Third-party software compatibilty with censhare Client

The censhare Client runs in a local environment and can interfere with third-party software that is installed and running on the computer. This articles lists know software that has been found to cause censhare Client to crash under certain circumstances.

Target group

• Users working with censhare Java Client in macOS platforms (see section “Workaround”)

• System administrators (see section “Other solutions”)

Purpose

The information given in this article helps you to investigate and avoid possible crashes or freezes of the censhare Java Client.

Prerequisites

If your customers work partly or exclusively with the censhare Java Client on a Mac OS platform, this article is helpful for setting up censhare. Also, it helps you troubleshooting reported problems. You need information about the operating system, installed software and versions on the computers of your customers.

Introduction

The censhare Server is written in Java. Users access censhare either through censhare Web or with a locally installed censhare Client. The latter requires the installation on the user’s computer. The censhare Client requires a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) or Java Developer Kit (JDK).

Problems with the stability of the censhare Client can be caused by the wrong Java Installation or by third party software. Check the table Known issues with third-party software for known software that can cause the censhare Client to crash or freeze. For problems caused by the Java platform itself, see the Known issues with Java 8 on macOS section below.

Known issues with Java on macOS

Due to an unresolved bug in some JDK distributions of Java 8 and Java 11, there are reports of system crashes of computers running on macOS 10.9 and higher. For more information, see the bug reports JDK-8057830 and JDK-8133783. It is still safe to install the censhare Client on macOS with the respective Java version, as stated in the respective censhare System requirements.

Known issues with third-party software

Causes

Basically, the crashes or freezes of the censhare Client are caused by the Java 8 installation, which is used not only by censhare but also by many third-party software.

Workaround

If one of the applications listed in the table above is running on a customer’s computer, closing the application (“Quit”) should solve the problem. Remind your customers to quit these applications before starting their censhare Client.

VFS

We recommend that you use VFS version 1.1.4 from macOS 10.10 onwards.

Other solutions

The following system configuration prevents censhare Client from crashing or freezing:

Working with Java 6 instead of Java 8

Computers running on macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) and lower can run on Java 6. We suggest to work with Java 6, if this is possible and your policies do not require to update to Java 8.

Note:

The censhare Client application for Java 6 is delivered without the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). Make sure that it has been installed separately, when working with this solution.

Working with Java 8

macOS 10.12 (Sierra) or higher requires Java 8. Depending on your policies, you may be forced to use Java 8 for lower versions of macOS, as well. In this case, we recommend to disable the map component in the dialog definition of the censhare Client (Java). In most cases, this component is not needed for your customers.

To do so, open the following configuration file:

~/censhare-Server/app/modules/client/javaclient/javaclient-dialogs-asset.xml

In this file, disable the following code lines:

<xe:expandgroup caption="${map}" id="map" expanded="false" save-state="true">
   <xe:map readonly="true" 
        map-control="small" zoom-level="10" 
        map-type="road" 
        margin-right="5px" 
        margin-bottom="5px" 
        weight-x="1" height="175"
        value="=:for $x in asset/asset_feature[@feature='censhare:geo-coord'] 
            return (xs:double($x/@value_double), xs:double($x/@value_double2), 
            xs:string($x/../@name))" />
</xe:expandgroup>

Save the file to the custom directory:

~/censhare-Custom/censhare-Server/app/modules/client/javaclient/

This will disable the Map in the asset details pane, which causes the censhare Java Client to crash or freeze.