[Zope] Fourth request for help - Win2K+Zope

[Tres Seaver]

Michael Simcich <msimcich@accesstools.com> wrote
> 
<snip>
> 
> I know what most everyone here would recommend I switch to, Linux for OS and
> Zope for writing applications. That at least is not obscured. And the
> reasons are transparent too, Linux works well if you know it, and Zope is
> unlike any other tool we have available. I was interested in evaluating Zope
> first, before learning Linux, but perhaps I don't have that choice.

For simple feature evaluation, try a Win98 or NT box, and stick to using ZServer
as a service -- Zope works beautifully in those configurations (modulo some
Win95/8 weirdness on startup if you don't have DNS handy).
 
> Oh... I just saw that you wrote "but without any customers that want/need
> this, it will not happen unless someone can pinpoint with some accuracy how
> exactly it fails on 2K". I didn't get that before - you are talking about
> DC's paying customers. It's certainly a fair division, but I hadn't quite
> plugged it in as this much of a factor in how Zope is
> extended/fixed/understood. I should have, it makes sense, I just didn't get
> it in this way before.

Your real problem is that Win2K is uncharted territory for almost everyone on
this list:  "Hic sunt draconis" is the first response for most.  That said, I
routinely move folders and products between Zopes running on both Linux and NT,
precisely to avoid depending on platform idiosyncracies.

> 
> > Have you considered that the problem is not Zope at
> > all, but perhaps some sort of conflict with your existing setup or some
> > other parameter?
> 
> Of course I have, and of course I have no idea what to look for. What I was
> hoping for was a pointer or two, Zope is a black box to me. No errors are
> produced, as I said, so any failure between it and W2K is unrecorded. I
> don't really care if it's Zope or python or Win2K or my rig that has a
> "problem" if indeed there is either a real problem or just a mismatched
> switch or two, I just want to know how to accommodate "it".

The classic Windows troubleshooting procedure goes something like:

  * Install Windows on a bare box, using the VGA driver (video drivers are
    _notorious_ for causing pseudo-random bugs in apparently unrelated
    applications).  Snapshot the registry to a text file.

  * Install only the software which you are trying to install, and test
    (if it breaks here, your next best bet on the system side is the network
    card driver).  Snapshot the registry to another text file.

  * Add the other components of the system one a time, testing after each
    and snapshotting the registry to a new text file.  When the app in question
    breaks, diff the two most recen registry snapshots, and look at the DLL's
    installed by the most recently-installed app.

> 
> I'm coming from the MS world. There if a problem arises, as they do in
> abundance, everyone involved with the products more or less has a stake in
> resolving problems. In a way, they all share the baseline weaknesses of the
> Windows realm and MS's products. My brick wall is their brick wall, to some
> extent. Here, my brick wall is... mine.

Don't misread DC -- they _do_ have an interest in supporting Zope on Win2K; 
what they don't have is the ability to troubleshoot your configuration in the
absence of more specific data than you provide, especially given reports from
other Win2K users that it "works for them" there.  Somebody (Martijn Pieters, I
think?) gave you pointers for stepping into the Zope startup process using the
Python debugger:  if you can, doing that and reporting the full context at the
place things go haywire is the surest way to get resolution (short of buying a
support contract, that is -- but then, the first thing DC would do is to perform
the exact same troubleshooting).

And to answer the subtext:  I have been working with Microsoft platforms
professionally for the last 10 years, and I have gotten significant help from
Microsoft exactly _once_ in the dozens of support calls I made, some on behalf
of Fortune 100 companies (I don't consider "try reinstalling Windows and see if
that helps" to be "significant help").  I see far better support here daily,
from both DC and the Zope community, than I ever expect to see from the Redmond
juggernaut.

> 
> Anyways, thanks for clearing up some of these things for me. With any luck
> I'll be able to spend some time with a working copy of Zope sometime in the
> near future and my questions will be more resolvable.

-- 
=========================================================
Tres Seaver         tseaver@palladion.com    713-523-6582
Palladion Software  http://www.palladion.com