AlfrescoRuntimeException: Registry root not present

Oh what a day,

after migrating customers alfresco version 1.4 up to 2.2.1 all seems okay(migration has already been made by Lothar, thanks to that alfresco-geek :)) during merging all customized features at this single point of time. After all, i´ve done a new test-approach assuring that migration works fine from 1.4 to 2.2.1.

But now, for my suprise, alfresco refused startup on telling me that somthing gonna be realy wrong:

...
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService.start(StandardService.java:448)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardServer.start(StandardServer.java:700)
 at org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start(Catalina.java:552)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
 at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.start(Bootstrap.java:295)
 at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:433)

Caused by: org.alfresco.error.AlfrescoRuntimeException: Registry root not present:

   Store: system://system
   Path:  /sys:system-registry

 at org.alfresco.repo.admin.registry.RegistryServiceImpl.getRegistryRootNodeRef(RegistryServiceImpl.java:137)
 at org.alfresco.repo.admin.registry.RegistryServiceImpl.getPath(RegistryServiceImpl.java:184)
 at org.alfresco.repo.admin.registry.RegistryServiceImpl.getChildElements(RegistryServiceImpl.java:326)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
...

Realy, i was confused about that error. I really thought at this moment that some data got be missed during schema patch from 1.4 up to 2.2.1.
As alfresco will drop exceptions that could sometimes be missunderstood by developers, we should asking ourself, what for changes have we made between two tries of migrations where the first of them works fine.

The approach was fairly the same, but one thing in alfresco will be changed during first starton migration: Licensing

After the first migration the licence file, being at all times stored on the same place: alfresco/extension/license/*.lic - will be suffixed automatically on appending *.installed upon the filename. This tells alfresco that no new registration of a license must be made.

But here comes the glue: If this license is already being suffixed (grml yet forgotten? *.lic into *.lic.installed) and an update will be made, the exception above will be your accompanion.

How to solve? Well that is the easy thing of that part on simply renaming this file in a *.lic file.

In other words: We make a rollback for Database-Junkies.

February 28, 2009 | Filed Under Alfresco