Processing PDFs, stalling at "Normalize for preservation"; "End Time: Invalid Date"

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Courtney Whitmore

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Dec 17, 2015, 9:55:45 AM12/17/15
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Good morning,

We have been having some problems in processing PDFs and have been unable to identify the exact factor that is causing the issues. Sometimes when we attempt to run PDFs through the system, it stalls out on the Normalize job of "Normalize for preservation". 

In the tasks, sometimes we generate errors, but for many of the files, it looks like this: 

Task UUID: 44f33b68-a372-4acc-ad76-60e1941cfa5b
File UUID: 49e677a7-aa2a-4bf4-a163-cdcc490c7b30
File name: GenCenDigest_2014-September_edition.pdf
Client: qamatica_2
  (exit code: None)
Start time: Thursday, December 17, 2015 9:31:24 AM
End time: Invalid Date
Created time: Thursday, December 17, 2015 9:30:57 AM
Duration: second(s)           





On a separate issue, perhaps, we recently got an error that looks like this:



The last error obviously has to do with the format, but I have had problems similar to that in the past and attempted to convert the files myself prior to ingest, however I encountered problems, so I wondered if anyone else has run into problems similar to either of these and has some experience to share. 



Kind Regards,


Courtney Whitmore

Michigan State University Archives & Historical Collections 


Sarah Romkey

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Dec 21, 2015, 4:53:24 PM12/21/15
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Hi Courtney,

For the first error you're reporting, which task did you receive the error on? And was there any output below the lines that you pasted in? Some tasks don't report any tool output, and I'm thinking this might be one of them.

Cheers,

Sarah

Sarah Romkey, MAS,MLIS
Archivematica Program Manager
Artefactual Systems
604-527-2056
@archivematica / @accesstomemory



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Sarah Romkey

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Dec 21, 2015, 4:55:29 PM12/21/15
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Sorry, as soon as I hit send I knew I missed something- this is the output from the Normalize for Preservation task. There should be more output below what you pasted, if you could check and report it, it might help us troubleshoot.

Cheers,

Sarah

Sarah Romkey, MAS,MLIS
Archivematica Program Manager
Artefactual Systems
604-527-2056
@archivematica / @accesstomemory



Courtney Whitmore

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Dec 22, 2015, 1:21:51 PM12/22/15
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Hello Sarah,

Thank you for the help. I am hoping this is what you are asking for. It's the part under the "Show Arguments". 

normalize_v1.0 preservation "49e677a7-aa2a-4bf4-a163-cdcc490c7b30" "/var/archivematica/sharedDirectory/currentlyProcessing/A.2015.0201_001-ecc4334b-599f-4596-952c-8db57b92fa92/objects/GenCenDigest_2014-September_edition.pdf" "/var/archivematica/sharedDirectory/currentlyProcessing/A.2015.0201_001-ecc4334b-599f-4596-952c-8db57b92fa92/" "ecc4334b-599f-4596-952c-8db57b92fa92" "%taskUUID%" "original"


As for the red error bit (the image in red above), there was nothing after that, but quite a lot before it. I am attaching a pdf of the full readout. 

Best,

Courtney 

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A.2015.0201_NormalizationTasksErrors.pdf

Sarah Romkey

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Dec 23, 2015, 4:40:44 PM12/23/15
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Hi Courtney,

Hmm, not exactly- I was hoping for some tool output below "Show Arguments". If you're allowed to share these PDF's I wonder if you could send me a sample on or off list and I'll see if I can do some testing locally?

Cheers,

Sarah

Sarah Romkey, MAS,MLIS
Archivematica Program Manager
Artefactual Systems
604-527-2056
@archivematica / @accesstomemory



Courtney Whitmore

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Dec 29, 2015, 9:05:09 AM12/29/15
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Hello Sarah,

Sorry for the delay. I have a few files here for you to try. 

Thank you for all the assistance with this. 

Best,

Courtney 
GenCenDigest_2014-September_edition.pdf
GenCenDigest_2015-AprilDigest.pdf
GenCenDigest_2011-February_edition.pdf
GenCenDigest_2011-September_edition.pdf

Kari R Smith

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Dec 29, 2015, 10:03:37 AM12/29/15
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Hi Courtney,

I just processed your three files through my instance of Archivematica and they were normalized for Preservation (PDFA using ghostscript) correctly.

 

Kari Smith, MIT

Courtney Whitmore

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Jan 21, 2016, 11:30:19 AM1/21/16
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Hello again,

As a follow up to these posts, I just processed a different set of files and have run into a similar, but somewhat different problem. It is still stalling at the "Normalize for Preservation" step, but the files have an End Time now, and I have some specific errors codes, which I wondered if anyone had run into. 

Here is one part:

Command stdout:
GPL Ghostscript 9.10 (2013-08-30)
Copyright (C) 2013 Artifex Software, Inc.  All rights reserved.
This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
Unrecoverable error: rangecheck in .putdeviceprops

-----
Command exit code: 255


And the STDERR:

Failed: Transcoding to pdfa with Ghostscript
Standard out: GPL Ghostscript 9.10 (2013-08-30)
Copyright (C) 2013 Artifex Software, Inc.  All rights reserved.
This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
Unrecoverable error: rangecheck in .putdeviceprops

Standard error: 
Command Transcoding to pdfa with Ghostscript failed!


One file seems to have normalized and had this message, which I have seen before:

GPL Ghostscript 9.10: Annotation set to non-printing,
 not permitted in PDF/A, annotation will not be present in output file


In any case, at this point, I think we are going to simply try a reinstall, since we think some configuration got screwed up at some point, but I wanted to post here and see if anyone had experienced this and had some input to share. 

Thank you for any feedback or advice.

Best,

Courtney Whitmore

Sarah Romkey

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Jan 21, 2016, 11:36:18 AM1/21/16
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Hi Courtney,

I had some trouble in the past few weeks with my messages to the user group going to spam, so I see now that you maybe didn't get my response. Like Kari, I was able to process your PDF samples through normalization without error. If you're reinstalling something, I think you could just reinstall/upgrade Ghostscript- the problem seems to be specific to that tool on your server.

Cheers,

Sarah

Sarah Romkey, MAS,MLIS
Archivematica Program Manager
Artefactual Systems
604-527-2056
@archivematica / @accesstomemory



Courtney Whitmore

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Jan 21, 2016, 11:50:35 AM1/21/16
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Hello Sarah,

Thank you for the advice! We will try that. 

Best,

Courtney 

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Grant Hurley

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Feb 20, 2018, 1:53:53 PM2/20/18
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Came across this post with a similar error listed above coming from Ghostscript:

Unrecoverable error: rangecheck in .putdeviceprops

-----
Command exit code: 255

I fixed it as suggested by Sarah by updating Ghostscript from source - instructions are available here - https://askubuntu.com/questions/199489/whats-the-easiest-way-to-upgrade-ghostscript
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