I must start by saying I do not see this as an Alpha 5 issue but is by way of a warning to others.
We recently went to install an Alpha 5 installation at a clients with 5 workstations running XP connected to what we were told was a windows server.
I did in fact turn out to be a Linux Server running Redhat Enterprise 5 overlaid with Samba 3.033.
We simply could not get Alpha to run on this configuration as everytime we tried to start our application Alpha seemed to be looking for the first DBF file it needs in the folder
C:\DOCUMENTS & SETTINGS\APPLICATION DATA\USERNAME\ALPHA5 VERSION XX where clearly there are no dbf files
We then tried running the application on the local drive and immediately hit the same problem.
Normally when deploying an application we simply copy the folder we have created the application in to the target drive either on the local machine or a shared folder on a server.
We have been doing this for about 15 years without once having a problem.
Curiously the only way we could get the application to function on the local drive was to use the install builder to create an "application files only" installation and run it on the local drive.
When we did this the application performed as we would normally expect.
I find this very strange because as far as I can see the installation exe simply seems to create the folder and unzip the files into it - I assume it only writes to the registry if a full installation including the runtime files is created and deployed. (Note can Alpha confirm exactly what an "application files only" installation does).
After several hours of trying all sorts of tricks including referencing the target drive by 1) its full UNC path and 2) by including the IP address we were forced to conceed defeat.
The whole experience confirmed what I have always thought and that is open source software is for geeks and hobbyists and should NEVER be used in a commercial working environment.
Has anybody else ever seen this behaviour.
Bob
We recently went to install an Alpha 5 installation at a clients with 5 workstations running XP connected to what we were told was a windows server.
I did in fact turn out to be a Linux Server running Redhat Enterprise 5 overlaid with Samba 3.033.
We simply could not get Alpha to run on this configuration as everytime we tried to start our application Alpha seemed to be looking for the first DBF file it needs in the folder
C:\DOCUMENTS & SETTINGS\APPLICATION DATA\USERNAME\ALPHA5 VERSION XX where clearly there are no dbf files
We then tried running the application on the local drive and immediately hit the same problem.
Normally when deploying an application we simply copy the folder we have created the application in to the target drive either on the local machine or a shared folder on a server.
We have been doing this for about 15 years without once having a problem.
Curiously the only way we could get the application to function on the local drive was to use the install builder to create an "application files only" installation and run it on the local drive.
When we did this the application performed as we would normally expect.
I find this very strange because as far as I can see the installation exe simply seems to create the folder and unzip the files into it - I assume it only writes to the registry if a full installation including the runtime files is created and deployed. (Note can Alpha confirm exactly what an "application files only" installation does).
After several hours of trying all sorts of tricks including referencing the target drive by 1) its full UNC path and 2) by including the IP address we were forced to conceed defeat.
The whole experience confirmed what I have always thought and that is open source software is for geeks and hobbyists and should NEVER be used in a commercial working environment.
Has anybody else ever seen this behaviour.
Bob
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