NullPointerException when creating a root community

[karma.some...@gmail.com]

Hi,

We're running DSpace 6.2 and we're having an issue creating root communities (on the top of the hierarchy). Immediately after hitting the "Create" button, a NullPointerException is shown. The strange thing is that there are no logs anywhere in the 'logs' directory nor in the tomcat logs when the exception pops-up. I could get Cocoon and Java logs though from the web browser, which I'm attaching.

We can just reproduce it when it comes to create a root community, no issues when creating subcommunities nor collections.

Could someone give some pointers on why is this happening and possibly how to solve it?

Thanks in advance

James

[karma.some...@gmail.com]

As per what I could see, the exception happens in the aspect/administrative/FlowContainerUtils.java file, in the line marked with bold:

        public static FlowResult processCreateCommunity(Context context, UUID communityID, Request request)
            throws AuthorizeException, IOException, SQLException
        {
                FlowResult result = new FlowResult();
                Community newCommunity;
                if (communityID != null)
        {
            newCommunity = communityService.createSubcommunity(context, communityService.find(context, communityID));
        }
                else
        {
            newCommunity = communityService.create(null, context);
        }

Any hints?

Thanks

[Evgeni Dimitrov]

May be something with the migration of the database. I have freshly installed DSpace 6.2 and I had no problems creating communities and collections.

[karma.some...@gmail.com]

Any way of how could I debug this? Something like activating a SQL debug or something... From the logs I cannot see any further information and the .create() call seems quite generic to see why it fails this way.

Thanks.

[karma.some...@gmail.com]

Guys, any help with this? At least a tip to start debugging?

[Tim Donohue]

Hi James,

The NullPointerException seems to happen here: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/blob/dspace-6_x/dspace-api/src/main/java/org/dspace/content/CommunityServiceImpl.java#L120

This is a very odd error, as it seems to throw an error on the Site object, which is an object that doesn't actually exist in the database, but in the API itself (i.e. it's a conceptual object that should *always* exist).  This is very odd behavior, so it makes me wonder if you upgraded from a previous release (4.x or 5.x), and accidentally have some old API/JARs sitting around (which could cause conflicts with the DSpace 6 APIs).  This shouldn't be occurring on a fresh installation.

I'd recommend trying a fresh install either in a different directory (on same server) or perhaps on a different server. I've never seen this behavior, and it almost seems like you have conflicting JAR files in place.

You also could closely check your logs for other errors...It's possible there are other related errors here that could give clues.  See also: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/Troubleshoot+an+error

Good luck, and feel free to report back to this list with whatever you find.

Tim

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Tim Donohue
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DuraSpace.org | DSpace.org | DSpaceDirect.org

[herna...@gmail.com]

Hi,

I want to post my solution in case it works for anyone. I had this same problem and I was able to solve it, this happened after upgrading from version 3.x to 6.3. 

I manually added a value for site table.

I generated a new UUID: d94cb9fa-ce34-4225-8e0d-96c08e599b3f

insert into dspaceobject (uuid) values ('d94cb9fa-ce34-4225-8e0d-96c08e599b3f');

insert into handle (handle_id, handle, resource_type_id, resource_id) values(3329, '123456789/0',5, 'd94cb9fa-ce34-4225-8e0d-96c08e599b3f');

insert into site (uuid) values ('d94cb9fa-ce34-4225-8e0d-96c08e599b3f');

Regards

Hernán