[Zope] Please help newbie access her control manager/panel

[Thomas B. Passin]

[J. Stuff]

> I am trying to use Zope at home and am wondering if someone might be
> willing to help me get started. I have installed Zope 2.4.3 on my new
> windowsXP machine, but I can't access the control manager. I've tried
> the following URLs:
>    http://localhost:8080/manage
>    http://127.0.0.1:8080/manage
> and was told by my browser (IE 6.0) the "page cannot be displayed."
> Since those didn't work, I looked up my computer's hostname: I
> typed "hostname" in a command prompt and found it is "joplop-alpha."
> So then i tried:
>    http://joplop-alpha:8080/manage
> Still, "page cannot be displayed." I don't know how to change the
> hostname or where it is even located as I am very unfamiliar with
> windowsXP.
>
> When I run start.bat (as the online zope book instructs) a dos prompt
> opens containing the following information:
>    C:\Program Files\WebSite>"C:\Program Files\WebSite\bin\python.exe"
>    "C:\Program Files\WebSite\z2.py" -D
> I have read mentions of the -D being a default debugging setting which
> may need to be turned off. How do I turn it off? When I put any of those
> strings into the address area of my web browser, windows wants to know
what
> program it should use to view it.
>
> I also ran across an article which suggested one may need to create a
> HOSTS file in the windows directory. I don't know how to do that, but I
> follow directions very well.
>



It sounds like you may have created some conflicts in trying to outguess
your problems.  First of all, you should know that Zope normally does run
perfectly well on Windows, and it may take some time, like 20 seconds or a
minute, to get started.  Much of that time is used in trying to look up its
host name from the network.  Very slow startup times for a new installation
may mean some network DNS lookup problem.

Next, you will want probably want to run Zope as a service under NT, but
that would prevent you from running it on the same port from a command line
session.  I saw in one of the posts that you tried installing it as a
service.  When it is running as a service, you can see no output, so it can
be hard to diagnose problems.  You can get it to log to a file.

If you want to access it as "localhost", you do need to create an entry in
the "hosts" file, which would go in the main Windows directory.  There will
be a file called "hosts.sam" in that directory and it shows what to put into
the file.  However, you can access it as 127.0.0.1 without any hosts table.

Here's what I suggest you do:

1) If Zope has been installed as a service, stop the service (remember, it
will try to start again after a reboot).  If you don't know how, let  us
know.

2) Open a command line session (a "command prompt") and in it run Zope, by
running start.bat in the Zope top-level directory.  Watch for anything that
Zope prints in the window.

3) After a bit of time, Zope should tell you that it is running on port 8080
(if you haven't changed it), that it is running ftp on port 8021, and pgci
on some other port.  It should tell you the IP address and host name.  When
you see all this information, Zope is ready to listen to you.  Send your
browser to

http://127.0.0.1:8080

It should respond.  If it does, you can try

    http://localhost:8080

because some Windows machines will respond to localhost without you having
to create a hosts file.

If it doesn' t respond, what to do next depends on what you will have seen
in the command prompt window.  One possibility is that something else is
running on port 8080.  Zope will give you some error message about not being
able to use the port.  If so, look up in the documentation about how to run
Zope on another port (or look in the file z2.py in the Zope top-level
dorectory).  Try it on another port, like 9080.

4) If that works, stop Zope (the easiest way is to close the command prompt
window), then try to start the it as a service (if it has been installed as
a service, and if you know how to do that).  Then try to connect to it as
above.

At this point, either it will have worked or you will have some more useful
information for us.

Cheers,

Tom P