SID-01705: How to Debug "Can't find topic" Warnings?

Status:	Answered	TWiki version:	5.1.4	Perl version:	5.10.1
Category:	CategoryError	Server OS:	RHEL 6.1	Last update:	12 years ago

I have a fresh Twiki 5.1.4 site. I added content from a MediaWiki site using the MediaWikiToTWikiAddOn. Things work pretty well but there's one problem I'm having.

In a web called MediaWiki I'm getting warnings like the following:

Warning: Can't find topic MediaWiki.Prettytable

Warning: Can't find topic HeaderLightBrown

Raw edit shows these as

 
%INCLUDE{"MediaWiki.Prettytable"}%
 %INCLUDE{"MediaWiki.HeaderLightBrown"}%

Files for these topics appear in the following locations:

/var/www/twiki/data/MediaWiki/Template/Prettytable.txt

/var/www/twiki/data/MediaWiki/Template/HeaderLightBrown.txt

I thought that template filenames end in .tmpl (like in /var/www/twiki/templates) but all the files in /var/www/twiki/data/MediaWiki/Template end in .txt.

I've looked in both the Twiki and the Apache logs and I don't see any mention of Prettytable or HeaderLightBrown. How can I debug what's going on here?

Thanks, Jon Forrest

-- Jon Forrest - 2013-05-16

Discussion and Answer

If you TWiki data is located at /var/www/twiki/data/ and you INCLUDE MediaWiki.Prettytable, it will look for /var/www/twiki/data/MediaWiki/Prettytable.txt

-- Peter Thoeny - 2013-05-17

Excellent!! That solved the problem. Thanks.

I didn't personally put these files in /var/www/twiki/data/MediaWiki/Template. The MediaWikiToTWikiAddOn did. In fact, it put 194 files there. From what you're saying, they should all go in /var/www/twiki/data/MediaWiki, right?

Also, what log file or other diagnostics tool should I have looked at to see that TWiki was looking for /var/www/twiki/data/MediaWiki/Prettytable.txt (other than strace)? I like to be a good citizen and answer questions like this myself but in this case, I couldn't find anything.

-- Jon Forrest - 2013-05-17

The twiki/data/logYYYYMM.txt files contain the access log.

It looks like the MediaWikiToTWikiAddOn needs to be fixed, or at least the docs updated to avoid confusion.

-- Peter Thoeny - 2013-05-20

I had already checked twiki/data/logYYYYMM.txt and it had no mention of Prettytable.txt.

It looks to me like this log file only shows successful actions. If a topic can't be found, it doesn't look to me like this fact is reflected in this log file.

What I was hoping to see was something like

/var/www/twiki/data/MediaWiki/Prettytable.txt - file not found

I checked all the TWiki and apache logs I could find and none of them contained anything about Prettytable.txt.

-- Jon Forrest - 2013-05-20

TWiki logs failed page views. Example entry from TWiki.org:

| 2013-05-01 - 00:17 | guest | view | TWiki.TagMeDeleteTag | Mozilla (not exist) | 183.xx.xx.xx |

-- Peter Thoeny - 2013-05-20

Later... Oh, I just realize that there is no log entry if a non-existing web is accessed. Needs to be tracked.

-- Peter Thoeny - 2013-05-20

I filed TWikibug:Item7260 to track this.

-- Peter Thoeny - 2013-05-20

This is now in SVN trunk and 5.1 branch.

-- Peter Thoeny - 2013-05-21

Thanks for the quick work on this.

-- Jon Forrest - 2013-05-21

This seems to be answered, so closing this question.

-- Peter Thoeny - 2013-06-03

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