Authors cannot preview or generate

Hello,

We've got the above problem on our QA box:

- TS6.5 SP2 (and patch 66182)
- W2K SP4
- plenty of CPU, space, ram

Admin users can preview and generate fine (even when logged in as Authors), so I suspect the issue is down to permissions.

However, I'm having trouble seeing where the permissions on our IFS drive differ from our dev box, which works fine - they look to be identical.

Does anyone have any advice on where else I should be checking permissions are OK - e.g. temporary folders used during generating, etc?

Or does this sound like a different issue to you?

Any help would be much appreciated!

Cheers,

Matt

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Comments

Frederik

I suggest you tell us what the error message or behaviour is when preview/generate fails.

-F

stefanmaier

Hi,
check if the zz_-files are generated properly.
To generate a file you need write access to the preview-dir given in templating.cfg,
I believe that you need write access to the templatedata directory too, some manifest files are written there...

If the files are generated correctly, but you are blocked while requesting them, check your preview webserver configuration.

aca96mrh

Frederik - sorry, I should have been more specific about the error. What happens is that a blank browser window appears when Authors try to preview or generate, with the URL "http://..../iw-bin/iw_cgi_wrapper.cgi/iwtmplpreview.cgi".

stefanmaier - many thanks, that's very helpful. I've checked for the zz_ files and they only appear for the users who can preview OK... when normal authors try to preview, no zz_ files appear. This is despite the entire workarea (including templatedata and the preview directory) having completely open permissions (full control for everyone). So I don't think the problem is simply with permissions to write the preview files, but something earlier in the process.

Frederik

weird.

- did you try the basic solution: reboot?
- did it ever work properly on this machine?
- is there anything in templating.cfg that refers to roles?
- did you try generating from command line, being logged in as such an author? It may spit more interesting errors.
- did you check all logfiles under IWLOGS/* and IWLOGS/iwui/* ?

EDIT:
- what happens in these tpl ? I would guess that there is something happening in the tpl that doesn't work due to permissions... are you writing to some other location outside the content store (custom logs), or reading from somewhere?
- can you reproduce this behaviour when using extremely simple DCT and TPL?

--Fred

Adam Stoller

- what happens in these tpl ? I would guess that there is something happening in the tpl that doesn't work due to permissions... are you writing to some other location outside the content store (custom logs), or reading from somewhere?

This is a good point, I recently ran into a case (of my own doing) where I was using Log::Log4perl in my PTs and the directory where the logging was being done and/or the file that was being used were not open for everyone to write to, and it caused seemingly strange behavior when other users tried to preview DCRs.

aca96mrh

- did you try the basic solution: reboot?
- did it ever work properly on this machine?
- is there anything in templating.cfg that refers to roles?
- did you try generating from command line, being logged in as such an author? It may spit more interesting errors.
- did you check all logfiles under IWLOGS/* and IWLOGS/iwui/* ?
- what happens in these tpl ? I would guess that there is something happening in the tpl that doesn't work due to permissions... are you writing to some other location outside the content store (custom logs), or reading from somewhere?
- can you reproduce this behaviour when using extremely simple DCT and TPL?

--Fred

Thanks for the tips, Fred. I'm currently looking at exactly what gets read/written by our TPL or its includes and checking permissions there.

In answer to the points above:

- yes we rebooted but it didn't help this time. Smiley Wink

- no role restrictions in templating.cfg
- although I can use iwpt_compile OK myself, I can't log on as one of the users who have the problem as they aren't allowed to log on to the box and using 'runas' didn't seem to work (either for those users or my colleague who can log on locally fine)... perhaps a quirk of Windows as I understand this check is easier to do on Unix?

- I checked all the logs in the locations mentioned but couldn't see anything suspicious

I'll let you know how I get on after checking exactly what gets read/written by our TPL.

Thanks again guys for your help. I feel a bit closer to a solution already. Smiley Happy