Forum OpenACS Development: Win32-OpenACS Version 1.8

Dear all,
I've just compiled version 1.8 (19th of April 2008) of Win32-OpenACS: an actual native Win32 port (no Cygwin, no VMware) of OpenACS.

This version of Win32-OpenACS consists of the following components:
1. aolserver-4.5.0 - including
1.1 nscache 1.4
1.2 nssha1 1.1.1.1
1.3 nspostgres 4.1
1.4 nsoracle 2.7
2. tcl-8.5.1
3. tk-8.5.1
4. tDom-0.8.2
5. xotcl-1.6.0
6. thread-2.6.5
7. tcllib-1.10
8. postgresql-8.3.0-2
9. openacs-5-4.1
10. xowiki-0.8.3 - from cvs head at the 18th of March 2008
11. dotlrn-2.3.1

The port can be obtained at the following URL:
http://www.friendlybits.com/en/inf_tec_en/win32openacs_en/

NOTES:
1. The Aolserver executable (nsd.exe) has been improved with a patch suggested by Titi Alailima. Thanks to this patch now the executable can run as a well behaved Windos Service (i.e. it ends properly).

2. This distribution supports Oracle 10g and 11g. Anyhow only OpenACS 5.4.1 core works properly with Oracle, the other extensions (e.g. xowiki) do not.

Hope it helps,
Maurizio

Dear Emannuelle, thanks for your remark.
I've included Potsgres 8.2.7-1 instead of 8.3.0-2.

Maybe it's a good time to start making sure that OpenACS/.LRN work also with the new versions of Postgres.

I've to admit that another point that I found somehow frustrating is that there are some packages that work with Postgres and don't with Oracle.

Once again many thanks,
Maurizio

Dear Emanuelle, thanks for your message.
Honestly for the windows installer at the moment I only have a plan in my mind.... no time yet to work on that.
When I progress a bit on this topic, I'll keep you posted.

Cheers and thanks,
Maurizio

Dear Gustav,
I'll send you the log file I get with Oracle.
Perhaps you can understand what's happening.

Cheers and thanks,
Maurizio

Dear Gustaf,
thanks for your help. My answers/comments here below.

a) ORACLE_HOME not set

[MM] True. In the first run this variable wasn't set. But then I fixed this problem and I restarted the server.

b) incorrect path:

[MM] This a real problem. It seams that Timezone package requires some changes. Is this an Oracle or a Windows vrs. Linux problem?

(c) tsearch 2

[MM] Correct, my mistake. No need to install this.

d) categories:

[MM] This is another real problem. Categories seem to be working with Postgresql while they don't with Oracle.

The end result of points b) and d) is that XoWiki shows some error messages (though not directly generated by XoWiki itself).

The problem I see is that not all the packages/extensions work in the same way when running on Oracle or on Postgresql.

Cheers and once again many thanks,
Maurizio

Dear Gustaf,
about point (b) the function seems to attempt the proper file (i.e. the file name is correct).
What I noticed is that there's a difference between the Postgresql and Oracle caes about how the file names are built.... may be this is the cause of the problem.....

please have a look at the following code:

d_proc -public db_load_sql_data {{
-dbn ""
-callback apm_ns_write_callback
} file } {

Loads a CSV formatted file into a table using PostgreSQL's COPY command or
Oracle's SQL*Loader utility. The file name format consists of a sequence
number used to control the order in which tables are loaded, and the table
name with "-" replacing "_". This is a bit of a kludge but greatly speeds
the loading of large amounts of data, such as is done when various "ref-*"
packages are installed.

@param dbn The database name to use. If empty_string, uses the default database.
@file Filename in the format dd-table-name.ctl where 'dd' is a sequence number
used to control the order in which data is loaded. This file is an
RDBMS-specific data loader control file.

} {

switch [db_driverkey $dbn] {

oracle {
global env

set user_pass [db_get_sql_user -dbn $dbn]
set tmpnam [ns_tmpnam]

set fd [open $file r]
set file_contents [read $fd]
close $fd

set file_contents [subst $file_contents]

set fd1 [open "${tmpnam}.ctl" w]
puts $fd1 $file_contents
close $fd1

cd [file dirname $file]

set fd [open "|[file join $env(ORACLE_HOME) bin sqlldr] userid=$user_pass control=$tmpnam" "r"]

while { [gets $fd line] >= 0 } {
# Don't bother writing out lines which are purely whitespace.
if { ![string is space $line] } {
apm_callback_and_log $callback "[ad_quotehtml $line]\n"
}
}
close $fd
}

postgresql {
global tcl_platform

set pguser [db_get_username]
if { ![string equal $pguser ""] } {
set pguser "-U $pguser"
}

set pgport [db_get_port]
if { ![string equal $pgport ""] } {
set pgport "-p $pgport"
}

set pgpass [db_get_password]
if { ![string equal $pgpass ""] } {
set pgpass "<<$pgpass"
}

if { [string equal [db_get_dbhost] "localhost"] || [string equal [db_get_dbhost] ""] } {
set pghost ""
} else {
set pghost "-h [db_get_dbhost]"
}

set fd [open $file r]
set copy_command [subst -nobackslashes [read $fd]]
close $fd
set copy_file [ns_mktemp /tmp/psql-copyfile-XXXXXX]
set fd [open $copy_file "CREAT EXCL WRONLY" 0600]
puts $fd $copy_command
close $fd

if { $tcl_platform(platform) == "windows" } {
set fp [open "|[file join [db_get_pgbin] psql] -f $copy_file $pghost $pgport $pguser [db_get_database]" "r"]
} else {
set fp [open "|[file join [db_get_pgbin] psql] -f $copy_file $pghost $pgport $pguser [db_get_database] $pgpass" "r"]
}

while { [gets $fp line] >= 0 } {
# Don't bother writing out lines which are purely whitespace.
if { ![string is space $line] } {
apm_callback_and_log $callback "[ad_quotehtml $line]\n"
}
}

# PSQL dumps errors and notice information on stderr, and has no option to turn
# this off. So we have to chug through the "error" lines looking for those that
# really signal an error.

set errno [ catch {
close $fp
} error]

# remove the copy file.
file delete -force $copy_file

if { $errno == 2 } {
return $error
}

# Just filter out the "NOTICE" lines, so we get the stack dump along with real
# ERRORs. This could be done with a couple of opaque-looking regexps...

set error_found 0
foreach line [split $error "\n"] {
if { [string first NOTICE $line] == -1 } {
append error_lines "$line\n"
set error_found [expr { $error_found || [string first ERROR $line] != -1 || \
[string first FATAL $line] != -1 } ]
}
}

if { $error_found } {
global errorCode
return -code error -errorinfo $error_lines -errorcode $errorCode $error_lines
}

}

nsodbc {
error "db_load_sql_data is not supported for this database."
}
default {
error "db_load_sql_data is not supported for this database."
}
}
}

About point (d) the version of Categories I'm using is 1.1.2d3 .

Hope it helps,
Maurizio

Dear Gustaf,
success!!!

1. The first problem was due to $tmpnam (which was wrong: in Vista you can't write files wherever you want).
To fix it I had to introduce the following change:

# set tmpnam [ns_tmpnam]
set tmpnam [ns_mktemp /tmp/ctl-XXXXXX]

2. Your correction to the categories Oracle creation procs worked.

Thanks a lot for your help!

Cheers,
Maurizio

Hi,

This could work for you as a workaround. We've fixed that overloading that function adding this code to one of our *-init.tcl procs:

if { [ns_info platform] == "win32"} {
rename ns_tmpnam aol_tmpnam
proc ns_tmpnam {} {
set tmp [aol_tmpnam]
set dir [parameter::get_from_package_key -package_key acs-subsite -parameter TmpDir]
return "${dir}${tmp}"
}
}

You just need to make sure that the MainSite parameter TmpDir in the site-map has the right path (i.e. C:\temp ).

In Windows, according to their documentation, the C function tmpnam() is deprecated and is not safe. They recommend to use tempnam(dir,filename) instead where you can specify the path and the filename.

Hope that helps!

Dear Gustaf, I absolutely agree with you.

The changes you proposed in your last post are allmost perfect. I had to change them as follows:

int i;
char *buf = _tempnam("/tmp", "nsd");

if (buf == NULL) {
Tcl_SetResult(interp, "could not generate temporary filename.", TCL_STATIC);
return TCL_ERROR;
}
/*
Change back slash characters into slash characters
*/
for (i = 0; i < strlen(buf); i++) {
if (buf[i] == '\\') buf[i] = '/';
}
/*
The documentation says that _tempnam() allocates memory via
malloc(); to be sure, that the "right" free() is used, we do
not use TCL_DYNAMIC but the TCL_VOLATILE followed by the manual
free().
*/
Tcl_SetResult(interp, buf, TCL_VOLATILE);
free(buf);

The problem is that _tempname generates file names in the Windows style (i.e. with back slash characters) and SqlLdr doesn't like that style for the "control" parameter (it requires normal slash characters).

Once again many thanks,
Maurizio

Dear Guastaf, the pleasure is mine.

Perhaps when you suggest the changes to the Aolserver community you could use the code here below, where the use of the function strlen has been optimized.

int i, str_len;
char *buf = _tempnam("/tmp", "nsd");

if (buf == NULL) {
Tcl_SetResult(interp, "could not generate temporary filename.", TCL_STATIC);
return TCL_ERROR;
}
/*
Change back slash characters into slash characters
*/
str_len = strlen(buf);
for (i = 0; i < str_len; i++) {
if (buf[i] == '\\') buf[i] = '/';
}
/*
The documentation says that _tempnam() allocates memory via
malloc(); to be sure, that the "right" free() is used, we do
not use TCL_DYNAMIC but the TCL_VOLATILE followed by the manual
free().
*/
Tcl_SetResult(interp, buf, TCL_VOLATILE);
free(buf);

Once again many thanks,
Maurizio