Hi Marco!

Your tip put me on the right track... I have a handle on how things work now and, so, I'll share my understanding in hope that it helps another nooby dev, especially if under Windows...

CONTEXT: I am pretty sure that my confusion came from working through the Startup page of the Getting Started section of the wiki, http://docs.basex.org/wiki/Startup. There are a number of different modes for running BaseX and each page section gives a tip bullet list of how to invoke these modes. Working through the page, both by double-clicking Windows desktop icons and issuing batch commands in command prompt and Powershell windows, I was inadvertently stopping and starting various combinations of server, http server, standalone, etc. And since there were no directly labeled processes or services that said anything about BaseX, I was in the dark about what was starting, stopping, and running when inspecting Windows' Task Manager.

Given Marco's tip and rereading the bullet points of the wiki's Startup page, I now understand "who's on first" in terms of what's running and serving which ports. My confusion on Windows was that when you issue the basexserver.bat command at a command prompt, you only start the server:8984 while the "BaseX Sever (Start)" icon on Windows runs the basexhttp.bat script with the '-S' option thus starting BOTH the basic and the http servers (although the command-line messages only mention the HTTP server starting on 8984).

I had so many things starting and stopping hither and yon that I was my own worst enemy in terms of entry learning.

I now have my "sea legs" and am plowing into the Python API so I can start to integrate BaseX with my research toolkit.

Thanks, Marco, for the clarifying tip. :-)

Happy-Healthy Vibes from Colorado, -: Jim :-

-----Original Message----- From: BaseX-Talk basex-talk-bounces@mailman.uni-konstanz.de On Behalf Of Marco Lettere Sent: Friday, March 29, 2019 1:56 AM To: basex-talk@mailman.uni-konstanz.de Subject: Re: [basex-talk] Quick Windows issue: Invalid reply on port 1984, works fine on port 8984

Hi Jim,

I think port 1984 is not meant to be connected to over HTTP. It's a pure socket connection that ships BaseX internal client-server protocol. When you connect to that port you probably have to use the Python client API in order to get your BaseX COMMANDS (not HTTP requests) serialized over the wire.

Hope this helps [cit.].

Regards, M.

On 28/03/19 23:28, Jim Salmons wrote:

Hello BaseX folk,

I have just installed version 9.1.2 and am starting to learn BaseX in support of my post-cancer #PayItForward Bonus Round #CitizenScientist research in #DigitalHumanities and #MachineLearning. My goal is to "cut out the middleman" of writing intermediate JSON and XML fragment files in order to update the #MAGAZINEgts ground-truth storage file that I am developing for a digital collection of Softalk Apple magazine at the Internet Archive. With BaseX and its Python interface, I want to write new and updated document structure and content depiction metadata directly to a local copy of this ground-truth master file which will then be easily popped out of the database as an XML file for uploading to the Softalk Apple collection at the Internet Archive.

I hit a bump, reported to the Github Issue queue, where my Windows 10 installation can not open the BaseX GUI exe launcher. The work-around, as noted in my issue report, is to use the Getting Started advice to execute the jar directly. By creating a desktop icon that launches the execuable jar in the installation folder, the GUI launches as expected.

With that minor issue behind me, I am wondering why my attempts to connect to the server via localhost:1984 port does not work while everything is fine and dandy when hitting port 8984. Port 1984 returns an invalid HTTP response. (Note: Other ports that are not assigned to anything else return a connection refused, so this invalid response is not the same as the server not being there.)

If I keep a Powershell window open with the server running, every once in a while (after several minutes or more) the server throws this error:

java.lang.NullPointerException at org.basex.core.Context.perm(Context.java:252) at org.basex.core.Command.run(Command.java:250) at org.basex.core.Command.run(Command.java:143) at org.basex.core.cmd.Close.close(Close.java:54) at org.basex.server.ClientListener.close(ClientListener.java:232) at org.basex.BaseXServer$1.run(BaseXServer.java:157) at java.base/java.util.TimerThread.mainLoop(Timer.java:556) at java.base/java.util.TimerThread.run(Timer.java:506)

which may be related to port 1984 not responding, a firewall issue perhaps? Honestly, I don't see anything that looks like a BaseX process or service running in Task Manager (other than a generic 'Java(TM) Platform SE binary' process, and there is nothing that looks related in the Windows Firewall entries. I'm still investigating this here, but if anyone knows what is akimbo, I would greatly appreciate your advice.

Thank you... and looking forward to being a new BaseX community member. :-)

Happy-Healthy Vibes, -: Jim Salmons :-

 Jim Salmons
 Twitter: @Jim_Salmons

 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jim_Salmons (my 

#CitizenScientist profile) www.medium.com/@Jim_Salmons/ (my mostly #DigitalHumanities writing)

Hey Jim,

Thanks for sharing your startup experiences with BaseX.

As reported back in GitHub, the issues with the Windows installers should be solved now. They have been triggered by the new variety of open source distributions for Open JDK (which are the result of Oracle’s stricter licensing policies). In the latest version, we got rid of our launch4j exe wrapper, and we are now directly linking the BaseX .bat startup scripts.

The stack trace you observed was probably caused by the intent to connect to 1984 with HTTP requests. I have revised our code; the corresponding client will only be closed now if authentication was successful.

BTW, it is the case that when you do the basexhttp.bat script on the command-line without the '-S' option, the response messages streamed to the command line include a message that the server on 1984 started along with the http server on 8984. When you invoke this script with the '-S' option, only a short message informs you that the server on 8984 has started. Perhaps it would be possible to return the message that the server on port 1984 started, too?

You’re right; resolved as well in the very latest snapshot.

Cheers

Christian

Oops... In my prior message I meant that the basexserver.bat script only starts the service on port 1984 not 8984.

Sorry for the unseen error. BTW, it is the case that when you do the basexhttp.bat script on the command-line without the '-S' option, the response messages streamed to the command line include a message that the server on 1984 started along with the http server on 8984. When you invoke this script with the '-S' option, only a short message informs you that the server on 8984 has started. Perhaps it would be possible to return the message that the server on port 1984 started, too?

    -: Jim :-

-----Original Message----- From: BaseX-Talk basex-talk-bounces@mailman.uni-konstanz.de On Behalf Of Jim Salmons Sent: Friday, March 29, 2019 1:16 PM To: 'Marco Lettere' m.lettere@gmail.com; basex-talk@mailman.uni-konstanz.de Subject: Re: [basex-talk] Quick Windows issue: Invalid reply on port 1984, works fine on port 8984

Hi Marco!

Your tip put me on the right track... I have a handle on how things work now and, so, I'll share my understanding in hope that it helps another nooby dev, especially if under Windows...

CONTEXT: I am pretty sure that my confusion came from working through the Startup page of the Getting Started section of the wiki, http://docs.basex.org/wiki/Startup. There are a number of different modes for running BaseX and each page section gives a tip bullet list of how to invoke these modes. Working through the page, both by double-clicking Windows desktop icons and issuing batch commands in command prompt and Powershell windows, I was inadvertently stopping and starting various combinations of server, http server, standalone, etc. And since there were no directly labeled processes or services that said anything about BaseX, I was in the dark about what was starting, stopping, and running when inspecting Windows' Task Manager.

Given Marco's tip and rereading the bullet points of the wiki's Startup page, I now understand "who's on first" in terms of what's running and serving which ports. My confusion on Windows was that when you issue the basexserver.bat command at a command prompt, you only start the server:8984 while the "BaseX Sever (Start)" icon on Windows runs the basexhttp.bat script with the '-S' option thus starting BOTH the basic and the http servers (although the command-line messages only mention the HTTP server starting on 8984).

I had so many things starting and stopping hither and yon that I was my own worst enemy in terms of entry learning.

I now have my "sea legs" and am plowing into the Python API so I can start to integrate BaseX with my research toolkit.

Thanks, Marco, for the clarifying tip. :-)

    Happy-Healthy Vibes from Colorado,
    -: Jim :-

-----Original Message----- From: BaseX-Talk basex-talk-bounces@mailman.uni-konstanz.de On Behalf Of Marco Lettere Sent: Friday, March 29, 2019 1:56 AM To: basex-talk@mailman.uni-konstanz.de Subject: Re: [basex-talk] Quick Windows issue: Invalid reply on port 1984, works fine on port 8984

Hi Jim,

I think port 1984 is not meant to be connected to over HTTP. It's a pure socket connection that ships BaseX internal client-server protocol. When you connect to that port you probably have to use the Python client API in order to get your BaseX COMMANDS (not HTTP requests) serialized over the wire.

Hope this helps [cit.].

Regards, M.

On 28/03/19 23:28, Jim Salmons wrote:

...

Hello BaseX folk,

I have just installed version 9.1.2 and am starting to learn BaseX in support of my post-cancer #PayItForward Bonus Round #CitizenScientist research in #DigitalHumanities and #MachineLearning. My goal is to "cut out the middleman" of writing intermediate JSON and XML fragment files in order to update the #MAGAZINEgts ground-truth storage file that I am developing for a digital collection of Softalk Apple magazine at the Internet Archive. With BaseX and its Python interface, I want to write new and updated document structure and content depiction metadata directly to a local copy of this ground-truth master file which will then be easily popped out of the database as an XML file for uploading to the Softalk Apple collection at the Internet Archive.

I hit a bump, reported to the Github Issue queue, where my Windows 10 installation can not open the BaseX GUI exe launcher. The work-around, as noted in my issue report, is to use the Getting Started advice to execute the jar directly. By creating a desktop icon that launches the execuable jar in the installation folder, the GUI launches as expected.

With that minor issue behind me, I am wondering why my attempts to connect to the server via localhost:1984 port does not work while everything is fine and dandy when hitting port 8984. Port 1984 returns an invalid HTTP response. (Note: Other ports that are not assigned to anything else return a connection refused, so this invalid response is not the same as the server not being there.)

If I keep a Powershell window open with the server running, every once in a while (after several minutes or more) the server throws this error:

java.lang.NullPointerException at org.basex.core.Context.perm(Context.java:252) at org.basex.core.Command.run(Command.java:250) at org.basex.core.Command.run(Command.java:143) at org.basex.core.cmd.Close.close(Close.java:54) at org.basex.server.ClientListener.close(ClientListener.java:232) at org.basex.BaseXServer$1.run(BaseXServer.java:157) at java.base/java.util.TimerThread.mainLoop(Timer.java:556) at java.base/java.util.TimerThread.run(Timer.java:506)

which may be related to port 1984 not responding, a firewall issue perhaps? Honestly, I don't see anything that looks like a BaseX process or service running in Task Manager (other than a generic 'Java(TM) Platform SE binary' process, and there is nothing that looks related in the Windows Firewall entries. I'm still investigating this here, but if anyone knows what is akimbo, I would greatly appreciate your advice.

Thank you... and looking forward to being a new BaseX community member. :-)

Happy-Healthy Vibes, -: Jim Salmons :-

 Jim Salmons
 Twitter: @Jim_Salmons

 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jim_Salmons (my

#CitizenScientist profile) www.medium.com/@Jim_Salmons/ (my mostly #DigitalHumanities writing)