"arFindingAidJob": Converting the EAD FO to PDF has failed

[specialb...@gmail.com]

Hello,

We are having issues generating a finding aid to PDF. The job ends up with an error message:

"arFindingAidJob": Converting the EAD FO to PDF has failed.



This is the first time we have encountered this. Is this a problem that originated from the finding aid's descriptions or something that has to be fixed from the back end?

Thanks,
Jacky

[Dan Gillean]

Hi Jacky, 

Have you upgraded recently from an older version? If so, and especially if you have switched from running Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04, the first thing I'd recommend would be checking what version of Apache FOP you have installed. AtoM 2.4 requires FOP version 2.1 o work as expected. See: 

• https://www.accesstomemory.org/docs/latest/admin-manual/installation/linux/ubuntu-xenial/#other-packages
  

The other thing you can check is that the error is not in the EAD itself. There are certain reserved characters in XML that, if found in your description, could cause the EAD export to fail, which might generate this message in the Jobs page. For this process to work, the EAD XML must first be able to export - which means it must first be valid XML. This means your EAD may fail to export properly if:

• You’ve used unescaped special characters, such as ampersands & or < and >.
  
• You’ve used inline HTML elements to style the display of some fields in AtoM - for example, using <em> or <i> elements for emphasis or italics.
  
• You’ve cut and pasted non UTF-8 encoded characters into AtoM - a common example would be the curvy quotation marks used in many word processing applications like Microsoft Word, instead of the standard UTF-8 straight quotes "
  

Try exporting the EAD from the description view page - if it exports properly, then this is probably not the issue. If the EAD fails to export and throws an error, then you might want to enter edit mode in the description, and look for some of these possible causes. 

Regards, 

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

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[specialb...@gmail.com]

Hi Dan,

I am able to export the EAD with no errors. I'll ask our IT colleagues to see which version of Apache FOP is installed.

We upgraded to AtoM 2.4 over the summer and have had no issues generating PDF finding aid until now. The major AtoM changes to my knowledge that occurred since our last successful generated PDF are:

-End of October, our AtoM server had a change re: PDF derivatives (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/ica-atom-users/AwNUifxWsS4/BvfV6x9uBQAJ)

-Increased disk space for AtoM

-Completed a 4000 line CSV import via UI last week

-AtoM index was repopulated after last week's import

I'm not sure if any of these affect this function.

Thanks,

Jacky

[Dan Gillean]

Hi Jacky, 

As far as I'm aware, none of those operations should break the finding aid generation. Because your institution has a remote technical maintenance contract with Artefactual, I will have one of our team follow-up with you about this privately, so we can help you troubleshoot this issue. 

Regards, 

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ica-atom-users/095155ac-1c68-4ba8-b09a-c44d64190ba1%40googlegroups.com.