Technical note: Troubleshooting DRG-11207 errors / INSO filters.

Question

All,
The following is Metalink's Note 210319.1about troubleshooting DRG-11207 errors.
If the content is of no help, I suggest contacting Oracle support.
-Omar
Subject: Troubleshooting DRG-11207 errors
INTRODUCTION
=============
Most of the errors encountered during creation of Oracle Text indexes are likely
to be caused when dealing with formatted documents. These errors are logged in the
view CTX_USER_INDEX_ERRORS and can be queried from the schema where the create index
statement was executed, or table CTX_INDEX_ERRORS queried from the CTXSYS user.
One of the errors commonly reported in these views is the DRG-11207 error.
Unfortunately, this error is often not useful in diagnosing indexing issues.
The INSO_FILTER issues are difficult to diagnose because Oracle uses a third-party
application for filtering. As a result, it is often difficult to identify the real
source of the problem.
This document will troubleshoot the INSO_FILTER errors associated with
the
DRG-11207 "exited with status X"
message. In regards to the INSO_FILTER, the error code implies that it is unable to
index a formatted document. It is important to mention that these errors can be operating
system specific and therefore this note is intended to provide some hints as a starting
point for analysis. Its possible that other cases may be reported and if this is the
case be sure to log the error with Oracle Support. Examples of the most common document
types are provided in this article (Adobe PDF, Micrsoft Word and Microsoft Excel).
For Oracle 10i, meaningful error messages have been added for drg-11207.
This has been documented in [BUG:2473885]
COMMON ERRORS
==============
DRG-11207: user filter command exited with status 1
Status 1 means "Could not filter the document". It is a generic error and indicates that
INSO_FILTER failed on a given document. This can happen due to many documented reasons: an
invalid environmental setting; document is corrupted, encrypted, password protected;
document version not supported(incompatibility) or due to a bug in INSO_FILTER.
DRG-11207: user filter command exited with status 2
Status 2 means "The INSO_FILTER has timed-out". The default value of the timeout value
for the INSO_FILTER is 120 (seconds). The default value for the timeout_type is
heuristic, which implies that if the timeout value is reached and the INSO_FILTER
has not started to write output, the indexing operation terminates for the document
row and Oracle moves to the next document row to be indexed. Beginning in 9.2.0.1
it is possible to change the timeout_type variable to fixed, which allows a
user to terminate filtering processing after the TIMEOUT seconds regardless of
whether filtering is progressing normally or hanging. The default timeout value
is generally enough for filtering most of the documents. If the timeout value is
not large enough then it may timeout even before filtering completes. PDF and
Microsoft Excel files are usually more prone to this timeout as the INSO_FILTER
generally takes more time to process these types of files. If this is the
case then you can create a preference with a larger timeout value in versions
8.1.7.1b and above. It should be noted, however, that the timeout attribute cannot be
changed dynamically. In order for the new timeout value to take effect, it
would be necessary to re-create the index with the new timeout attribute
setting.
For example, in 9.2.x to alter the timeout to 600 seconds(10 minutes) and use
the fixed timeout_type:
begin
ctx_ddl.create_preference('my_inso', 'INSO_FILTER');
ctx_ddl.set_attribute('my_inso', 'timeout', '600');
ctx_ddl.set_attribute('my_inso', 'timeout_type', 'FIXED');
end;
Documented reasons for timing out are:
1. the document is too large to be indexed in the alloted time set via TIMEOUT
attribute.
2. INSO_FILTER is hanging during the filtering.
DRG-11207: user filter command exited with status 127
Status 127 points to that likely an environmental issue with the shared library
environmental variable.
DRG-11207: user filter command exited with status 137
Status 137 meand that the ctxhx executable was killed as the inso filter is not
set-up properly. Confirm that the correct environmental variables are
setup(LD_LIBRARY_PATH AND PATH) and the format of the document is
supported by INSO_FILTER.
ENVIRONMENTAL SETTINGS
======================
Please note that any DRG-11207 error may be caused by the setting of the
environmental variables. Be sure that the PATH and shared library path
which is LD_LIBRARY_PATH (SHLIB_PATH for HP-UX and LIBPATH for AIX) are
correct, since it is this setting which actually invokes the INSO_FILTER.
Note : it is also possible to define the environment variable
LD_LIBRARY_PATH in the listener.ora entry for extproc. This would be
included in the ENVS section of the origin database LISTENER.ORA:
ENVS = 'LD_LIBRARY_PATH=<full_pathname_of_oracle_home>/ctx/lib:$ORACLE_HOME/lib'
LD_LIBRARY_PATH should include
<full_pathname_of_oracle_home>/ctx/lib:<full_pathname_of_oracle_home>/lib
For example:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=<full_pathname_of_oracle_home>/ctx/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
PATH should include
<full_pathname_of_oracle_home>/ctx/bin:<full_pathname_of_oracle_home>/bin
[NOTE:133691.1] and [NOTE:135333.1] provides possible steps to get around this error.
SUPPORTED DOCUMENT ATTRIBUTE CHECKLIST
======================================
1. Determine if the filtered document is supported
A list of supported formats is provided in the InterMedia Text documentation
pages. Please check whether the format falls in the list of supported formats.
It is important to note that each Oracle version may support different
versions of documents.
For PDF Acrobat (full version), click on File->Document_Info->General and
you should see the PDF version.
For Microsoft Word and Excel, click on File->Save As and review the
"Save as type" to determine the version.
2. Determine if the document is corrupted
To verify if a document is corrupted, open the document and view it line
by line checking for corrupted output. Please note, just holding down the
"Page Down" button to view all the pages, it's possible that potential
corruption on a particular page will go unnoticed.
3. Determine if the document is a secure or copy protected document
Password protected documents and documents with password protected contents
are not supported by the INSO_FILTER.
For PDF Acrobat (full version), click under file->document_info->security.
If the open password or security password is set to true then it's password
protected.
For Microsoft Word, click under Tools->Options->Save. If the
"Password to open" or "Password to modify" appears as asterisks (*****),
then the document is secured.
For Microsoft Excel, click under File->Save As->Tools->General options.
If the "Password to open" or "Password to modify" appears as
asterisks (*****), then the document is secured.
4. Determine if the document is a encrypted
INSO_FILTER does not currently support encrypted documents.
For PDF Acrobat (full version), click under file->document_info->security.
If security method is none, the document is not encrypted. In other cases,
it is encrypted.
For Microsoft Word, it is not possible to encrypt this type of document
directly.
For Microsoft Excel, if the document is workbook protected then this
implies that the document is encrypted. To determine this click under
tools->protection and if the Unprotect Workbook or Unprotect
Sheet is shown, this implies that the workbook/worksheet is encrypted.
5. Determine if the document has custom embedded fonts
Stellent filters will succeed on the majority of PDF documents containing
custom fonts. Until now, there have only been a few documented cases of
custom embedded fonts causing filtering problems with PDF documents. If
there is a filtering problem with custom fonts, it will only result in
garbage tokens being produced as a result of the custom font, whereas the
remainder of the PDF document using the standard/built-in font will be
filtered properly.
To determine if custom embedded fonts are used for PDF Acrobat (full version),
click under file->document_info->fonts and review the encoding type.
The best way to identify whether a particular custom font will filter successfully
is to highlight the character, copy and paste into Notepad. If the output
contains garbage text then it is not likely to be filtered properly.
For Microsoft Word and Excel, regardless of what font is being used, the
INSO_FILTER should be able to extract the characters.
References
Oracle Text Reference Releases 9.1 and 9.2
[BUG:2473885] BETTER ERROR MESSAGES FOR WHEN CREATING INTERMEDIA INDEX
USING INSO FILTER
[NOTE:133691.1] Create context index fails with DRG-11207 or fatal:libsc_fa.so
[NOTE:135333.1] CTX_DDL.SYNC_INDEX With DBMS_JOB Fails (DRG-11207) Using
INSO Filter in V817
[BUG:1795642] INTERMEDIA TEXT INDEX OF A CERTAIN EXCEL97 FILE IS NOT
CREATED IN WEBDB SITE

Answer 1

Gary,
This is two questions:
1. The INSO filter on 8.1.7 when converting MS Word or WordPrefect Docs to HTML would give you <I> and <B> used in
the word processor. The 9.2.0.1 version is not converting <I> or <B> in the HTML. Is there any documentation
from the Company on using the ctxhx and template files? If <I> and <B> tags are missing in 9.2.0.1 then it is a bug in the INSO code.
2. I have received an error in the CTX_USER_INDEX_ERRORS from one of the docs store in a BLOB here is the error.
DRG-11207: user filter command exited with status 1.
Is there a way to debug the ctxhx or INSO load libraries? I know what a 137 error is (NO LD_LIBRARY_PATH for ctx/lib)
but what a 1. Where is the FL_CMD_EXIT_ERR info? Status 1 is a generic error and you can't debug it. Could you please post your email address? I would like to contact you for a test case.
Thanks.