Troubleshooting

for Cycle 12 DDT proposals

If you are submitting a Cycle 12 DDT proposal, you may also encounter some of the issues listed below, for which we provide help. If you have any further questions or discover a new bug, please contact us via the ALMA Helpdesk. Please note that the following advice assumes that the user is running an up-to-date version of the Cycle 12 OT.

What do I do if the OT fails to start?

Actually, simply trying again will often fix the problem. If this doesn't work, it may be necessary to delete the existing installation and re-install from scratch.

Problems can also arise with the user's preferences which are stored in the $HOME/.almaot directory. The 'splash screen' will appear as usual, but once the message "Initialising GUI" has appeared the splash screen disappears and the OT GUI does not appear. The solution is probably to delete the 'preferences.xml' and 'StoredPerspective_1.ser' in the $HOME/.almaot directory.

It seems that trying to run the OT on a 32-bit Java installation will fail without any warning whatsoever. The OT now requires a 64-bit installation of Java.

Finally, it seems that problems with graphics drivers can also lead to the OT failing to start - the "Java..." splash screen will appear and then vanish. This problem has so far only been reported by Windows 7 users, but we cannot rule out that other operating systems are also affected. The solution appears to be to update the graphic drivers and may also require that Java be reinstalled.

The OT freezes when I try and input text

It seems that operation of the OT can be affected if other Java applications are run at the same time. To date we only know of problems with the time-management software "RescueTime", but there may be others.

The OT GUI is taking forever to start

What may have happened here is that the GUI that requests the user's password has got lost under other windows.

I quit the OT and I don't know how to start it again

As in Cycle 12 there is no installer, you will not find an OT icon on your desktop as in previous years. To restart the OT, just navigate to the alma-ot-c12 directory and double click on ALMA-OT.command for MacOS, alma-ot.sh for Linux, or ALMA-OT (may read ALMA-OT.cmd) for Windows.

There are problems with the PDF of the proposal

The OT uses software on the user's machine to produce the PDF of the proposal and sometimes this can lead to areas of the PDF being black instead of showing text. However, after the proposal deadline all PDFs are regenerated at JAO and so the PDFs seen by the review committees will not have this problem.