15.2. Fault-diagnosis instructions

15.2.1. How-to

15.2.1. How-to

With the adoption of the Eclipse framework, Debrief enjoys the benefits of the Eclipse configuration and logging engine. Debrief uses this for information, warning, and error reporting.

Details of an individual Debrief NG installation can be obtained by selecting About Debrief NG from the Help menu. From the dialog that opens, select Installation Details. This will open a text dialog providing the following information:

  • Date stamp

  • System properties (about the Java and OS environments)

  • Plug-in registry (plug-ins and fragments - ids, versions, and names)

  • Update manager log

  • Current error log contents

In addition to these configuration details is a button to View Error Log. The Error Log is a continuous stream of comments recorded by Debrief - typically comments that are not of value to a typical user under normal usage. The log itself is called .log and is located in the workspace/metadata folder within your Workspace (initially, this is within your Debrief NG installation directory).

Th error log may be examined for hints to the problem occurring. The error trace may be viewed in a text editor, and may be forwarded back to the Project Manager (see Table 1, “List of acknowledged Debrief users”) via post/e-mail/fax as applicable. The file does not contain any details of the data being edited, but the file may still be inspected before transmission

If these error messages do not provide any insight to the problem, you are left with the normal diagnosis steps as follows:

  • Try to run another Java application on the machine, to check that Java is not corrupted

  • If Java is ok then,

    • Check that Debrief can open and process the "sample" files included in the installation: boat1.rep and boat2.rep.

    • If Debrief can process these files, but not the current ones then

      • Try to re-install the Debrief application from 'save' disks to check that the sources are not corrupted

      • If at this point the error is still occurring then you will have to resort to reading as much of this Help guidance as practical, and then contacting the Project Manager (see Table 1, “List of acknowledged Debrief users”).