Item10114: EasyTimelinePlugin does not Work on Windows

My colleque told me, the EasyTimelinePlugin used to work a while ago on 1.0.9. Now i need to implement a solution using this Plugin. But as about 5 other plugins i reported, it does not seem to to work on 1.1.2. I'm using a Windows 2003 server, so the #! line and the confuguration was changed to c:\strawberry\perl\bin\perl.exe -wT as in all my other .pl files. The Sandbox example i wrote is fairly simple: %TIMELINE% %ENDTIMELINE% If i enable debug option for EasyTimelinePlugin i get: EasyTimelinePlugin Error (9): If debug is disabled i get: Foswiki detected an internal error - please check logs....Couldn't untaint c:path The logs show:

| 2010-12-03T09:38:40Z warning | Couldn't untaint C:/www/foswiki/foswiki/working/work_areas/EasyTimelinePlugin/tmp/EasyTimeline Plugin3540 at c:/www/foswiki/foswiki/lib/Foswiki/Plugins/EasyTimelinePlugin.pm line 248. at C:/strawberry/perl/lib/CGI/Carp.pm line 354 CGI::Carp::realdie('Couldn\'t untaint C:/www/foswiki/foswiki/working/work_areas/E...') called at C:/strawberry/perl/lib/CGI/Carp.pm line 435 CGI::Carp::die('Couldn\'t untaint C:/www/foswiki/foswiki/working/work_areas/E...') called at c:/www/foswiki/foswiki/lib/Foswiki/Plugins/EasyTimelinePlugin.pm line 248

Foswiki::Plugins::EasyTimelinePlugin::cleanTmp('C:/www/foswiki/foswiki/workin g/work_areas/EasyTimelinePlugin/...') called at c:/www/foswiki/foswiki/lib/Foswiki/Plugins/EasyTimelinePlugin.pm line 147 Foswiki::Plugins::EasyTimelinePlugin::handleTimeline('', 'Sandbox', 'TimelineTest') called at c:/www/foswiki/foswiki/lib/Foswiki/Plugins/EasyTimelinePlugin.pm line 78

Foswiki::Plugins::EasyTimelinePlugin::commonTagsHandler('%TIMELINE%\x{a}\x{a} %ENDTIMELINE%\x{a}\x{a}', 'TimelineTest', 'Sandbox', 0, 'Foswiki::Meta=HASH(0xbf2c44)') called at c:/www/foswiki/foswiki/lib/Foswiki/Plugin.pm line 285 Foswiki::Plugin::invoke('Foswiki::Plugin=HASH(0x13e3d94)', 'commonTagsHandler', '%TIMELINE%\x{a}\x{a}%ENDTIMELINE%\x{a}\x{a}', 'TimelineTest', 'Sandbox', 0, 'Foswiki::Meta=HASH(0xbf2c44)') called at c:/www/foswiki/foswiki/lib/Foswiki/Plugins.pm line 331 Foswiki::Plugins::dispatch('Foswiki::Plugins=HASH(0xf6c1ac)', 'commonTagsHandler', '%TIMELINE%\x{a}\x{a}%ENDTIMELINE%\x{a}\x{a}', 'TimelineTest', 'Sandbox', 0, 'Foswiki::Meta=HASH(0xbf2c44)') called at c:/www/foswiki/foswiki/lib/Foswiki.pm line 3215 Foswiki::expandMacros('Foswiki=HASH(0xf36ddc)', '%TIMELINE%\x{a}\x{a}%ENDTIMELINE%\x{a}\x{a}', 'Foswiki::Meta=HASH(0xbf2c44)') called at c:/www/foswiki/foswiki/lib/Foswiki/Meta.pm line 3016 Foswiki::Meta::expandMacros('Foswiki::Meta=HASH(0xbf2c44)', '%TIMELINE%\x{a}\x{a}%ENDTIMELINE%\x{a}\x{a}') called at c:/www/foswiki/foswiki/lib/Foswiki/UI/View.pm line 400

Foswiki::UI::View::_prepare('%TIMELINE%\x{a}\x{a}%ENDTIMELINE%\x{a}\x{a}', 'Foswiki::Meta=HASH(0xbf2c44)', 0) called at c:/www/foswiki/foswiki/lib/Foswiki/UI/View.pm line 380 Foswiki::UI::View::view('Foswiki=HASH(0xf36ddc)') called at c:/www/foswiki/foswiki/lib/Foswiki/UI.pm line 316 Foswiki::UI::__ANON__() called at c:/www/foswiki/foswiki/lib/CPAN/lib/Error.pm line 379 eval {...} called at c:/www/foswiki/foswiki/lib/CPAN/lib/Error.pm line 371 Error::subs::try('CODE(0x3da234)', 'HASH(0xf36b0c)') called at c:/www/foswiki/foswiki/lib/Foswiki/UI.pm line 435 Foswiki::UI::_execute('Foswiki::Request=HASH(0xef6a8c)', 'CODE(0x8c3a7c)', 'view', 1) called at c:/www/foswiki/foswiki/lib/Foswiki/UI.pm line 277 Foswiki::UI::handleRequest('Foswiki::Request=HASH(0xef6a8c)') called at c:/www/foswiki/foswiki/lib/Foswiki/Engine/CGI.pm line 37 Foswiki::Engine::CGI::run('Foswiki::Engine::CGI=HASH(0x9a30ec)') called |

Can anyone confirm or is this a problem exclusivly on my system? -- EnrikGuenter - 03 Dec 2010

A quick look on the code suggests that it has never worked on Windows, so I don't think it is due to the version of Foswiki. I have changed the title of the task accordingly.

Unfortunately I don't have any access to Windows. As a quick fix, you can add the following line to line 241:

sub cleanTmp {
+    return;
    my $dir    = shift;

But keep an eye on your tmp folder, to make sure it doesn't fill up.

In the meantime, hopefully someone with Windows access will look at this.

-- AndrewJones - 03 Dec 2010

Thank you very much, i will try on monday!!

-- EnrikGuenter - 04 Dec 2010

Nope No more white page with internal error but the same as if i switch on debug mode: EasyTimelinePlugin Error (9): and an empty, small gray box below. HTML code pre /pre . Nothing else.

I'd be quite sad if i had to kill my timeline project - i already have beautiful code ideas but no way to test them Can i be of any assistance? Sadly, i can't give you access to my Windows Server here since i'm not the server admin. And believe me, it's not even worth asking the network admin here to give you some kind of access

Kind regards,

-- EnrikGuenter - 08 Dec 2010

It sounds like a little bit of progress.

You said earlier that your example was just %TIMELINE% %ENDTIMELINE%. If there is nothing inbetween the TIMELINE tags, then I would expect it to just render empty <pre> tags.

Can you try the example from the plugin page? The first one should be fine. If it doesn't work in the plugin topic, try copying it to a test topic in the Sandbox web and see if it works there.

The problem for me is at home I don't have access to Windows, and at work while we do have Windows boxes, I shouldn't be spending my work time getting Foswiki to work well on them... However, I will see if I can find a way to help you out.

-- AndrewJones - 08 Dec 2010

Just had another thought... the EasyTimelinePlugin relies on a tool called ploticus. Do you have this installed? If you run pl from the command prompt, do you see any output?

-- AndrewJones - 08 Dec 2010

OK, I have managed to get access to Windows at work and have fixed the plugin. Could you please download the latest release and give it a try?

A couple of things to check:

• Ensure that the path to ploticus is correct in configure
• Ensure that the path to EasyTimeline.pl is correct

If you are still having problems, enable Debug and check your debug.txt file for error messages.

Let us know if you have any problems.

-- AndrewJones - 09 Dec 2010

Works! Thank you so much! A straight A+ with a to Andrew!

-- EnrikGuenter - 10 Dec 2010

You welcome

-- AndrewJones - 10 Dec 2010

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