[Glass] Install GemStone in a Testing Environment

[Dale Henrichs via Glass]

On 6/17/16 1:51 PM, BrunoBB via Glass wrote:
> Dale,
>
> Ok, i think i have enough information.
>
> The context of this question is:
> I have to install GS on a VM that is NOT managed by me. This VM is behind
> "hundreds" of Firewall and so on...
>
> The VM does not reach some site and ftps (which is a networking problem
> nothing to do with GS). As the networking problem is being solved i was
> trying to do a "off line installation". I though if i do not install tode
> then the installation will be more simple. Then connect via Topaz and
> execute the Metacello script to install my packages
>
> A more accurate question: is possible to perform the "download" on one
> machine and then copy the file to other machine to perform the actual
> installation there ? [some kind of offline installation]
>
possible ... yes, BUT ...

At the moment it isn't possible to bootstrap glass without hitting the 
network and projects like Seaside still need to hit the network for some 
things ... I've got an open bug on this issue[1], but it isn't as easy 
as I had hoped ... For example, GsUpgrader can be used to upgrade stones 
without having to hit the network (except for the first time), but I 
have found that when this is done, I run into issues upgrading the stone 
... so I've turned off this "feature."

Ultimately the real solution will be to get all projects managed by git. 
When you have a local git clone the system can be repeatedly installed 
without hitting the network ...

You could try creating a stone in GsDevKit_home on a machine with 
network access, then shutdown the stone and netldi and then scp (or zip) 
the entire directory structure (preserving symbolic links) to another 
machine buried behind firewalls, but I would be concerned that there 
might be some directory paths that end up being expanded and stored 
somewhere ... with that said, I think that the paths could be found and 
repaired but I just don't know how much work it would entail ... If you 
could arrange for the $GS_HOME to be identical on both machines, I would 
think that things would have a good chance of working ...

Of course you will still need to somehow get the machine setup with the 
prerequisites for GemStone ... the 32 bit libraries and X packages don't 
apply. Unzip, curl and a few of the other utilities aren't really needed 
(if you are not hitting the network), but pam, glibc and ssl are still 
needed for the base GemStone to function ...

If you could create vm in an networked environment then I would think 
that you could move the whole vm behind your firewall and have a very 
good chance of having everything work as expected ...

Dale

[1] https://github.com/GsDevKit/GsDevKit_home/issues/54