Forum OpenACS Q&A: OpenACS and Win2k -- any success stories?

1: OpenACS and Win2k -- any success stories?

Posted by Adam Farkas on 08/21/00 03:21 AM

Anyone have success installing OpenACS on Win2k?

I haven't seen a concise explanation of the steps necessary to make
it a "go". Please point me in the right direction, if the docs do
exist.

If not.. I'm prepared to write them.

thanks.

2: Response to OpenACS and Win2k -- any success stories? (response to 1)

Posted by Gregory McMullan on 08/21/00 03:54 AM

I don't have everything done yet, but I was trying to install it under Win98, hoping that 98 was similar enough to NT and 2000 that I could make it work. I got as far as compiling Postgres with Cygwin, and almost making Postgres work, before I got better access to Linux boxes on the net and thus making it work on Windows was lower-priority for me. If it'll help someone else, I'll gladly try to resurrect what I learned in making it work.

One of the finest places to start seems to be Kevin Lo's "Porting PostgreSQL to Windows NT installation procedures" (available at http://people.FreeBSD.org/~kevlo/postgres/portNT.html ). Combining the step by step instructions in there with some research into understanding how Cygwin works (I forget where I learned it, but will track it down later and post to this thread) was where I finished. I was temporarily stuck on Kevin's step 3 of "Install Cygwin", because I was getting an error trying his mount command. I think I learned that all I needed to do was issue the mount command, then not worry about the error, but close the cygwin window and restart it, because cygwin would save the state, but I can't swear to it at the moment.

More later, when I am not falling asleep

3: Response to OpenACS and Win2k -- any success stories? (response to 1)

Posted by Adam Farkas on 08/21/00 04:21 AM

Thanks for the link, Greg. Do the existing postgres 7.0 binaries for w2k not work? I'll probably give them a shot before I resort to compiling the source. I find it hard to imagine that the people behind PG wouldn't make an easy windows install routine -- especially now that InterBase is on the scene [I had it running in no time flat...]

4: Response to OpenACS and Win2k -- any success stories? (response to 1)

Posted by Nathan Reeves on 08/21/00 08:56 AM

I think one of the big showstoppers with trying to setup PG under Win* was that a binary copy of the postgres driver for AOLServer was not available. If anyone gets a copy compiled I've a feeling a few more people may try to get the system running.

HTH

5: Response to OpenACS and Win2k -- any success stories? (response to 1)

Posted by Gregory McMullan on 08/21/00 04:04 PM

I never tried the Postgres Win2k binary because:

I'm on Win98
I assumed that I'd have to build everything, including the postgres driver for aolserver, from source with the same compiler to make it work
I was pretty sure that cygwin would make it straightforward to build aolserver as well. Never got to test that assumption.
Having cygwin installed and working on my notebook would hopefully give me convenient access to lots of other unix-based software in the long run, without having to reboot into linux.

6: Response to OpenACS and Win2k -- any success stories? (response to 1)

Posted by Adam Farkas on 08/21/00 04:25 PM

uh-oh -- so there is no aolserver/PG driver ready-to-go for W2k? Does anyone have the binary? Looks like this project just got a little more complicated 😊

7: Response to OpenACS and Win2k -- any success stories? (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 08/21/00 04:32 PM

Before worrying overmuch about the driver, see what it takes to install Postgres. It is supported under cygwin but it's not as polished as it might be. But win2K is certainly important to Great Bridge, so I think you can expect to see more effort go into packaging win2K Postgres in the future.

Unix/Linux has really been the Postgres focus in the past. It is also the OpenACS focus (and until very recently aD's focus), so things are a bit rough and unpolished in win2kville. Yep.

8: Response to OpenACS and Win2k -- any success stories? (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 08/21/00 04:35 PM

I forgot to mention that if you do take some time to work on getting stuff running, writing docs would be excellent and they'd be snapped up in a flash. I'd offer to help you out with the install via e-mail but as you know in less than two weeks I'll be in Nevada for a month, with no 'net access - and I'm leaving for nearly a week Thursday morning, to visit friends on the southern Oregon coast.