office. Resident Fellow, King Edward VII Hall :: National University of Singapore :: University Hall, Tan Chin Tuan Wing, UHT #03-03, 21 Lower Kent Ridge Road Singapore 119077 :: 65-6516 2268 (DID) :: 65-9025 9342 (HP) :: 65-6776 3980 (Fax) :: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> (E), [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> (E) :: www.nus.edu.sg (W), kevii.nus.edu.sg (W) :: Company Registration No: 200604346E Important: This email is confidential and may be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete it and notify us immediately; you should not copy or use it for any purpose, nor disclose its contents to any other person. Thank you.
Hi, First of all, you forgot to mention what version of XWiki you are using. Goh Chong Leng, Jenson wrote:
We have managed to setup xwiki to work in our UNIX environment.
However, we faced a lot of problems with xwiki during runtime.
(1) Running xwiki in tomcat - The java process of tomcat can never be shutdown properly without using 'hard' killing, i.e. kill -HUP <process id>. I have searched the web and found that the cause is actually quartz library holding on to a process and thus preventing the tomcat jvm from shutting down. See here http://jira.opensymphony.com/browse/QUARTZ-204 . The problem is upgrading quartz to 1.6 doesn't resolve the problem and attempting to update the two properties as recommended into the quartz.properties file will cause tomcat startup failure. This is quite frustrating, so any input on how to resolve this problem is much appreciated. Of course, the main motivation for this is to ensure proper startup and shutdown so that this process can be automated. If we have to manually execute 'kill', the automation of this tomcat process will be problematic.
This should be fixed in 1.5, see http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XWIKI-2454
(2) Everytime after a fresh restart of tomcat, when I hit the first page of my installed xwiki, I almost always get a connection reset error. But the second hit will be ok. I wonder why? Any answers to this?
I think it is safe to ignore this error.
(3) The WYSIWYG support is a nightmare. Everytime after an edit (even a mere clicking on the WYSIWYG link without edit will cause similar problems), all the formatting that used to work suddenly don't and user have to manually reformat it. How to make WYSIWYG rendering consistent?
We know that the current WYSIWYG editor is buggy, unstable and confusing. Starting with 1.6 we'll have a new editor. Until then, there's nothing we can do, as maintaining or fixing the current one has proved to be almost impossible.
(4) Customization of user registration field - we spend hours trying to figure out how to customize the fields which we would like to have in our registration page. Only managed to get the attributes added into the XWiki.XWikiUsers object. But how to link this to stats/user profile edit page? Any ideas? Also it seem like after an attribute is added to the XWikiUsers object, it can't be removed. Any ideas on how to remove it? Documentation on customization of user registration page is just a one liner which is totally useless to anyone who want to customize it. It should be improved.
You cannot remove class properties yet. This is a known bug, and it will be fixed. A workaround is to revert to a previous version (from the history view of the XWikiUsers document) and continue from there. To change the registration page, you must edit <xwikidir>/templates/registerinline.vm To change the user profile page, you must edit XWiki/XWikiUserSheet
(5) When using Oracle as backend, search functions cannot work. Exception like this occurred when user perform search:
Exception while searching documents with sql from VisitStats as obj where obj.cookie=? and obj.endDate > ? order by obj.endDate desc
Wrapped Exception: could not execute query
Any way to get this search function working?
This one is also fixed in 1.5, see http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XWIKI-2472
(6) Every now and then, log file will throws exceptions like this: java.sql.SQLException: ORA-00932: inconsistent datatypes: expected - got CLOB
Any idea what is the cause of it and how to resolve it?
I thought this was also fixed, seems I was wrong. See http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/browse/XASTATS-12 The support for Oracle is not so good, since none of the core developers is using it. We rely on user feedback and patches to maintain XWiki on Oracle.
All in all, xwiki presents a great opportunity that meets many organization knowledge management needs (esp. in my organization). But until all these problems are being resolved, I am amazed by the large number of user web sites that used xwiki in a production environment.
In my limited experience with xwiki thus far (closed to 3 months of working on it), the support requirements of xwiki would be such a big problems that it will make anyone think twice to adopt it as enterprise knowledge management system. I certainly is reconsidering other wiki consequently of all these problems.
My company uses mediawiki as well. While don't have the nice authentications and authorizations features like xwiki (which we like to have), it is extremely stable and easy to use.
-- Sergiu Dumitriu http://purl.org/net/sergiu/
participants (2)
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Goh Chong Leng, Jenson -
Sergiu Dumitriu