[omniORB] Newbie having win32 installation problems

Michael Kenniston mkenniston at cs.depaul.edu
Tue Oct 14 15:05:33 BST 2003


Hello,

I teach a graduate class in distributed systems, and I'm trying to show
my students how CORBA can be used to call between languages.
We've already done some work in Java (using Sun's JDK and ORB),
but now it would be nice to show interoperability with Python.

I'm trying to get ActivePython to work with omniORB, and I'm having
a lot of trouble getting the installation to work right.  Although I have
some CORBA experience, I'm a complete novice with Python.

The context here is that the students all have Windows machines of
various flavors (9x, NT, 2K, XP), and I cannot rely on them having
anything other than standard Windows stuff and a reasonably recent
JDK.  I specifically cannot rely on them having a C++ compiler (most
of them probably do, but not all the same one) or any cygwin or gnu
tools.  (Note: I do have cygwin on /my/ machine, but I'm running in
a vanilla "cmd" window rather than using bash so that I'll see the same
thing my students see.)

We have installed ActivePython 2.2.2 so that part seems to work fine.
However, when I install omniORB and try to compile an idl file, I get
the following:

=======
C:\Courses\AY2004-Autumn-DS520\pythoneg1>omniidl -bpython example_echo.idl
omniidl: Could not import back-end 'python'
omniidl: Maybe you need to use the -p option?
omniidl: (The error was 'No module named python')

C:\Courses\AY2004-Autumn-DS520\pythoneg1>
=======

The problem is probably something simple that I did wrong or
didn't do at all, but after looking through a lot of the documentation
I'm stumped as to exactly what it is.

Here is what my C:\ directory looks like, so you can see
where I put omniORB and Python22, and also a dump of
all my environment variables:

=======
C:\Courses\AY2004-Autumn-DS520\pythoneg1>dir c:\
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 40D3-D8F6

 Directory of c:\

11/08/2002  04:45 PM                 2 AUTOEXEC.BAT
06/17/2003  12:46 PM    <DIR>          Books
10/30/2002  10:49 AM                 0 CONFIG.SYS
09/25/2003  04:03 PM    <DIR>          Courses
10/14/2003  11:28 AM    <DIR>          cygwin
05/29/2003  04:44 PM    <DIR>          Documents and Settings
10/08/2003  03:10 PM    <DIR>          Downloads
03/20/2003  06:40 PM    <DIR>          DS52-presentations
07/23/2003  11:04 PM    <DIR>          EPSONREG
07/23/2003  03:10 PM    <DIR>          gs
06/13/2003  10:48 AM    <DIR>          Hammond
09/18/2003  11:22 AM    <DIR>          j2sdk1.4.2_01
09/26/2003  07:32 AM    <DIR>          junit3.8.1
08/07/2003  09:39 AM    <DIR>          LanguageDoctor
07/22/2003  03:25 PM    <DIR>          maxima
04/04/2003  05:32 PM    <DIR>          mono-0.23
03/17/2003  07:20 PM    <DIR>          MRCAD
07/25/2003  10:55 PM    <DIR>          msk
02/05/2003  06:06 PM    <DIR>          NET
10/13/2003  09:42 PM    <DIR>          omniORB-4.0.2
10/14/2003  11:31 AM    <DIR>          omniORBpy-2.2
10/14/2003  12:43 PM    <DIR>          pavfn
10/06/2003  12:56 PM    <DIR>          Program Files
10/14/2003  10:39 AM    <DIR>          Python22
09/18/2003  11:55 AM    <DIR>          rrpix
10/08/2003  04:37 PM                 0 s218
10/14/2003  10:39 AM                 0 s294
08/11/2003  11:23 AM            36,181 service.txt
10/13/2003  08:46 PM                 0 sq0
01/10/2003  03:26 PM    <DIR>          temp
01/22/2003  12:19 PM    <DIR>          Trainz
05/29/2003  01:37 PM    <DIR>          trendmicro
09/25/2003  04:21 PM    <DIR>          TRENG
02/21/2003  06:04 PM                 0 VDM5.tmp
02/21/2003  06:04 PM                 0 VDM6.tmp
10/06/2003  12:59 PM    <DIR>          WINDOWS
05/21/2003  06:12 PM                21 WINDOWSOND.exe
10/06/2003  12:59 PM    <DIR>          WUTemp
               9 File(s)         36,204 bytes
              29 Dir(s)  20,074,143,744 bytes free

C:\Courses\AY2004-Autumn-DS520\pythoneg1>set
ALLUSERSPROFILE=C:\Documents and Settings\All Users
APPDATA=C:\Documents and Settings\mkenniston\Application Data
CLASSPATH=.;c:\junit3.8.1;c:\junit3.8.1\junit.jar
CLIENTNAME=Console
CommonProgramFiles=C:\Program Files\Common Files
COMPUTERNAME=KENNISTONXPN
ComSpec=C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe
HOMEDRIVE=C:
HOMEPATH=\Documents and Settings\mkenniston
INCLUDE=C:\Program Files\Microsoft.NET\FrameworkSDK\include\;C:\Program 
Files\Mi
crosoft Visual Studio .NET\Vc7\include\
JAVA_HOME=c:\j2sdk1.4.2_01
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=C:\omniORB-4.0.2\lib\x86_win32
LIB=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET\Vc7\lib\;C:\Program 
Files\Micr
osoft.NET\FrameworkSDK\Lib\
LOGONSERVER=\\LEMOND
NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS=1
OMNIORB_CONFIG=C:\omniORBpy-2.2\config
OS=Windows_NT
Path=C:\omniORB-4.0.2\bin\x86_win32;C:\Python22\.;C:\Program 
Files\Microsoft.NET
\FrameworkSDK\Bin\;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 
.NET\Common7\IDE\;C:
\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.0.3705\;C:\Program Files\Microsoft 
Visual St
udio 
.NET\Vc7\bin\;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;c:\pa
vfn\exch;c:\pavfn\platinum;C:\j2sdk1.4.2_01\bin;C:\Program 
Files\erl5.2.3.3\bin
PATHEXT=.COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;.py;.pyc;.pyo;.pyw;.pys

PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE=x86
PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER=x86 Family 15 Model 2 Stepping 4, GenuineIntel
PROCESSOR_LEVEL=15
PROCESSOR_REVISION=0204
ProgramFiles=C:\Program Files
PROMPT=$P$G
PYTHONPATH=C:\Python22\lib\site-packages;C:\omniORBpy-2.2\lib\python;C:\omniORBp
y-2.2\lib\x86_win32
SESSIONNAME=Console
SystemDrive=C:
SystemRoot=C:\WINDOWS
TEMP=C:\DOCUME~1\MKENNI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp
TMP=C:\DOCUME~1\MKENNI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp
USERDNSDOMAIN=CSTCIS.CTI.DEPAUL.EDU
USERDOMAIN=CSTCIS
USERNAME=mkenniston
USERPROFILE=C:\Documents and Settings\mkenniston
windir=C:\WINDOWS

C:\Courses\AY2004-Autumn-DS520\pythoneg1>
=======

Here is the procedure that I followed (after installing ActivePython 2.2).
Hopefully someone can spot what I'm doing wrong here.  (These are the
directions that I'm going to give my students, but not until they work. :-)

Create a PYTHONPATH environment variable (if you don't already have one)
and add "C:\Python22\lib\site-packages".

Download omniORB-4.0.2-x86_win32.zip and 
omniORBpy-2.2-x86_win32-python3.2.zip
from http://omniorb.sourceforge.net/download.html.

Unzip omniORB-4.0.2-x86_win32.zip.  Move the resulting omniORB4.0.2 
directory
to a convenient location; for the purposes of this example we'll assume you
move it into "c:\".

Edit your PATH environment variable to include 
"C:\omniORB-4.0.2\bin\x86_win32".
Edit your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable (or create one) to include
"C:\omniORB-4.0.2\lib\x86_win32".

Unzip omniORBpy-2.2-x86_win32-python3.2.zip.  Move the resulting 
omniORBpy-2.2
directory to a convenient location; for the purpose of this example we'll
assume you move it into "C:\".

Edit your PYTHONPATH environment variable to include 
"C:\omniORBpy-2.2\lib\python"
and "C:\omniORBpy-2.2\lib\x86_win32".

Create an OMNIORB_CONFIG environment variable and set it to 
"C:\omniORBpy-2.2\config".

Create a file called "c:\onmiORBpy-2.2\config" and put this single line 
in it:
InitRef = NameService=corbaname::localhost

Create a working directory, cd there, and create an idl file.  Compile 
it with
omniidl -bpython filename.idl
This is where I get the error described at the beginning.

If anyone can help I'd really appreciate it.  (Sorry for the length of 
this message,
but better too much info about a problem than too little.)

-- 
- Michael Kenniston
  Visiting Assistant Professor
  DePaul University, School of Computer Science,
    Telecommunications, and Information Systems
  mkenniston at cs.depaul.edu





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