[Plone-docs] is "Installing a Plone buildout on Ubuntu" a useful how-to?

[Kees Hink]

For some time now, I've been keeping track (in a blog post) of the steps
required to install a Plone buildout on Ubuntu. I'm wondering if there might be
enough value in it to add is a a how-to on plone.org. I've added the how-to on
http://plone.org/documentation/kb/installing-a-plone-buildout-on-ubuntu

It might be useful:
- for people who are considering to install Plone on a Debian/Ubuntu server;
- in the situation where a Unified Installer is not yet available;
- to serve as a place to keep track of tricks people use to get/keep their
buildouts working, as these are now scattered over various blog posts

Ultimately, i'd like to share the document with other Ubuntu-using Plone devs,
and make it apply to other Linux distributions as well.

On the other hand, maybe there's no use for yet another how-to-install on
plone.org. In this case, I'll just keep it on as a blog post, and whoever knows
Google will find it.

Kees

[Israel Saeta Pérez]

Post by Kees Hink
For some time now, I've been keeping track (in a blog post) of the steps
required to install a Plone buildout on Ubuntu. I'm wondering if there might be
enough value in it to add is a a how-to on plone.org. I've added the how-to on
http://plone.org/documentation/kb/installing-a-plone-buildout-on-ubuntu
- for people who are considering to install Plone on a Debian/Ubuntu server;
- in the situation where a Unified Installer is not yet available;
- to serve as a place to keep track of tricks people use to get/keep their
buildouts working, as these are now scattered over various blog posts
Ultimately, i'd like to share the document with other Ubuntu-using Plone devs,
and make it apply to other Linux distributions as well.
On the other hand, maybe there's no use for yet another how-to-install on
plone.org. In this case, I'll just keep it on as a blog post, and whoever knows
Google will find it.

Hello Kees,

Although the policies for KB/manuals areas aren't approved yet, I'm
approving all (non-crap) content submitted to the KnowledgeBase (under
/documentation/kb in plone.org) as a rule of thumb.

I'd love to gather all these installation instructions in an unique,
all-platforms aware, beautiful installation manual (which can give us a
lot of marketing and evangelism points :), see
https://dev.plone.org/plone/ticket/9080. But as long as there isn't
anybody really stepping in to work on this, I prefer scattered
documentation to no documentation. So I've just published your howto.

Thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge,
Israel. :)

[David Hostetler]

I applaud your effort, but I would much prefer to see the energy spent on
plone installation docs be shepherded around general resources, rather than
distro-specific documents.

Regardless of whether we're talking about the universal installer, or a raw
from-scratch buildout, there are little to no distro-specific details
involved.

If there were separate how-to's for ubuntu, gentoo, debian, fedore, suse,
centos, etc.. they would be 99% identical, save for the very first step of
a buildout how-to which might describe getting python and virtualenv
installed via a native package manager, just so you could get the buildout
sandbox started. After that, your distro is fairly moot.

- to serve as a place to keep track of tricks people use to get/keep their

Post by Kees Hink
buildouts working, as these are now scattered over various blog posts

That in particular is a category of collective wisdom that I think would be
much better served in a general document than in something
distro-specific. Unless you mean that there are literally Ubuntu-specific
things that influence buildout frequently enough that it merits its own
document. But that seems unlikely.


regards,

-David

Post by Kees Hink
For some time now, I've been keeping track (in a blog post) of the steps
required to install a Plone buildout on Ubuntu. I'm wondering if there might be
enough value in it to add is a a how-to on plone.org. I've added the how-to on
http://plone.org/documentation/kb/installing-a-plone-buildout-on-ubuntu
- for people who are considering to install Plone on a Debian/Ubuntu server;
- in the situation where a Unified Installer is not yet available;
- to serve as a place to keep track of tricks people use to get/keep their
buildouts working, as these are now scattered over various blog posts
Ultimately, i'd like to share the document with other Ubuntu-using Plone devs,
and make it apply to other Linux distributions as well.
On the other hand, maybe there's no use for yet another how-to-install on
plone.org. In this case, I'll just keep it on as a blog post, and whoever knows
Google will find it.
Kees
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[Israel Saeta Pérez]

Post by David Hostetler
I applaud your effort, but I would much prefer to see the energy spent
on plone installation docs be shepherded around general resources,
rather than distro-specific documents.
Regardless of whether we're talking about the universal installer, or a
raw from-scratch buildout, there are little to no distro-specific
details involved.

I agree with that we should have a main general installation manual with
a section on distro-specific (and platform-specific where needed)
instructions.

But until we have this manual, I will welcome well-written howtos to
plone.org/documentation/kb.

-- israel

[Guy Heckman]

Kees,

I think that is a great idea. I've been doing the same (in a personal doc) the past week since I am moving from RHEL to Ubuntu hosts. I also have been through repairing a 3.2.2 buildout with the help of Chris Ewing's 3.1 howto and the assistance of a few nightowls in the IRC.

David,

While I agree that 99% of the docs would be the same, the bear is in those 1% of undocumented differences, that is where time gets wasted and people get frustrated. Most OS projects provide distro-specific setup instructions assuming no reqiurements are already installed. If someone is willing to put together the document to documentation standards, shouldn't it be made available? Even if it is just how to get the right bits and pieces of python installed. For instance, there is a bug in the Ubuntu 9.10 Python 2.4 PIL package that causes PIL to not function after system reboot, suffice it to say that there are couple added steps aside from the apt-get (aptitude) install of the appropriate packages.

Guy Heckman
Systems Design Specialist

Research, Instruction, & Information Technology Group
Smeal College of Business
The Pennsylvania State University

11 Business Building
University Park, PA 16802

Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Website: http://www.smeal.psu.edu
Email: ***@psu.edu<mailto:***@psu.edu>

On Jan 8, 2010, at 9:41 AM, David Hostetler wrote:

I applaud your effort, but I would much prefer to see the energy spent on plone installation docs be shepherded around general resources, rather than distro-specific documents.

Regardless of whether we're talking about the universal installer, or a raw from-scratch buildout, there are little to no distro-specific details involved.

If there were separate how-to's for ubuntu, gentoo, debian, fedore, suse, centos, etc.. they would be 99% identical, save for the very first step of a buildout how-to which might describe getting python and virtualenv installed via a native package manager, just so you could get the buildout sandbox started. After that, your distro is fairly moot.

- to serve as a place to keep track of tricks people use to get/keep their
buildouts working, as these are now scattered over various blog posts

That in particular is a category of collective wisdom that I think would be much better served in a general document than in something distro-specific. Unless you mean that there are literally Ubuntu-specific things that influence buildout frequently enough that it merits its own document. But that seems unlikely.


regards,

-David



On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 08:21, Kees Hink <***@gw20e.com<mailto:***@gw20e.com>> wrote:
For some time now, I've been keeping track (in a blog post) of the steps
required to install a Plone buildout on Ubuntu. I'm wondering if there might be
enough value in it to add is a a how-to on plone.org<http://plone.org/>. I've added the how-to on
http://plone.org/documentation/kb/installing-a-plone-buildout-on-ubuntu

It might be useful:
- for people who are considering to install Plone on a Debian/Ubuntu server;
- in the situation where a Unified Installer is not yet available;
- to serve as a place to keep track of tricks people use to get/keep their
buildouts working, as these are now scattered over various blog posts

Ultimately, i'd like to share the document with other Ubuntu-using Plone devs,
and make it apply to other Linux distributions as well.

On the other hand, maybe there's no use for yet another how-to-install on
plone.org<http://plone.org/>. In this case, I'll just keep it on as a blog post, and whoever knows
Google will find it.

Kees

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[Kees Hink]

Okay, off to a (hesitant) start then...

I would like for the document to become more distro-independent, or even
cross-platform. Let's see if we can gradually improve on it, without losing its
current quality, which i think is that it tells you exactly what you need to
do, on one page.

I've added Maurits (van Rees) and Alex (Clark) as people who can edit. If you
know anyone else who might want to contribute, please let me know so i can add
them.

Kees

Post by Kees Hink
For some time now, I've been keeping track (in a blog post) of the steps
required to install a Plone buildout on Ubuntu. I'm wondering if there might be
enough value in it to add is a a how-to on plone.org. I've added the how-to on
http://plone.org/documentation/kb/installing-a-plone-buildout-on-ubuntu
- for people who are considering to install Plone on a Debian/Ubuntu server;
- in the situation where a Unified Installer is not yet available;
- to serve as a place to keep track of tricks people use to get/keep their
buildouts working, as these are now scattered over various blog posts
Ultimately, i'd like to share the document with other Ubuntu-using Plone devs,
and make it apply to other Linux distributions as well.
On the other hand, maybe there's no use for yet another how-to-install on
plone.org. In this case, I'll just keep it on as a blog post, and whoever knows
Google will find it.
Kees
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Take advantage of Verizon's best-in-class app development support
A streamlined, 14 day to market process makes app distribution fast and easy
Join now and get one step closer to millions of Verizon customers
http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-dev2dev