[ZCM] [ZC] 1640/ 6 Comment "Windows XP Pro SP2 Install"

[Matthew Gow]

I'm very grateful for this thread and all the helpful posts. Here is a
verbose howto for technically-challenged, sleep deprived folks (like me) who
are trying to solve this.

SYMPTOMS

The new Zope installation on your IBM Thinkpad is not working.

If you installed it to run as a service, all you will notice is

"Page cannot be displayed"
when you visit http://localhost:8080 in Internet Explorer or

"The connection was refused when attempting to contact localhost:8080" when
you try in Firefox.

If you are trying to start zope manually using runzope.bat you will see an
error in your DOS shell saying something like

C:\Zope\bin\lib\fcntl.py:7: DeprecationWarning: the FCNTL module is
deprecated; please use fcntl


EXPLANATION

Zope is not broken. Your laptop has a system environment variable that is
preventing zope from starting properly.

On your Windows XP IBM ThinkPad, you have a version of Python pre-installed
(probably in c:\IBMTOOLS\python22) It is used by many of the groovy tools
that IBM provides. The "IBM Rescue and Recovery with Rapid Restore" process
(i.e. the thing that sets up a IBM laptop with all the factory default
software and settings) sets a system environment variable PYTHONCASEOK=1

(this link describes a little of what the PYTHONCASEOK variable does
http://python.fyxm.net/peps/pep-0235.html)

To check if you have that troublesome system environment variable,
right-click on the "My Computer" icon and select "properties" to bring up
the System Properties window. Go to the "advanced" tab and press the
"environment variables" button at the bottom. You will then be shown a list
of system environment variables.


HOW TO FIX IT

You could delete the PYTHONCASEOK=1 environment variable from your system
and the problem should be solved. HOWEVER, IBM probably sets the variable
for a reason and deleting it might cause some of the IBM tools to break.
Instead, I recommend that you run zope manually (rather than as a service)
and add a line to the batch script that starts zope. The line you add will
set the PYTHONCASEOK variable back to nothing for your Zope process.

(If you have installed Zope to run as a service, you can prevent it from
starting automatically like this...

Go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services
In the list of services, find the service called something like "Zope
instance at..." Right click on that service and select "properties". There
will be a select box called "Startup type". Change that from automatic to
manual.)


Now change the batch file you will be using to start zope manually.

Find the runzope.bat file in the bin directory of your zope instance. In a
default installation it will be C:\zope-instance\bin\runzope.bat

To edit that file, open it in notepad.
*Before* the last line add a new line with the following text

@set PYTHONCASEOK=

Save the file and try to start Zope using that same file. (ie double click
the edited runzope.bat file or run it from a DOS prompt)

Hopefully you can now use Zope and discover all its wonders. Don't let one
little environment variable ruin your Zope experience!