Context initialization failed nodeRef is a mandatory parameter

As we transition to the new Hyland Community, some post links may be temporarily disrupted as we finalize redirects. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to resolve this as quickly as possible. Details.

sslavescu

Hi all,

Starting alfresco services fails and because of that share and the other applications don't work. Could you please help in finding out where the problem is, I suspect is some corrupt data in the database but I cannot figure out where.
Attached is the log file for alfresco application.

Thanks a lot

alfresco_109.log.zip

afaust

Hello,

Looking at the log and the Alfresco code base, it seems that the startup error is the result of a bug in Alfresco 5.0.c that appears to be fixed in 5.0.d. But that fix only addresses the error that is now preventing startup. The actual cause of the issue lies in the fact that a very specific, pre-defined “node” / object in Alfresco has been deleted and is now missing for the facet configuration feature to initialize properly.

Unfortunately, without being able to start Alfresco it will be quite difficult / cumbersome to re-create the missing node.

Technically, you can recreate the node with manual database manipulation. This could be done by restoring an old database backup in a separate schema, identifying the relevant entries in alf_node, alf_node_aspects, alf_child_assoc and alf_node_properties, and re-creating those entries in your production schema.
Normally, it is not easy to identify the relevant entries, but in this case – fortunately – there is a unique, non-generated identifier that can be used.
Look for an alf_node entry with the UUID of “solr_facets_root_space”. The ID of the alf_node entry is the foreign key for all entries in the related tables (node_id in alf_node_aspects and alf_node_properties, child_node_id in alf_child_assoc).

After re-creating the entries in the production scheme you should be able to start up Alfresco without this error. Of course, if someone did go and manually deleted nodes / objects in Alfresco, there is no knowing if other issues may come up after that.

Otherwise, the simplest options at this time would be to a) restore a database backup where that node still exists or b) upgrade to Alfresco 5.0.d where Alfresco should start up even with the node missing. Note that an upgrade to 5.0.d will only fix the startup issue but will not bring back the deleted node, so the facet configuration feature may not work afterwards.

Regards
Axel