Error in NonGUIDriver

[jeffw87]

I have spent near a week trying to get this tool to work but with little success. I have attempted the following:

CENTOS 6.5
Java 1.6 or Java 1.7 (64 bit)
PHP 5.5 and 5.3
jmeter versions 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, 2.10, and 2.11

jmeter and moodle on the same server.
jmeter and moodle on different servers.
Using own mysqldumps of Moodle.

I keep getting this error when running ./compare.sh
"
ERROR - jmeter.JMeter: Error in NonGUIDriver com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.StreamException: : only whitespace content allowed before start tag and not F (position: START_DOCUMENT seen F... @1:1)
at com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.xml.XppReader.pullNextEvent(XppReader.java:124)
at com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.xml.AbstractPullReader.readRealEvent(AbstractPullReader.java:148)
at com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.xml.AbstractPullReader.readEvent(AbstractPullReader.java:141)
at com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.xml.AbstractPullReader.move(AbstractPullReader.java:118)
at com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.xml.AbstractPullReader.moveDown(AbstractPullReader.java:103)
at com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.xml.XppReader.(XppReader.java:63)
at com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.xml.AbstractXppDriver.createReader(AbstractXppDriver.java:54)
at com.thoughtworks.xstream.XStream.fromXML(XStream.java:913)
at org.apache.jmeter.save.SaveService.loadTree(SaveService.java:501)
at org.apache.jmeter.JMeter.runNonGui(JMeter.java:749)
at org.apache.jmeter.JMeter.startNonGui(JMeter.java:732)
at org.apache.jmeter.JMeter.start(JMeter.java:390)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606)
at org.apache.jmeter.NewDriver.main(NewDriver.java:259)
Caused by: org.xmlpull.v1.XmlPullParserException: only whitespace content allowed before start tag and not F (position: START_DOCUMENT seen F... @1:1)
at org.xmlpull.mxp1.MXParser.parseProlog(MXParser.java:1519)
at org.xmlpull.mxp1.MXParser.nextImpl(MXParser.java:1395)
at org.xmlpull.mxp1.MXParser.next(MXParser.java:1093)
at com.thoughtworks.xstream.io.xml.XppReader.pullNextEvent(XppReader.java:109)
... 16 more
"

I am assuming this is a user error on my part. Is there any way we could have a very detailed step by step guide on how to get this tool working including all dependencies needed for this tool to run?

[danpoltawski]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the report. The difficult thing is discovering the steps which are missing from the already existing instructions. Or improving the scripts so they output more descriptive errors indicating the problem in the case of problems. We'll get there eventually :)

There error you are experiencing looks familiar to one I have experienced where I didn't have the moodle configured correctly and the test plan file being downloaded was not correct. Could you see what is contained within moodle/testplan.jmx in your checkout? It should by an xml file, but I suspect its not in your case.

[dmonllao]

Hi,

Yes, I remember that it had something to do with the wwwroot value but if I remember correctly we added an extra error message to catch this case and provide a friendly and understandable error message.

PD: Note that at the moment JMeter 2.11 (haven't tried 2.10) is not working, we will integrate a solution for it tomorrow after testing the patch properly, until then you can use JMeter 2.9 (#42 (reference))

[dmonllao]

I'm also writing a troubleshooting doc explaining the steps the scripts are following so, in case that there are no proper error messages, users can backtrace the processes and find the error causes.

We will be adding more "user-friendly" error messages along with reports like yours, but it is hard to foresee all the possible errors that users will find because there are many different pieces of software and versions involved, so thanks for the report.

[jeffw87]

Got it working :)

Jmeter did not have access to dataroot directory. The testplan.jmx actually stated that error and I did not think to check there for any outputs. Since I was running the script as root I did not check those the permissions. I switched over to jmeter 2.9 and the compare tool ran correctly.

Thanks for your help.

[danpoltawski]

David: To help with things like this - perhaps we could run an explicit to test to check if the Moodle setup is ok?

[dmonllao]

@danpoltawski yes sure, we can check that the site was properly installed / updated checking also some webserver_config.properties vars like wwwroot

@jeffwSAS can you be more specific about the problems you have been finding so we can improve the checkings and the documentation?

[jeffw87]

You want details of additional difficulties I have had with setting up the tool? I would be happy to do so and include all the steps I did setting it up. Do you want me to just post all the in this issue tracker? Also, would it be a good idea to set up a Moodle forum section for this tool?

[dmonllao]

Yes, the blocker difficulties you found where the tool didn't provide a message about where is the problem or how to solve it. Please do it here and I will attach a patch.

Also feel free to open a post in the performance or general development forum in using moodle course (in moodle.org) if you have more doubts, from there we can continue opening issues here if problems are found or error messages can be added/improved

[dmonllao]

Grrrrr, forget about the first 2 links, I've rebased -i.

Waiting for @jeffwSAS's feedback to add more checkings if necessary

[dmonllao]

Ok, I'm merging this, the patch was sent a month ago and there is no reply, today Rajesh was asking me a few questions that are directly answered in the troubleshooting guide (I thought it was already integrated)

[dmonllao]

Integrated in 25, 26 and master