[Zope] Migrating to Zope, Getting files in and out of Zope

[Pieter Biemond]

Hello,

I'm currently working on a project to migrate a fairly large intranet
webserver (apache on linux) to a zope webserver (linux redhat 7.1).
Because a lot of the applications/files on the old intranet are
used on a daily basis I can't make the migration in one weekend
So I need to setup a new server which I use to test all the
applications one at the time, before the old server can be taken down.

There are a number of problems I encounter:

The nicest thing would be to temporary syndicate the old website
through Zope and proxy the old server through the new server. Every
request to http://newserver/somefile.html will be handled by the
new server which retrieves http://oldserver/somefile.html and wraps
it into a standard_html_header and standard_html_footer and extracts
title and keywords correctly. Unfortuately, I didn't get this to
work properly with the Python httplib.  (see
http://www.zope.org/Members/cba/Get_External and
http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-February/126090.html)
Did anybody manage to get something like this working?

I am now working on the final migration and I will use a
copy script every night to copy all the files from the Apache server
to the new Zope server. During the nightly copy I want all the
binary files (gif/jpg/PDF/Word/Powerpoint and even WordPerfect-files)
to be written in a seperate repository (available to Zope through
LocalFS or ExtFile objects, see
http://www.zope.org/Members/sabaini/externalfiles-howto) Has anybody
done this before? Pittfalls I should look out for? Should I use
LocalFS or ExtFile?

I tried copying all the files in a number of ways (ftp, load_site.py
and webdav (using a windows client and using cadaver)) but all
options seem to have problems with filenames that contain spaces
(I know, you shouldn't use filenames with spaces, but people did).
I'll still have to try the suckfs-command from the ZShell Product.
Does anybody now a way to solve this problem?

Another problem: I can't copy filenames starting with an underscore.
Fortunately they don't need to be copied (they are used for Frontpage
Extentions on the old server). Are there any other things I should take
into account when using filenames in Zope? (length of filenames/directory
names,
number of files in a directory, special characters, etc.).

I'm planning of writing a how-to of all the pittfals I encountered,
and describing the best way and possibilities of migrating to a
Zope site. Any help would be appreciated.

Pieter