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August 25, 2011
Question

Migrating PE from 5.3 M040 to 5.4 M100

  • August 25, 2011
  • 9 replies
  • 1354 views
Hello all,



I am working on setting up PE 5.4 M100 on a dev server to begin
composition testing.



I have several custom SGML DTDs and FOSIs that I have recompiled for
5.4, and a few custom XML DTDs with FOSI stylesheets.



Since I had 5.3 running on this server (using Tomcat 5.5), I installed
the 1.6 JRE and Tomcat 6 (the distro from the media), then PE.



I got everything to come up fine, but I cannot get my custom doctypes to
show up under the composition information.



I checked the DCOM config for the service account we run PE under,
everything's fine there. Set APTPATH to point to the 5.4 install tree,
and set my APTCUSTOM to point at the custom directory containing my
custom doctypes (under the doctype directory, with a catalog file at the
root).



I restart PE, it comes up fine, but when I open the index page and check
the composition information, under the doctypes it lists the local
doctypes for the PE install tree but no custom doctypes from the
APTCUSTOM path.



I looked through the help files for a bit, but nothing stands out. Is
there a gotcha or caveat for PE 5.4 loading custom apps that I've
missed? Is the default PE to still use FOSI, or is APP the new default
in 5.4? Also, I noticed in my e3config.xml file, there was no defined
"pool-tie" subprocess, which is typically used to field composition
requests from Arbortext clients (but there was a defined subprocess for
windchill, but it's enabled="no"). I added pool-tie and set the logging
to verbose-debug, and it seems to initialize the subprocess just fine,
but I cannot publish with the custom doctypes (returns the "doctype not
installed on the PE server" error).



What am I missing here?



Thanks,



-Jason

    9 replies

    1-Visitor
    August 25, 2011
    Are your DTDs/FOSIs in the install directory or at least the same machine.
    PE didn't like using APTCUSTOM and APTCATPATH when they were on a
    different network location. Once I got the files to the machine,
    everything stabilized.

    ..dan

    > Hello all,
    >
    >
    >
    > I am working on setting up PE 5.4 M100 on a dev server to begin
    > composition testing.
    >
    >
    >
    > I have several custom SGML DTDs and FOSIs that I have recompiled for
    > 5.4, and a few custom XML DTDs with FOSI stylesheets.
    >
    >
    >
    > Since I had 5.3 running on this server (using Tomcat 5.5), I installed
    > the 1.6 JRE and Tomcat 6 (the distro from the media), then PE.
    >
    >
    >
    > I got everything to come up fine, but I cannot get my custom doctypes to
    > show up under the composition information.
    >
    >
    >
    > I checked the DCOM config for the service account we run PE under,
    > everything's fine there. Set APTPATH to point to the 5.4 install tree,
    > and set my APTCUSTOM to point at the custom directory containing my
    > custom doctypes (under the doctype directory, with a catalog file at the
    > root).
    >
    >
    >
    > I restart PE, it comes up fine, but when I open the index page and check
    > the composition information, under the doctypes it lists the local
    > doctypes for the PE install tree but no custom doctypes from the
    > APTCUSTOM path.
    >
    >
    >
    > I looked through the help files for a bit, but nothing stands out. Is
    > there a gotcha or caveat for PE 5.4 loading custom apps that I've
    > missed? Is the default PE to still use FOSI, or is APP the new default
    > in 5.4? Also, I noticed in my e3config.xml file, there was no defined
    > "pool-tie" subprocess, which is typically used to field composition
    > requests from Arbortext clients (but there was a defined subprocess for
    > windchill, but it's enabled="no"). I added pool-tie and set the logging
    > to verbose-debug, and it seems to initialize the subprocess just fine,
    > but I cannot publish with the custom doctypes (returns the "doctype not
    > installed on the PE server" error).
    >
    >
    >
    > What am I missing here?
    >
    >
    >
    > Thanks,
    >
    >
    >
    > -Jason
    >
    >
    18-Opal
    August 25, 2011
    Hi Jason-



    Did you reboot the machine after setting the environment variables? In
    some cases, when setting system environment variables, they don't take
    effect until you reboot.



    --Clay



    Clay Helberg

    Senior Consultant

    TerraXML


    August 25, 2011
    The custom files are local to the machine. I tried both a UNC pathname
    and the local drive letter for the APTCUSTOM value, but I couldn't get
    PE to find them when I restarted the service.

    We typically have the authoring clients pointing to a share with the
    doctypes, and PE looks to the same location, so I don't have to worry
    about syncing changes to multiple locations. This worked ok on 5.3,
    which made me wonder if there's an e3config.xml or possibly a DCF
    setting new to 5.4 that I was missing, but I haven't found anything so
    far...
    August 25, 2011
    I didn't try that. I will give that a shot later tonight...


    1-Visitor
    August 25, 2011
    You say you restarted PE ... do you mean you stop/started Tomcat?

    On my recent PE 6.0 m010 installs, I had to reboot the server in order for
    PE to read the PTC_D_LICENSE_FILE environment variable. Wonder if you might
    be running into the same situation.

    If you haven't, try a reboot.

    Regarding the pool processes: Did you run the sample compositions off of the
    e3 admin page to prove PE will compose to HTML it's sample XML?

    16-Pearl
    August 26, 2011
    Hi Jason,



    I think you are almost there with the config, I'm sure it's just something
    simple missing like the environment variables not getting picked up.



    I can answer one question from your email below, yes, in 6.0 APP is the
    "default" print engine. However if you are running FOSI stylesheets then PE
    will automatically use the FOSI output path because, of course, APP can't do
    FOSI (and vice versa for APP "3F" templates). The default print engine
    setting only really applies to when you make new Styler stylesheets in 6.0 -
    if you don't fiddle with the settings then it is going to use APP for PDF by
    default.



    -Gareth


    1-Visitor
    August 26, 2011

    Hi Jason,


    I did an upgrade from 5.3 M060 to 5.4 M070 last year. I remember that I needed to set the APTAPPLICATION environment variable to the same directory as the APTCUSTOM variable for everything to work properly. I had to set this variable on both the upgraded PE and the upgraded client PCs with Editor that were referencing the central custom folder. This took some time to figure that out because APTAPPLICATION wasn't required in 5.3 for our customizations to work.


    If you don't have that variable set, give it a try, reboot and see if that helps.

    August 26, 2011
    Ok, so did you have to point it to the custom directory, or the custom\application directory? You suggested to set APTAPPLICATION to the same value as APTCUSTOM, but the documentation is indicating that it needs to point to an application directory.



    I honestly haven’t used the application directory for custom apps yet. The custom\doctypes directory had been working fine up to this point, and I didn’t see a need to mess with what wasn’t broken… 😉


    1-Visitor
    August 26, 2011

    I pointed it to the custom directory because that is where the baseapplication.xml file is stored. I'm not sure if you need a separate application.xml for each of your custom doctypes or not.