Autopsy 3 Troubleshooting

1. Autopsy launch issues.

• "JVM creation failed" pop up dialog shown when launching Autopsy.

Cause: JVM is not able to allocate the requested 768m for heap size due to more memory requiring to load other native resources.

Solution: reduce amount of memory allocated to jvm:

as Administrator, edit the file: C:\Program Files (x86)\Autopsy\etc\autopsy.conf

and change the line:

default_options="--branding autopsy -J-Xms24m -J-Xmx768m -J-XX:MaxPermSize=256M -J Xverify:none"

to something like:

default_options="--branding autopsy -J-Xms24m -J-Xmx512m -J-XX:MaxPermSize=128M -J-Xverify:none"

save the file, and restart Autopsy.

If that didn't work, change the line to:

default_options="--branding autopsy"

• Autopsy crashes after start when running within Virtual Machine, such as VMWare Fusion:

Cause: Incompatibility between some virtual machine video drivers and java.

Solution: shut down the virtual machine, disable Video Acceleration (both 2D and 3D if available) in the virtual machine settings, restart the virtual machine, restart Autopsy.

3. Keyword Search fails to index files and search keywords

Cause 1: Some antivirus / security products deny Solr from properly starting (examples: Dr. Web and Trend Micro OfficeScan).

Solution 1: add an exception rule for Solr or use another AV product

Cause 2: old Solr instance is already running and it was not properly shutdown, causing a conflcit

Solution 2: kill old Solr instances (java start.jar) and restart Autopst

Cause 3: Solr instance communicates with Autopsy using a local TCP port on which Solr listens for connections. The port is statically configured in C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\.autopsy\dev\config\KeywordSearch.properties Another application on the system is already using the default TCP port 23232

Solution 3: change the default TCP port from 23232 to an available port in C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\.autopsy\dev\config\KeywordSearch.properties, property: IndexingServerPort and restart Autopsy

4. UI/windows are not properly initialized

Cause: Windows state was not properly saved during last Autopsy shutdown or platform has been upgraded and configuration is not backwards compatible.

Solution: Delete C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\.autopsy\config\Windows2Local and C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\.autopsy\config\Preferences

5. All modules are disabled when application starts

Cause: Modules have been disabled due to a critical error

Solution: Rename (or delete) C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\.autopsy\dev\config\Modules and restart Autopsy

6. Media player does not show videos (MacOSX and Linux)

Cause: gstreamer dependency is not currently part of the build, it needs to be installed on the system

Solution: install gstreamer 0.10 in the standard user library locations, restart Autopsy

7. No physical drives detected in "Add Data Source" Wizard

Cause: Some devices on some OSs require root/admin privileges to be discovered and opened/read

Solution: run Autopsy as Administrator