Confusing Windows installation documentation: versions of prerequisites

[mtbcarroll]

http://www.openmicroscopy.org/site/support/omero4-staging/sysadmins/windows/server-installation.html tells me not to mix 32-bit and 64-bit prerequisites and then later on tells me to install 32-bit Python. If that's true, it would have been rather easier to tell me from the start to go 32-bit.

Also, it tells me not to install Ice 3.5, then links me to a ZeroC download page which offers only Ice 3.5.

[hflynn]

Who is best equipped to open a PR for this? I can fix the Ice issue but I don't know what best to recommend for the 32 vs 64 bit issue.

[jamoore]

First this will probably just need really accurate testing of the different options. What works? (and for our own benefit, how does each combination go wrong so we can detect the problem for others)

[hflynn]

Ok, I am going to open a PR to update the Ice link and then disown this ticket. Maybe it should be moved to deployment or something?

[hflynn]

PRs open on all 3 branches to update Ice download link (631-633) - disowning ticket for someone to test the rest of the doc properly.

[bpindelski]

Mark: the confusing sentence stems from ​https://trac.openmicroscopy.org.uk/ome/ticket/10769. I see two solutions here:

• quick one: we reformat the install introduction text and remove the bold text and make it explicit to use only 32bit Python,
• slower one: we re-test Python installation on Windows with 64-bit only packages from ​http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/ and 64bit Python. This might be easier/harder (?) for users to follow. We would have to verify that OMERO is happy with the python libs from the unofficial source.

Josh: any suggestions?

[mtbcarroll]

My notebook's Windows side currently has 64-bit prerequisites installed. I didn't get as far yet as trying to build and run OMERO but could make time to next week if that helps.

[bpindelski]

Mark: If that is fine with the 5.0 release timeline, then that would be great to test. As this is the sysadmin doc, I'd first try if you can start up the server downloaded from hudson, and then see if the source code build works fine. Assigning to you for testing.

[mtbcarroll]

My 64-bit-only attempts so far have bin\omero telling me,

DLL load failed: %1 is not a valid Win32 application.

I wonder if I've failed to have it properly find pywin32 or something. I do have the 64-bit Ice binaries earlier in the PATH.

[jamoore]

What does:

python -c "import Ice"

get you?
~J.

[mtbcarroll]

Aha:

D:\mtbc\src\openmicroscopy\dist\bin>python -c "import Ice"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "D:\ZeroC\Ice-3.4.2\python\Ice.py", line 47, in <module>
    import IcePy
ImportError: DLL load failed: %1 is not a valid Win32 application.

D:\mtbc\src\openmicroscopy\dist\bin>

Optimistically:

D:\mtbc\src\openmicroscopy\dist\bin>set pythonpath=d:\zeroc\ice-3.4.2\python\x64;d:\zeroc\ice-3.4.2\python

D:\mtbc\src\openmicroscopy\dist\bin>python
Python 2.7.6 (default, Nov 10 2013, 19:24:24) [MSC v.1500 64 bit (AMD64)] on win
32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import Ice
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "d:\zeroc\ice-3.4.2\python\x64\Ice.py", line 47, in <module>
    import IcePy
ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.
>>>

even with Ice's bin\x64 before bin in the PATH.

[mtbcarroll]

Simon, do you have any thoughts on this? I didn't know if you might have more success. I can open a PR to change the docs to suggesting just stick with all-32-bit for now if we can't get anything else working (well, probably the JRE can still be 64-bit).

[spli]

5.0 PR: ​https://github.com/openmicroscopy/ome-documentation/pull/661

I tested a 64 bit Python setup on a clean Windows 7 VirtualBox? VM.

Copies of the binaries installed are on squig ome:team/simon/windows/python_64bit_omero/:

Ice-3.4.2.msi
jre-7u51-windows-x64.exe
postgresql-9.3.2-3-windows-x64.exe

python-2.6.6.amd64.msi
matplotlib-1.3.1.win-amd64-py2.6.exe
numexpr-2.3.win-amd64-py2.6.exe
numpy-MKL-1.8.0.win-amd64-py2.6.exe
Pillow-2.3.0.win-amd64-py2.6.exe
pyparsing-2.0.1.win-amd64-py2.6.exe
python-dateutil-2.2.win-amd64-py2.6.exe
pytz-2013.9.win-amd64-py2.6.exe
pywin32-218.win-amd64-py2.6.exe
scipy-0.13.3.win-amd64-py2.6.exe
six-1.5.2.win-amd64-py2.6.exe
tables-3.1.0.win-amd64-py2.6.exe

OMERO.clients-5.0.0-rc2-ice35-b14.win.zip
OMERO.server-5.0.0-rc2-ice34-b14.zip

The following worked:

• omero admin start
• omero admin stop
• Connect via Insight
• omero web start in development mode
• Connect via Internet Explorer