[ome-devel] OME installation difficulties

[Ilya Goldberg]

Before anyone gets bent out of shape:
I am not maligning debian, OK?  Its a much better package system than  
RedHat.  The unfortunate fact is that RedHat is more popular and if  
someone were to fall out of a tree, they would be installing OME on a  
RedHat system (or OS X).  This is just a fact of life.
It takes WORK to support an OS.  Valuable resources.  Every new OS that  
we support, we should either support it fully or not even try.   
Willy-nilly attempts or the assumption that "it will just work" are not  
appropriate.  So if you would like to use a different OS, please do.   
But also please support it!

This is bug 471 in Bugzilla which was reported again as bug 483.  Its  
was fixed by Josiah Fri 11 Mar 2005 06:10:14.  It should be in the  
2.4.0 branch.  I have no idea why its still complaining about it.

-Ilya


On Aug 14, 2005, at 4:36 PM, Ilya Goldberg wrote:

> That's nice.  So debian decides to call the Apache user 'www-data'.   
> Why not 'www/data' or 'www data' or throw some other really nasty  
> characters into the username.  It should "just work", right?  Right.
>
> Apparently postgres is none too happy about this user name, and who  
> would blame it really?
>
> Just as a note, I know a lot of people like debian, and its certainly  
> a favorite among linux-heads.
> The problem is that its not a favorite among most of the people who  
> would be using ome (instead of developing for it).  If developers use  
> OSes that are different from those used by our users, then we should  
> expect our users to have problems (check!).
>
> I would be more than happy to "Officially" support debian, but my  
> resources are limited in terms of supporting it ourselves.  My group  
> tests everything on OS X 10.3 and Fedora 1, 2 and 3 (please note the  
> version numbers).  If there are people out there who prefer other  
> OSes, they are more than welcome to patch the installer and other  
> software to support these OSes.  Otherwise it just makes work for  
> everyone else.
>
> My suggestion for this case would be to fix the installer so that it  
> works properly (for you and for other people who might want to use  
> debian) by escaping the (rather stupidly named, I should say) apache  
> user with quotes.
>
> As far as long-term debian support, someone needs to "own" support for  
> this OS, which basically means maintaining the installer, the  
> installation notes, etc.  It can't be my group because we don't use  
> it.  Until we have an owner for debian support, then its status by  
> definition remains "Unofficial".
> I would be happy to help someone fix this if that someone volunteers  
> to be the debian maintainer.
> So, volunteers?
>
> Thanks
> Ilya
>
> On Aug 12, 2005, at 2:32 PM, Curtis Rueden wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> As of late, we have been having trouble getting OME up and running on  
>> our machines.
>>
>> We had two fresh Debian testing i386 machines, and tried to install  
>> both the stable and CVS versions of OME, and ran into a variety of  
>> difficulties.
>>
>> First of all, some notes on the Debian prerequisites page:
>> - libtiff3g is no longer available (using libtiff4 instead).
>> - libgd2-dev requires libpng12-dev, but that conflicts with the  
>> libpng2 prerequisite.
>> - The libdb_B-Tree prerequisite (libdb4.3-dev) is not mentioned.
>> - The libcurl prerequisite for CVS also isn't covered on the page,  
>> but I assume that's because it's a new addition since the stable  
>> release.
>>
>> Here are some errors we received trying to install the 2.4 stable  
>> release:
>>
>> -----
>> Creating OME PostgreSQL SUPERUSER (ome)[SUCCESS].
>> Creating Apache PostgreSQL SUPERUSER (www-data)[FAILURE].
>>
>>
>> Errors executing task: Unable to create PostgreSQL superuser  
>> 'www-data', see CoreDatabaseTablesTask.log for details. at (eval 99)  
>> line 1
>>
>> at ./install.pl line 80
>>        main::run_tasks() called at ./install.pl line 249
>> # Looks like your test died before it could output anything.
>> -----
>>
>> From CoreDatabaseTablesTask.log:
>>
>> -----
>> Creating OME PostgreSQL SUPERUSER (ome)
>> Result for creating OME_USER ome:
>> FATAL:  user "ome" does not exist
>>
>> Result for creating OME_USER ome as postgres:
>> FATAL:  IDENT authentication failed for user "postgres"
>>
>> Unable to create PostgreSQL superuser 'www-data'
>> ERROR:  syntax error at or near "-" at character 16
>> -----
>>
>> It looks like the first problem is that the command:
>>   template1=# CREATE USER www-data CREATEUSER;
>> does not like the dash in www-data. So instead you have to do:
>>   template1=# CREATE USER "www-data" CREATEUSER;
>>
>> After doing that manually, I received this error:
>>
>> -----
>> Creating OME PostgreSQL SUPERUSER (ome)[SUCCESS].
>> Creating Apache PostgreSQL SUPERUSER (www-data)
>>
>> Errors executing task: Modifying user priviledges is not supported -  
>> sorry. at /home/curtis/OME/src/perl2/OME/Database/PostgresDelegate.pm  
>> line 198, <STDIN> line 21.
>>
>> at ./install.pl line 80
>>        main::run_tasks() called at ./install.pl line 249
>> # Looks like your test died before it could output anything.
>> -----
>>
>> That's currently where I'm stuck. I could probably figure it out if I  
>> knew more about Postgres. Is there something you guys do to configure  
>> the postgres installations on your machines that I'm not doing?
>>
>> Trying the latest version from CVS, I first receive this error:
>>
>> -----
>> Would you like to install OLE::Storage_Lite from the repository ?  
>> [y/n]: y
>>    \_ Downloading  
>> http://openmicroscopy.org/packages/perl/OLE-Storage_Lite-0.14.tar.gz  
>> [FAILURE].
>>
>>
>> Errors executing task: Unable to download package, see  
>> PerlModuleTask.log for details. at (eval 35) line 1
>>
>> at ./install.pl line 80
>>        main::run_tasks() called at ./install.pl line 249
>> # Looks like your test died before it could output anything.
>> -----
>>
>> From PerlModuleTask.log:
>>
>> -----
>> ERRORS DOWNLOADING MODULE -- OUTPUT FROM DOWNLOADER "wget -nv -N":  
>> "http://openmicroscopy.org/packages/perl/OLE-Storage_Lite 
>> -0.14.tar.gz:
>> 15:00:46 ERROR 404: Not Found.
>> -----
>>
>> Declining to install that module, the Spreadsheet::ParseExcel test  
>> then failed after downloading and installing it:
>>
>> -----
>> Would you like to install Spreadsheet::ParseExcel from the repository  
>> ? [y/n]: y
>>    \_ Downloading  
>> http://openmicroscopy.org/packages/perl/Spreadsheet-ParseExcel 
>> -0.2603.tar.gz [SUCCESS].
>>    \_ Unpacking [SUCCESS].
>>    \_ Configuring [SUCCESS].
>>    \_ Compiling [SUCCESS].
>>    \_ Testing [FAILURE].
>> Unable to test module, see PerlModuleTask.log for details. at (eval  
>> 35) line 1
>> Some tests failed, would you like to continue anyway ? [y/n]: y
>>    \_ Installing [SUCCESS].
>> -----
>>
>> After a few more steps, the installer finally dies at the same place  
>> as the 2.4 installer. So it looks like I'm stuck for now.
>>
>> Mike, a student we have working on some sysadmin tasks, was able to  
>> get further into the install on another fresh Debian testing i386  
>> machine, but eventually started running into errors with DBD::Pg. I  
>> recently noticed the note on the prerequisites page about some  
>> versions of DBD::Pg being unreliable, so I've asked him to verify  
>> which version we are using (what's the easiest way to do that?).
>>
>> I will be on vacation for the next couple of weeks, but I have CC'ed  
>> Mike on this email. He will continue investigating these installation  
>> issues, and hopefully get them resolved, so that I can announce our  
>> OME-TIFF work when I return. (I accidently hosed skyking, the box  
>> containing our only working installation of OME from CVS. I  
>> reinstalled Debian, but as described above I haven't been able to get  
>> OME working on it again. I can't test our OME-TIFF sample data with  
>> the OME-TIFF importer until we get OME working first.)
>>
>> Thanks a lot for any assistance!
>>
>> -Curtis
>> _______________________________________________
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>> ome-devel at lists.openmicroscopy.org.uk
>> http://lists.openmicroscopy.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/ome-devel
>>
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