Howdy folks. I thought I'd share the results of something we delivered yesterday and see if anyone here thinks it's useful. We are pursuing a contract for a think tank that wants to provide an interactive presentation of a data-driven policy decision. The deliverable must run completely off a CD-ROM without installation of anything and use a standard web browser with no tricks. First we whipped up a quick Zope site that had a few cosmetic pieces in it. For a demonstration application we took 1600 recent Zope mail messages, made a ZClass for them, then loaded them into Zope and catalogued them. Next we took the "read-only" machinery that _might_ be in Z2b4 (it's in my sandbox), that allows ZServer to run without writing a pid file or log file, and ZODB to run in-memory. You're still allowed to do everything with the database -- add objects, undo, versions, etc. -- but no changes are made on disk. When you quit, the changes are gone. Very useful for giving demos as well. Finally I copied the directory onto a CD-R. Sure enough, you just double-click on start.bat (I don't know anything about autorun) and, after a bit of a wait, everything runs just fine. Absolutely nothing gets written to the hard drive. It's still a little rough. First, there's a whole lot of unnecessary stuff being imported (like all the win32 stuff for running as a service), and thus the startup time is around 45 seconds. With some serious tinkering I imagine that could be brought under control. But still it's a neat opportunity for Zope. Where else can the app server _and_ database be cranked up with one click and leave your system in a nice state? Try that with ColdFusion or Domino. :^) If anyone thinks this would make a good "How-To", either for the part about running in read-only mode or the mail archive application, lemme know. --Paul
In article <37B2A881.421F3520@digicool.com>, Paul Everitt <paul@digicool.com> writes
Howdy folks. I thought I'd share the results of something we delivered yesterday and see if anyone here thinks it's useful.
...
If anyone thinks this would make a good "How-To", either for the part about running in read-only mode or the mail archive application, lemme know.
--Paul
great stuff. I'm sure that should be in a howto. Running a demo cleanly off a read only device is a huge win for a salesperson. -- Robin Becker
Very interesting. Can you estimate the work to put several zope-binaries for different architectures on the CD and link them all to the same database? Then also different versions of Python are needed. Is this feasible? But anyway this will be good for data delivering. __Janko
Paul, I've thought about doing something like this, but with a slight difference. I would like Zope running on a CD-ROM but allow the user to add objects etc and save the Odb to disk, but nothing else on the harddrive, only the odb. Then at an appropriate time I would like an auto-synchronisation to take place with the 'real' Zope Server, at our site. This would allow me to use Zope as a distant learning tool. The students could do the course off-line and then sync with our server and allow marking by a cource tutor at a later date. I may very well take your bits and 'extend' them for my own use. The HOW-TO would be a great pointer for me though, so what you hanging around for, get to it and do it ;). Yours in anticipation, Phil phil@philh.org ----- Original Message ----- From: Paul Everitt <paul@digicool.com> To: <zope@zope.org> Sent: Thursday, August 12, 1999 11:57 AM Subject: [Zope] FYI: Running Zope off a CD-ROM
Howdy folks. I thought I'd share the results of something we delivered yesterday and see if anyone here thinks it's useful.
We are pursuing a contract for a think tank that wants to provide an interactive presentation of a data-driven policy decision. The deliverable must run completely off a CD-ROM without installation of anything and use a standard web browser with no tricks.
First we whipped up a quick Zope site that had a few cosmetic pieces in it. For a demonstration application we took 1600 recent Zope mail messages, made a ZClass for them, then loaded them into Zope and catalogued them.
Next we took the "read-only" machinery that _might_ be in Z2b4 (it's in my sandbox), that allows ZServer to run without writing a pid file or log file, and ZODB to run in-memory. You're still allowed to do everything with the database -- add objects, undo, versions, etc. -- but no changes are made on disk. When you quit, the changes are gone. Very useful for giving demos as well.
Finally I copied the directory onto a CD-R. Sure enough, you just double-click on start.bat (I don't know anything about autorun) and, after a bit of a wait, everything runs just fine. Absolutely nothing gets written to the hard drive.
It's still a little rough. First, there's a whole lot of unnecessary stuff being imported (like all the win32 stuff for running as a service), and thus the startup time is around 45 seconds. With some serious tinkering I imagine that could be brought under control.
But still it's a neat opportunity for Zope. Where else can the app server _and_ database be cranked up with one click and leave your system in a nice state? Try that with ColdFusion or Domino. :^)
If anyone thinks this would make a good "How-To", either for the part about running in read-only mode or the mail archive application, lemme know.
--Paul
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Paul Everitt wrote:
Howdy folks. I thought I'd share the results of something we delivered yesterday and see if anyone here thinks it's useful.
We are pursuing a contract for a think tank that wants to provide an interactive presentation of a data-driven policy decision. The deliverable must run completely off a CD-ROM without installation of anything and use a standard web browser with no tricks.
If anyone thinks this would make a good "How-To", either for the part about running in read-only mode or the mail archive application, lemme know.
Please, this will be an essential HOWTO :-) I would be very happy to have single-file Zope-binaries for many different plattforms supported by Zope. Just but all this Zope-Binaries (for eg. Linux, Win95/98/NT, MacOS *, BeOS?) on the CD + one Data-set and give it to interested people. This sounds not only cool, but is definively a project I'd like to see happen (Imagine also giving a talk by just putting the CD into the CD-ROM drive, staring ZServer, then riding through an XML-based slide-show and finallay using ZCatalog and other goodies for answering questions..) I will test everything I can in this aerea.. -- Tom http://www.linux-magazin.de/
On Thu, 12 Aug 1999, Tom Schwaller wrote:
Paul Everitt wrote:
Please, this will be an essential HOWTO :-) I would be very happy to have single-file Zope-binaries for many different plattforms supported by Zope.
The easiest way to do this is to use Gordon's Installer program. This program allows you to compress all your *.pyc files into a pyz archive. This is then banged onto the end of a coff binary (both Windows and Linux) along with the pyds. When you run it, the pyz & pyd files are dumped in the current directory and a site.py file used to load the stuff. By copying this directory to RO storage you have Zope RO Edition ;). Note, the default win32 extensions from Mark Hammond hate this so use the ones included in my distrib of Zope. In addition, the system is ALOT faster as the python scripts are loaded in one hit. When I finish the unix zmake files (might be a while) I'll see if I can organise a Zope Daily Build for unix and windows. Cheers, Anthony Pfrunder
Paul Everitt wrote:
Howdy folks. I thought I'd share the results of something we delivered yesterday and see if anyone here thinks it's useful.
<stuff deleted>
But still it's a neat opportunity for Zope. Where else can the app server _and_ database be cranked up with one click and leave your system in a nice state? Try that with ColdFusion or Domino. :^)
If anyone thinks this would make a good "How-To", either for the part about running in read-only mode or the mail archive application, lemme know.
Holy Crap! this would be perfect for archiving and distributing Squishdot sites, photo archives, or any other situation where the data is cumulative but 'snapshots' would be useful. With the whole thing self contained, and few external dependencies, this is a good way to 'future-proof' your backups. I've been concerned about the impermanence of digital media for some time now, and was wondering if there was a way to make self-contained read-only copies of stuff without sacrificing interactivity. This is perfect! Michael Bernstein
In article <37B2A881.421F3520@digicool.com>, Paul Everitt <paul@digicool.com> writes
But still it's a neat opportunity for Zope. Where else can the app server _and_ database be cranked up with one click and leave your system in a nice state? Try that with ColdFusion or Domino. :^)
If anyone thinks this would make a good "How-To", either for the part about running in read-only mode or the mail archive application, lemme know.
Excellent idea. Encyclopaedia Brittanica is/was released with a web server on the cdrom, and I think it was multi-platform web site. I can imagine Medline, or Index Medicus being released in this way ( though I guess DVD would be more appropriate for those databases! ). ------- Regards, Graham Chiu gchiu<at>compkarori.co.nz
If anyone thinks this would make a good "How-To", either for the part about running in read-only mode or the mail archive application, lemme know.
Absolutely. I can think of at least one of our projects that would benefit from this technology. tone out. ------ Dr Tony McDonald, FMCC, Networked Learning Environments Project http://nle.ncl.ac.uk/ The Medical School, Newcastle University Tel: +44 191 222 5888 Fingerprint: 3450 876D FA41 B926 D3DD F8C3 F2D0 C3B9 8B38 18A2
participants (9)
-
Anthony Pfrunder -
Graham Chiu -
jhauser＠ifm.uni-kiel.de -
Michael Bernstein -
Paul Everitt -
Phil Harris -
Robin Becker -
Tom Schwaller -
Tony McDonald