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[aperi-dev] notes on R 0.3 installation problems
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Hello All,
So I spent part of the last two days installing R 0.3 on a
(Windows) machine in our lab that previously had R.02 running successfully.
Here are my comments on the installation process and documentation (note my
installation ultimately failed and I do not have a running Aperi R 0.3 on this
machine currently):
- First off, we need a GUI
installer, stat. This is the first experience people will have with the
product, and it is a painful and time-consuming one to say the least.
Following the instructions obsessively, spending 2 afternoons and then
finding out that my install had failed and the recommended recourse is to
re-install everything was not smile-inducing. If I was trying out Aperi as
a potential customer instead of being actively involved with this
community in my current vendor role, I would have walked away from Aperi
at that point and never looked back. If we want this to be a viable
alternative to existing management applications out there, then we need to
have a user experience that is AT LEAST equal to what other software
provides: namely, a GUI-based installer.
OK, on to problems/areas of confusion I ran into with the
install as it stands today. I followed the installation instructions on the
wiki (whoever made them did a great job in general, thought I’d mention
that since I spend the rest of this note complaining!) and so I will organize
my comments according to the steps in the installation instructions that
represent them.
- SECTION 4: INSTALL APERI
STORAGE MANAGER FILES, STEP 4 (DOWNLOAD BIRT RUNTIME 2.1.2 SUBSECTION):
When unzipping the contents of the birt runtime zip into my local
directory structure I created the birt-runtime-2_1_2 directory as
recommended and unzipped to that location. The .zip archive already
contains a top level folder with that name so when I unzipped I had two
nested folders in my directory structure with the same name. This meant
that trying to copy/paste as much of the command line code examples as I
could to alleviate the lack of a GUI installer did not work since the
example file structure for the birt files did not contain the two nested
levels of folders with the same name. The instructions should either A) not
recommend creating the birt runtime directory but should just have people
unzip the contents directly under their C: drive to match the structure of
the command examples for easier copy/paste, B) instruct people to delete
the second level of directory structure they created so that their
structure matches the examples, or C) eliminate the top-level folder in
the .zip archive so that people, when they unzip to the recommended
location, have the correct directory structure in place. Note that the
Aperi Storage Manager .zip file that was the first thing I downloaded as
part of this installation does not have this same parent directory as the
rest of these archives do and just contained the necessary files and
directories without a superfluous parent directory getting in the way. I
found this problem several times in the install instructions and will note
them all, but later references to this problem will just refer back to
here rather than re-stating the problem and recommended solution
- SECTION 4: INSTALL APERI
STORAGE MANAGER FILES, STEP 4 (DOWNLOAD DOJO TOOLKIT 0.4.2 SUBSECTION):
The instructions suggest you unzip the file to one location and then copy
it to a second location. Why not just have people unzip the file directly
to the second location where it belongs? That is what I did and it worked
out fine (unless this one place where I deviated slightly from the
instructions caused the missing .dll that was my later undoing?). Also
note the same problem as mentioned above with the instructions resulting in
an extra layer of directory structure.
- SECTION 4: INSTALL APERI
STORAGE MANAGER FILES, STEP 8 (SUB-STEP 1 IN THE INSTRUCTIONS FOR
MODIFYING THE DTDs): The instructions list the directory structure as
having a folder called “aperi-report” but it is actually
“aperi-reports” and this is important when you are forcing
people to use the command line or find things in their file system
themselves instead of providing a GUI installer. You can’t ask users
to figure out that the folders you mention don’t exist not because
of a problem but because of a typo.
- SECTION 4: INSTALL APERI
STORAGE MANAGER FILES, STEP 8 (SUB-STEP 3 IN THE INSTRUCTIONS FOR
MODIFYING THE DTDs): Same typo issue: “eporting” should be
“reporting” please.
- SECTION 5.2: USE THE
CONFIGURATOR (REGULAR MODE), STEP 11: I typed YES earlier to automatically
download the 3rd party libraries and then never got the request
from the CLI to select my mirror sites. After I had said Yes, tons of
stuff just started scrolling by in the command prompt window. Then I
finally got the “Aperi configuration is complete” message as
described at the end of Section 5.4.
- SECTION 6.1: START THE APERI
STORAGE MANAGER SERVER, AGENT, REPORT SERVER, AND DATABASE REPOSITORY:
This is the first indication I had that everything was not hunky-dory with
my install. Entering the “aperi” command generated the second
CLI window to start the derby server. I kept waiting for it to tell me to
hit any key like the instructions said, then realized that the derby
window opened on top of the window where I had typed the aperi command and
was obscuring my view of that window where the instruction to hit any key
awaited me. Can somebody anchor those windows so they don’t open on
top of each other? Everything still seemed basically OK at that point, but
when I hit a key to start the data server, I got the error I mentioned in
today’s meeting, and it was the same for the rest of the windows as
well, though some windows generated a ton of messages while others just
sat at the osgi< prompt. I am attaching a file to this message with
screenshots of everything I am mentioning in this bullet, please look them
over to see the error messages indicating I was missing a .dll and a
reinstall was required (NOT happy-making, again if I was curious about
Aperi as an end user this would end my curiosity for good at this point
and a customer would be lost). Note again that I had R 0.2 running
successfully on this same machine prior to this installation.
- SECTION 7: SHUT DOWN APERI
STORAGE MANAGER: The instructions mention the preferred order for closing
down components, but the reporting.bat window is not included in this
list.
I will be happy to cut and paste each of these problems
individually into bugzilla if someone (Todd?) can provide me with instructions.
I’m not really a bug-filer in my day-to-day existence and so am not
familiar with this (lucky me!).
Thanks everyone. Hope this isn’t too long-winded or
confusing.
Jenny
Jenny Monesson, Ph.D.
Solutions Architecture
LSI - Engenio Storage Group, Austin TX
jenny.monesson@xxxxxxx
Voice: (512) 794-3723
Fax: (512) 794-3702
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