UITopia trouble starting ProM 6

ergonomist

Hi there,

I'd like to give ProM 6 a spin, but unfortunately it won't start as it should. Running prom6.bat, it gets the packages.xml downloaded OK regardless of proxy, but it then fails when trying to set up UITopia:


WARNING: No configuration found for UITopia!
(This is okay if you start the application for the first time)
Creating new configuration file at C:\Profiles\XXX\UITopia\uito...
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
        at org.processmining.contexts.uitopia.UI.main(UI.java:61)

The folder C:\Profiles\XXX\UITopia is created, but that's it - no contents ever appear inside it. :-(

Ideas?

Many thanks
E

JBuijs

Dear 'E',

What operating system are you running? Assuming you are running Windows, which version of Windows?

I think that the main problem is that ProM does not have the proper rights to read/edit/write the xml file it uses to store the UItopia settings. Could you try to manually create an empty file called 'uitopiaconfig.xml'? It might help.
Otherwise, if you are running Windows 7, you might try running ProM as an administrator. This should allow ProM/UITopia to create the file the first time. Reading and editing it in later runs should work correctly.

Hope these suggestions help you to fix the problem. Otherwise let me/us know so we can help you further.

ergonomist

Dear Joos,

Thanks for the prompt reply. For the record, I'm running Win XP Pro SP3 as a non-administrator in a corporate environment. I should have all the required privileges to create files in my profile folder (manual creation worked fine), but alas, doing so didn't improve things.

The launch still fails with the same error message, it even keeps complaining about not finding configuration for UITopia (makes sense considering that the uitopiaconfig.xml is - and remains - empty).

Thanks for any further ideas you may have.

Cheers
Ergonomist

JBuijs

Dear 'Ergonomist',

I asked around and it seems that the problem is not UITopia but more the packages that need to be downloaded.

During the first run ProM tries to install certain packages so that you can run the most commonly used analysis. This seems to fail. Could you check if you can open the following URLs from the PC that has the problem?
http://prom.win.tue.nl/ProM/packages/6.0/packages.xml
http://www.win.tue.nl/~hverbeek/downloads/ProM/BPEL-1.1-all.zip

You don't need to download these files but just test if can access them.

Let me know if this works.

ergonomist

Dear Joos,

The links work fine in both official browsers (IE and Firefox), using their proxy configuration. I should add that R couldn't connect to CRAN mirrors before I switched to "internet2.dll" (which defaults to IE proxy config, for all I know), so this may be a similar issue indeed.

Do you want to try a bugfix with my setup, as my case might help others with similar issues, or should we go for a manual fix? I adjust to your preference. :-)

Thanks
E

JBuijs

Dear 'E',

I don't think that this is an issue of ProM but more a configuration setting in your Java installation.

Does the following webpage help to configure Java to use your proxy settings?
http://www.java.com/en/download/help/proxy_setup.xml

Let me know!

ergonomist

Hi Joos,

It helped me to find the configuration dialogue, but unfortunately the result after copying over the Firefox settings 1:1 remains the same. Maybe one aspect of the download action is against our web filter policies, making the whole process fail? Downloads in Firefox get screened with their own "please wait" dialogue showing, while in IE the download is instantaneous, but unfortunately opaque to end-users. I just know that using R's "internet2.dll" made the whole thing suddenly work, and it somehow accesses IE proxy settings internally for that.

FWIW, the execution of DNS-lookup java snippets from within KNIME works perfectly, so it's doesn't seem to be a general Java problem. Maybe a version issue? Is there a ProM version that packs a JRE known to work?

Could manually copying over the files you've pointed me to make ProM work? If that process is only required once, I guess I could live with that, repeating with new versions as necessary.

Thanks
E

JBuijs

Dear 'E',

It sounds to me that indeed the proxy of your company is blocking the package downloads.

I don't think that ProM packs any JRE version. It runs on an installed JRE of version 1.6 and up.

Your suggestion of manually copying the files could work but would also imply a lot of work on your side. You would need to open the packages.xml file and create a mirror containing all the files mentioned in that packages.xml file. Then update the packages.xml file to point to the correct internal location. This also implies that you would need to update your mirror when updates are published.
It could work but would mean a lot of effort on your side which should not be necessary.
I would therefore advise you to not create a mirror.

Can you contact the IT department of your organization and ask if they can help you locate and possibly resolve the issue? It seems that the proxy settings are too tight.

I'm afraid that is all I can do/suggest for now.
Let me know of any progress with the issue, I would like to have you use ProM 6 and become a process miner yourself

ergonomist

Dear Joos,

Having installed ProM on my private laptop I'm now know what I'm up to - offline install seems like quite a challenge. Anyway, I'll hopefully get a mining server with local admin rights soon, on which I am at liberty to install things, unlike on my desktop. :-)

Anyway, with ProM being for the rest rather "offlineish" by nature (i.e. no query sources etc.), I can live with having it on my laptop, I just need to throw my data sources at a Dropbox folder or the like.

Now let's just see if I can make Nitro work, and if so, how far I get with the free licence model. I suppose it is informally supported here as well if I ask nicely?

Cheers
E

ergonomist

Dear Joos,

Having installed ProM on my private laptop I now
know what I'm up to - offline install seems like quite a challenge.
Anyway, I'll hopefully get a mining server with local admin rights soon,
on which I am at liberty to install things, unlike on my desktop. :-)

Anyway,
with ProM being for the rest rather "offlineish" by nature (i.e. no
query sources etc.), I can live with having it on my laptop, I just need
to throw my data sources at a Dropbox folder or the like.

Now
let's just see if I can make Nitro work, and if so, how far I get with
the free licence model. I suppose it is informally supported here as
well if I ask nicely?

Cheers
E

ergonomist

Editing typos after posting works strangely in this forum, I must say... sorry for the double-post, but I don't know how to undo it now.

E

JBuijs

Dear 'E',

Glad to hear that ProM 6 works on your laptop and that it will most likely work on your company computer soon.
Happy mining!!!

Anne from Fluxicon is a frequent visitor on this forum so she might be able to answer some of your Nitro related questions. I'm not sure though if they prefer this forum over direct e-mail.
When I'm able to answer your question I will try to reply but I hope you understand that Nitro questions are of less priority than ProM or XESame related questions so it might take longer.

(I will be able to look into the forum post edit problem next week hopefully)

ergonomist

Good to hear that. I personally don't like to ask support questions via e-mail unless strictly necessary, since the publication of resolved issues can avoid future questions. Then again a compact community might more easily start off in private - dunno. Anyway I'll ask away, see my next post already.

Cheers
Ergonomist

ergonomist

Forget my next post - the link between CSV records and events is obvious enough if you think twice. :-)

E

imatesiu

the problem is related to the search for newer versions of packages and
opening the file  .java/.userPrefs/org/processmining/framework/boot/prefs.xml
sometimes strangely empty

amarant

Hi,

When I try running ProM from Eclipse, I got the same message too:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
    at org.processmining.contexts.uitopia.UI.main(UI.java:61)

I'm trying it form home, using windows 7, and signed in as the root user.

My C:\Profiles\XXX\UITopia is created is too, and it created uitopiaconfig.xml (but not at the first time). It contains:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!-- UITopia configuration file. -->
<!-- (c) 2009 by Christian W. Guenther (christian@deckfour.org) -->
<!-- WARNING: Do not manually edit this file, unless you know what you are doing! -->
<configuration timestamp="1299524471609">
    <set name="master">
        <set name="org.processmining.contexts.uitopia.packagemanager.PMFrame">
            <attribute key="window_height" value="750"/>
            <attribute key="window_width" value="1024"/>
            <attribute key="window_x" value="10"/>
            <attribute key="window_y" value="10"/>
        </set>
        <set name="org.processmining.contexts.uitopia.packagemanager.PMMainView">
            <attribute key="activeView" value="WORKSPACE"/>
        </set>
    </set>
</configuration>

I already visited the http://www.java.com/en/download/help/proxy_setup.xml page, but it didn't helped.

Please help me, if you can!

thanks,
  amarant

Macuyiko

Sorry for re-opening this topic, but I'm having the exact same problem as "amarant" above. When I try to launch ProM6 from Eclipse, I get:

Sep 28, 2011 9:46:52 AM java.util.prefs.FileSystemPreferences$1 run

INFO: Created user preferences directory.

WARNING: No configuration found for UITopia!

(This is okay if you start the application for the first time)

Creating new configuration file at /home/macuyiko/.UITopia/uitopiaconfig.xml...

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException

at org.processmining.contexts.uitopia.UI.main(UI.java:61)

I've tried with both the openjdk and Oracle JRE's. The line in question in UI.java reads:

if (releasePackage.getStatus() == PMStatus.TOUNINSTALL) {

Any suggestions on how to solve this? Thanks in advance.

Macuyiko

Solved, I was still using the old repo mentioned here: http://prom.win.tue.nl:8000/Tracsites/wiki/setup/CheckingOutPromUsingSubclipse

Switching to https://svn.win.tue.nl/repos/prom/ solved the problem.