I downloaded the latest Bitnami Jaspersoft (7.1.1) appliance, and when creating a PostgreSQL (JDBC) Data Source to a PostgreSQL via the Jaspersoft web front-end, the "Test Connection" button always fails with an error message "Connection failed". I downloaded the appliance as an OVM, I'm running it as a VirtualBox VM.
To ensure it's not due to networking issues, I installed psql in the appliance (it's a Debian box) to ensure it can actually connect to my PostgreSQL database (it's a separate server), and it connects well via command-line psql, so I assume the problem is a JDBC issue. I also tried opening port-forwarding 5432 via ssh, so that I can connect to my database via localhost.
My question is, how can debug connection problems in Jaspersoft, or identify what is causing the failure? Jaspersoft 7.1.1 appliance comes with MySQL and PostgreSQL JDBC drivers already installed, and I was able to create and successfully test a new Data Source to the local standard MySQL database, so that driver definitely works. I couldn't find any log files that would output any error messages when testing the connection.
The appliance comes with the following JDBC driver: /opt/bitnami/apache-tomcat/lib/postgresql-9.1-903.jdbc4.jar. It also includes the following files:
/opt/bitnami/apps/jasperserver/buildomatic/conf_source/db/postgresql/jdbc/postgresql-9.4-1210.jdbc41.jar
/opt/bitnami/apps/jasperserver/buildomatic/conf_source/db/postgresql/jdbc/postgresql-9.4-1210.jdbc42.jar
/opt/bitnami/apps/jasperserver/buildomatic/conf_source/db/app-srv-jdbc-drivers/postgresql-9.4-1210.jdbc41.jar
/opt/bitnami/apps/jasperserver/buildomatic/conf_source/ieCe/lib/postgresql-9.4-1210.jdbc41.jar
I'm unfamiliar with Tomcat, and although I understand java code, I'm not a full-stack java developer. How can I debug this problem?
After hacking on it for a while, I tried replacing the file /opt/bitnami/apache-tomcat/lib/postgresql-9.1-903.jdbc4.jar with the latest jdbc driver from jdbc.postgresql.org, and restarted the server. This did the trick! I wonder why the latest Jaspersoft Server appliance comes pre-installed with such an old jdbc driver. Also, installing it via the web-based interface as per the documentation didn't work either.
Answering my own question here just in case anyone else gets stuck with the same problem!