Forum OpenACS Q&A: Notes on installing 5.2.2

I have just reinstalled 5.2.2 but it still doensn't make any sense. DotLRN get's installed without ever beeing asked. Xowiki asks for a file storage version that's not available, and because contacts is a no go area many other of the very desirable modules won't work. Certain packages require workflow, but the version available (although hidden form the repository) doesn't seem to match.

The basic display seems to lack one thing:

What to install in which order. Right now you have an option to activate an install all feature that will crash your system. That's not helpfull. It looks like installing package by package reduces the crash risk, but even than, the weerd behaviour of dependancies can cause errors and "file not found" messages. The trouble with those is that they don't explain what's wrong, so I have no idea what to do to fix things. It would help to make the error mesage allert bold, as an extra warning, not to proceed with the installation incase missing packages could cause crash!.

The process of refering folks to the forum to ask for help doesn't realy ends up in a positive experience for some. The techno replies wont make much sense if you don't talk that lingo. Maybe we should, as long as this sort of trouble arises, think about a "semi commercial tuning service" where "old hands" assist in installing the system and make sure things work from scratch. You guys know what you are looking at, and I wouldn't have any problems to pay you for getting me set up without all the hassle. Given the pace at which features are added and changes are made, this only sounds a reasonable option. All we need is a paypal billing interface! It can't be that difficult to come up with a fixed price for a clean install. Sounds like easy money to me.

Spring cleanup I notice we still have an address package that has been declared obsolete 2 years ago, so either remove or get it working so we have at least a simple adressbook for starters, a feature many have asked for over the years. Dependancies are great but if they don't work they suck!. It may suck from a development point of view, and lack of fancy features, but right now we have noting!

I'll try to give an acurate update on state of affairs later, as I got lost during the mounting process and it's running late.

I have a clean install and welcome anybody who know's more about this than I do to check the status. IMHO this step should not be required, a stable release should contain modules that work by following the install process, without hacking.

Photobd will not work unless imagemagick is installed. unfortunately, there's no reference when the package is mounted on a clean install. It would make life a lot easier if there was a flag to this fact upon install, so people won't wonder why they can't upload a picture.

For now 5.2.2 is not safe for non programmers. To bad, but reality, it will not install out of the box.

Cheers
Ben

System crashed again so I dumped it !