Cube build fails with no discernible error message

[gabbagabba]

I am using IBM Cognos Business Intelligence Transformer 10.2.2 on an AIX 7.1.4.1 TL04 server. We are trying to migrate our Cognos Transformer models and cubes to another server and we also migrated the source reports and data sources to another Cognos environment. We do not manage the server, as a result the user ID under which we're running Cognos Transformer is different from the one to which my Transformer installation's files belong to. The user ID, however, does belongs to the same group as my Transformer installation.

To run Cognos Transformer I don't use a direct command. Instead, I run it through a script that automatically does extra stuff like checking for ongoing builds, sending a mail notification or backing up the previous cube before publishing the current one. One of the things that script does is setting the following environment variables:

Code Select Expand

ModelSaveDirectory=/usr/cognos/transformer/prod/models
LogFileDirectory=/usr/cognos/c1022trans/logs
CubeSaveDirectory=/usr/cognos/transformer/prod/cube_sources
LC_ALL=en_US
COG_ROOT=/usr/cognos/c1022trans/bin

However, when I try to run a cube build, all I get is the first few lines of an attempt to build the cube with no further output. No error message, no nothing.

Code Select Expand

Business Intelligence Transformer version 10.2.6100.22
Transformer(Transformer)    Fri 13 Jan 2017 15:09:49
LogFileDirectory=/usr/cognos/c1022trans/logs/
ModelSaveDirectory=/usr/cognos/transformer/prod/models/
DataSourceDirectory=/usr/cognos/c1022trans/data/
CubeSaveDirectory=/usr/cognos/transformer/prod/cube_sources/
DataWorkDirectory=/usr/cognos/c1022trans/temp
ModelWorkDirectory=/usr/cognos/c1022trans/temp/
Codepage: ISO_8859-1:1987
MaxTransactionNum=500000

Fri 13 Jan 2017 15:09:49        3       00000000        Command Line: /usr/cognos/c1022trans/bin/cogtr -c -mcubemodel.mdl [->OK]
Fri 13 Jan 2017 15:09:49        3       00000000        Processing MDL file /usr/cognos/transformer/prod/models/cubemodel.mdl
Fri 13 Jan 2017 15:09:49        3       00000000        Creating model file /usr/cognos/c1022trans/temp/ppd00108.qyj

Can anyone help me figure out what's happening?

[bdbits]

Have you tried building the cube interactively as opposed to from a script?

Another thing would be to be certain that the Transformer "user" has proper permissions to the folders being used.

[gabbagabba]

Have you tried building the cube interactively as opposed to from a script?

Another thing would be to be certain that the Transformer "user" has proper permissions to the folders being used.

I tried doing that, and lo and behold -- it did work  ;D

The problem was that Transformer was crashing with a segfault. Because the "Segmentation fault." error message goes to stderr instead of stdout, that message was being discarded by my wrapper script, hence why there didn't seem to be any error message.

It was up to the cube development staff to figure out the rest of the error, but finding this out removed a blocker.