Question

I’m trying to install Plone-4.1.2 on a RH Enterprise server which I am not the administrator of.

Linux ddwap01 2.6.18-194.el5 #1 SMP Tue Mar 16 21:52:39 EDT 2010 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I can install GNU libraries in a non standard location (/public/local vs /usr/local), but I think this is causing more difficulties than anticipated. The configure script (preflight) is failing on several libraries using the autoconf generated command lines:

gcc -o conftest -g -O2 conftest.c -lssl

gcc -o conftest -g -O2 conftest.c -lreadline

After some online searching, I was able to get the test programs to compile by manipulating the linked libraries:

gcc -o conftest -g -O2 conftest.c -lssl -lcrypto

gcc -o conftest -g -O2 conftest.c -lreadline -lncurses

How do I convey this information to the Plone installation script, or will there more problems that make installing impossible. I’ve tried regenerating the preflight autoconf script by compiling and installing autoconf and then using the preflight.ac source file to generate a preflight script specific to the server I’m installing to, but this has had no affect on the install.sh outcome. The previous Plone 3.3.5 installation completed without problems.

The Plone site suggested asking technical questions here on stackoverflow, so if there is a better venue, please let me know.

---

The problem above was resolved by adding the following to the environment:

export CPATH=/public/local/include
export LDFLAGS=-L/public/local/lib
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=:/public/local/lib
export LIBRARY_PATH=/public/local/lib
export LIBS="-lcrypto -lncurses"

This has led to a new error condition. The first installation attempt fails with the following error:

[redacted]@[redacted]:Plone-4.1.2-UnifiedInstaller> ./install.sh --password=[redacted] --target=/public/local/plone-4.1.2 --user=[redacted] standalone
Stand-Alone Zope Instance selected

Detailed installation log being written to /public/plone/Plone-4.1.2-UnifiedInstaller/install.log

Rootless install method chosen. Will install for use by system user sysapps

Installing Plone 4.1.2 at /public/local/plone-4.1.2

Compiling and installing jpeg local libraries ...
Skipping zlib build
Skipping readline build
Installing Python 2.6.7. This takes a while...
Patching for thread size
Installing distribute...
Failed: This Python does not have ssl support.

***Aborting***
The built Python does not meet the requirements for Zope/Plone.
Check messages and the install.log to find out what went wrong.

The second installation attempt finds the broken Python and skips over the installation step:

...
Python found at /public/local/plone-4.1.2/Python-2.6/bin/python; Skipping Python install.
Unpacking buildout cache to /public/local/plone-4.1.2/buildout-cache
Compiling .py files in egg cache
Copying Plone-docs
Your platform's xml2/xslt are missing or out-of-date. We'll need to build them.
Copying buildout skeleton
Fixing up bin/buildout
Building lxml with static libxml2/libxslt; this takes a while...
Building Zope/Plone; this takes a while...
...

I assume this will not result in a healthy Plone installation. Any more help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Steve

Answer 1

As you may have already figured out, preflight is just an autoconf-generated configure script with another name (to prevent confusion). It’s run by the Unified Installer’s ./install.sh to try to figure out what libraries, headers and tools are available.

That means that you can run ./preflight --help to get configure style options for setting environment variables for things like CFLAGS and LDFLAGS. If you set these before running the install.sh script, they should be honored.