[Zope] Moving Zope data from Wintel to Sparc 64

Jerry.Spicklemire@IFLYATA.COM Jerry.Spicklemire@IFLYATA.COM
Wed, 8 Sep 1999 09:59:46 -0500


Help! 
I'm sorry if this winds up in the wrong place, but MS Exchange has a mind of
it's own on how to deal with Web based E-Mail , and I really need some
feedback on this, ASAP. Zope is hanging by a thread here . . .
Has anyone run into problems copying a Zope2 data set (ZODB3) from 32 bit
Intel to 64 bit Sparc systems? Zope runs fine on our shiny new Solaris box,
but my data, developed in Intel / Win 32 won't. We are using the binary Zope
install from Solaris 2.6, and my development platform is the binary for Win
32. 
I have been following the advice for "upgrading" from one rev. of Zope to
the next, which really just involves copying three data files, labeled
Data.fs, Data.fs.tmp, & Data.fs.lock into the same spot on the target
system. This worked fine when I need to move from Win'95 to NT, but fails
moving from NT to Sparc 64. 
Of course the Data.fs file appears to be the ZODB data, and when viewed with
a text editor certain "binary" characters are revealed, which our Unix admin
suspects may be dependent on the system processor. In other words, if the
hash table structure is influenced by the endian, or bit width of the
hardware, this would explain the problem we're seeing. 
I'm considering doing an "export" from my working Zope, and attempting an
"import" to Zope on Sun. If this is the correct way to go, can someone point
me to complete, step by step, How-To for the export / import process. Mostly
I've seen spotty references to this and I am so weary of trying things that
don't work because a How-To assumes I already know stuff that I don't. 
Until the new searchable site came up I've searched the egroups list daily
for topics such as "backup", "recovery", "replication", etc. It seems I am
the only one who ever needs such things. Or maybe I'm just using the wrong
names to search for . . . How do you spell "mission critical?" In our
environment we use separate units for develop / test, and production
systems. Moving data from one to the other is going to be a daily task, so
we really need to nail this one. 
Enterprise Objects sounds relevant to this, perhaps even in the short run.
Can someone release the rest of the scoop on this topic. Once again, all
I've seen are spotty teases, not enough to go to the boss with.
Also, if I'm way off base here, there are a couple of other things that are
odd. For instance, on the Sun/Sparc/Solaris box, the /Zope/var/ directory
has a file called Data.fs.in, that I've never seen on the Win32. Might this
also be related to the problem reading the Data.fs files?
Thanks for your consideration, 
Jerry S.