Forum OpenACS Development: OpenACS 4 fails to install

Questions:

• is this a known problem?
• the last think in the log is:

   
  
  [16/Aug/2001:13:51:32][7558.4101][-conn0-] Notice: BEGIN
  [16/Aug/2001:13:51:32][7558.4101][-conn0-] Notice: *ABORT STATE*
  [16/Aug/2001:13:51:32][7558.4101][-conn0-] Notice: COMMIT
  [16/Aug/2001:13:51:32][7558.4101][-conn0-] Notice: CREATE
  [16/Aug/2001:13:51:32][7558.4101][-conn0-] Notice: DROP
  [16/Aug/2001:13:51:32][7558.4101][-conn0-] Notice: Acs-content-
  repository not installed.
  Error:
  

  i.e., it doesn't tell me anything. Any tip on how to turn more verbose debugging info so that I know what's wrong (I presume it's a failing SQL but have no idea how to debug it).
• install happily goes on. Wouldn't it be better to stop on such errors, given that's it's almost a fatal blow (not much will work afterwards anyway).

Strangely enough, I did get it to work on 7.1.2 on Windows machine. I've re-installed latest 7.1.2 RPMS from postgresql.org but still have the same issue on RH 6.2.

There's an acs bootstrap installer module in the openacs-4 package in the SDM (https://openacs.org/sdm) so feel free to submit a patch there.
If you don't have time I'll try to get to it myself but it will be awhile.

The error from your server.log file would help a lot - post it here when you've got a moment (again, you need VERBOSE=ON when you install to get it).

Now ...

I just did a fresh install of OpenACS 4 on my RH 6.2 box with PG 7.1.2, and didn't run into a problem.

You've gotten it to install without a problem on Windoze.

This makes me thing something's wrong with your PG installation.  Is the box a pure development box?  Can you reinstall PG, make sure you get rid of all old traces of it, do a "initdb" and fresh "createdb" and fresh reinstall of OpenACS4?

I know that sounds like a lot of work but given that it is installing for other and even for you on your windows box, I'm suspicious that something's screwy on the RH 6.2 box.

Also make sure it is really running your PG 7.1.2.  In other words that any old postmaster's been stopped, that the old version's been thoroughly deleted, that you don't have any RH-installed components lying around and in your PATH (RH RPMS install PG in a different place
than the PG distro tarball).

Etc etc etc...

Under Red Hat, the quick fix for now is to do

echo LANG=C >>/etc/sysconfig/i18n

*before* installing PG (from RPMs) and bringing it up for the first time (in particular, before it runs initdb).

Once you have installed the PG 7.1.2 RPMs and done /sbin/service postgresql start for the first time (which does the initdb), you can then remove the added line from your /etc/sysconfig/i18n , which sets things back to your native locale (often LANG=en_US) if you so wish.

This is a bad situation (ideally, OACS4 would work no matter what locale PG was using?), but one I thought Don had recently put a patch into the OACS4 installer to check for?

Note: To try this, you'll need to rpm -e postgresql-server and then rm -rf /var/lib/pgsql to get rid of your old database, then reinstall PG with the edited i18n file. Otherwise your old db with its unwanted locale info will be retained.

I tried an OpenACS4 install myself for the first time just now.

The PG locale stuff worked for me following my own instructions (this was RH 7.1 and the PG 7.1.3 RPMs); that is, make sure the initdb (done the first time you start postgresql and there is no pre-existing database) happens under LANG=C. Are you sure when you tried it you didn't have an existing older PG database present?

However, I now seem to have a more interesting issue... after installing PG 7.1.3, aolserver-3.3.1+ad13 and aolserver-nsxml and libxml2 2.4.1 and libxslt 1.0.1 (all from RPMs), I:

1. Update openacs4 from CVS, then copy the files over to /var/lib/aolserver/servers/openacs4. rm -rf packages/acs-subsite since it isn't 'PORTED' yet, and seems to give an error about a missing file if you leave it in there.
2. Edit /etc/aolserver/nsd.tcl to use a PG db and username of openacs4, and to expect the pageroot to be .../openacs4 rather than .../defaultacs.
3. Fire up aolserver, point a browser at port 8000.
4. Edit one more time and reboot to get rid of a warning about teh Fancy parser, though actually it *was* enabled, just in a different way from the way the installer seems to check... convert siggested .ini settings to .tcl (incidentally, shouldn't the installer offer both, or offer the .tcl way instead of .ini??), edit, restart aolserver.
5. No warnings this time, select Next, ACS kernel installed fine, select Next again.
6. Lost more installing happens, all looks fine, then it says it is 'Completing install sequence'. A few more commands echo, then nothing happens.

The log shows a referential integrity issue, followed by a problem writing a NULL into a NOT NULL field:

[24/Aug/2001:22:19:57][13925.4101][-conn0-] Error: Error sourcing /var/lib/aolserver/servers/openacs4/packages/acs-bootstrap-installer/installer/packages-install.tcl:
psql:acs-install.sql:196: ERROR:  apm_packages_package_key_fk referential integrity violation - key referenced from apm_packages not found in apm_package_types
psql:acs-install.sql:203: ERROR:  ExecAppend: Fail to add null value in not null attribute object_id

    invoked from within
"db_source_sql_file -callback apm_ns_write_callback acs-install.sql"
    invoked from within
"if { ![ad_acs_admin_node] } {
    ns_write "  <p><li> Completing Install sequence.<p>
    <blockquote><pre>"
    cd [file join [acs_root_dir] packages..."
    (file "/var/lib/aolserver/servers/openacs4/packages/acs-bootstrap-installer/installer/packages-install.tcl" line 34)
    invoked from within
"source $__file "

Repeated visits to http://myhostname:8000 just get me the same thing, I can't do anything useful with the installation at all.

I'll email the acs-subsite porter. Meanwhile, the workaround is to delete or comment out the two lines:

            <file type="query_file" db_type="postgresql" path="www/admin/group-types/change-join-policy-2-postgresql.xql"/>
            <file type="query_file" db_type="postgresql" path="www/admin/group-types/change-join-policy-postgresql.xql"/>

which are lines 138 and 142 of the packages/acs-subsite/acs-subsite.info file.

Can you describe the effect of this circular dependency issue on an install?

I'm trying to get acs-bootstrap-installer/installer/auto-install.tcl working and closer to doing what the interactive installer does... now I'm not sure if I'm seeing problems of my own making, or the circular dependency thing you just warned us about.
BTW it looks like auto-install.tcl was never ported (no .xql file) -- is that correct?

Problem is, in both cases browsing to /register causes instant death of AOLserver, with no clear indication from logs as to why.  This also happens during attempts to install some (most?) non-core packages using /acs-admin/apm/packages-install.

Once I can install OpenACS4 and then install bboard (for example) and configure it and post a message or two to a bboard, I'll declare my auto-install.tcl useful and post a patch with my changes.

I don't *think* I'm seeing circ. dep. issues, because all the packages you mentioned seem to install fine, no errors.

BTW I went back to a nightly tarball from 18 Aug. and the behaviour is the same as with current (12 hours ago) CVS.  But the same installation of PG and AOLserver will run OpenACS 3.2.5 quite happily.

I'm told I may have to break out a debugger and attach it to nsd? But it seems odd this only happens to me, not to everyone else!?

I'm running PG 7.1.3, AOLserver 3.3.1+ad13, and the PG driver from CVS as of 25 April 2001.  All from my RPMs.

Yes! That fixed it.  Thanks!

Maybe the installer could/should check that you have a larger-than-default stacksize setting?

BTW I see you checked in a change to the PG driver a couple of days ago, making some buffers 100x bigger... is that just playing safe, or does OACS4 overflow the smaller buffers in the earlier code?

Thanks for your patience, folks ...