Forum OpenACS Q&A: Anyone build nsopenssl for Win32

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Posted by C. R. Oldham on
Greetings,

I also posted this to the aolserver list, sorry for the crosspost.

Has anyone built a working nsopenssl for Win32?  I started, but
couldn't even build the OpenSSL kit on Windows with VC++ 6.  I think
the Win32 build process is broken there right now...

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Posted by Paul Moody on
Dear Oldham,

I know the feeling. I think it is a shame we do not have any window savvy people. Openacs would be a viable alternative to many people considering Microsoft´s knew Online XP offerings. However, most of these people do not know openacs and if they have heard of it, they can not run it. Most of them only have Windows. So, we need to show them that projects like openacs are not only good alternatives, but are in fact a better product. But, we can not.

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Posted by John Sequeira on
C.R.,

If you're developing on Windows, but deploying on *nix, have you considered using VMWare? I struggled a bit with ACS development using AOLServer on Windows and though I was pretty happy with it, it was a relief when I switched to using VMWare to run Linux on my Windows box and everything just worked all of the sudden.

I've built a virtual machine with openacs 4.0 that you could download, and wrote up a page about my VM project, and the potential benefits towards OpenACS advocacy.

If you or anybody else would like to take it for a spin, let me know and I'll arrange FTP access. I can't publish a URL to the VM file directly because of bandwidth restrictions.

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Posted by C. R. Oldham on
*I* could use it, but some of my less-technical users probably could not.  It's a good idea, though.
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Posted by John Sequeira on
My target audience is the less techinical... what makes you think it'd be too much to handle?

VMWare installs via Installshield and takes a few minutes.  The VM file, once downloaded,  does need a path change,  but that's about it.

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Posted by C. R. Oldham on
Hmm, maybe I don't understand this then.  Doesn't this mean we are duplicating a Linux configuration completely within their Win32 installation?  With all the associated administrative overhead?  That's what I meant by the technical nature of the VMware solution.
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Posted by John Sequeira on
I believe the administrative overhead you refer to largely doesn't exist when you use the VM expressly for a single purpose,  like openACS development.  You don't have to worry about software conflict or device conflicts because little if any will be added to a base developer system.  There's no security or user management because each VM is essentially a single user system (though there's no reason it couldn't be shared as a server).

Give everyone root if they want it -> the system you're duplicating and they're coding on is just a blob that sits on their hard drive.  They mess it up,  you send a new file their way and they're off and running.  It's a good idea to keep the source code they're working on backed up or versioned outside the VM (using Samba/NFS/CVS or sneakernet) for this eventuality,  but I've done this before on my last big ACS gig.  It's not a big deal.

We distributed VM's to the sales team for doing onsite demos and it worked fine after we did the initial setup.  I challenge you to find a less technical group to validate the VM approach.  😊

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Posted by C. R. Oldham on
OK, you've convinced me to give it a try.  Didn't VMWare used to be free for personal use?  Looks like it's $299 now; that's a little pricey.  And it only runs on w2k/xp.
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Posted by John Sequeira on
They've always had a free one-month trial... but the initial price was $99,  I think.  They've now priced a special Linux "personal-edition" version at $99 which only runs Windows programs on Linux to compete with Netraverse's Win4Lin.  The one you want,  however is $299.

Since all my developer tools are free,  it's the most expensive piece of software I own.  The time it's saved me from having to admin a linux box (not to mention actually owning one) is worth far more to me.

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Posted by Paul Moody on
Hello,

I bought VMWare 3.0 about a month ago for my Windows 2000 laptop. This software is fantastic if you want to play with many different operating systems. I then installed the newest RedHat version. I spent most of my time trying to figure out RedHats security tools. In anycase, I finally got it running. One warning, the Windows 2000 FTP program would not work for me. I could not get a local connection with the virtual machine. I finally downloaded SmartFTP, a freeware program at CNet, which worked immediately.

I like the idea that John is alluding to. Virtual Machines are no brainers to install. You immediately have a full working environment. The only downside, I believe the download will be quite large. Having said this, it appears to be the only solution at this time that works and you will never have a quicker running version for windows. Considering this, is it possible to have VMs in the future for download from the OpenACS site.

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Posted by John Sequeira on
Paul,

The VM I've created is 200Meg compressed.  No X/Gnome/etc... but w/ftp connectivity.  It includes the entire openACS stack,  including CVS setup.  I've experimented with including the desktop tools,  and the VM goes to ~ 800Meg.  I think someone who knows what they're doing could probably slice it in half by eliminating unnecessary packages,  but either way it's going to be huge.  Posting it the the openacs.org site is a no-brainer,  paying for the bandwidth is a different matter.

To address the bandwidth issue,  I like the idea of using a p2p framework to distribute the VMs (read my web page @ http://www.pobox.com/~johnseq/oasis/about.html for a more in-depth discussion. )  I haven't identified a simple one that's reliable open-source/free and cross-platform yet,  but BitTorrent is probably the closest.

Sourceforge offers user-mode-linux downloads (the same idea,  just linux-VM-on-linux only) of complete operating system installs.  They'd probably support an OpenACS VM,  but I haven't looked into this too closely.

Anyone have any ideas for download hosting of big files?

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Posted by John Sequeira on
FWIW Paul I've had no trouble using W2K ftp to connect to my VM's.  Red Hat 7.0/7.1/Progeny Debian/Mandrake/etc.  I've had trouble getting a local connection before when installing a new version of VMWare for the first time,  but once you figure out the right network voodoo,  it works for all subsequent guest installs.

Also, I invariably disable almost all security on the guest VMs.  Since I sit behind a firewall and I'm the only user on my home office lan,  it's one less complicated thing to have to worry about.

YMMV.