SynapseDirect

Hi All,

I've been running the Windows Synapse Client on  Puppy Linux  using  the  Wine.   Wine is a Linux program/system that provides a Windows software environment upon which to run Windows programs.  Wine is neither a Windows emulator or a virtual machine like VMware player, so doesn't require a user to provide their own Windows installation disc or Windows virtual image file.  Wine has been around for quite awhile now, and is able to run many Windows programs including MS Office 2003, IE Explorer 6, and hundreds of others.

Using the latest version of Wine on Puppy Linux, which is a popular and fast Linux Live CD distro, I've been able to run the SynapseEMRClient.exe and SynapseEMRServer.exe installers successfully.  I can launch synapse-server.exe OK, but cannot connect to the Firebird database due to inability to properly install the Firebird ODBC driver.  I can install the the native Windows odbc components contained in the version 2.8 MDAC_TYP.EXE file from Microsoft OK.  I cannot get the file odbcad32.exe to run, which is the ODBC applet that manages/adds odbc drivers.  There is a command line utility called odbcconf.exe that will run,  and a help screen to explain the options, but I cannot find enough information about it so far to use it to install the Firebird odbc driver.  I believe it would install the Firebird odbc driver if I knew enough about how to use it.  I tried using an "add-on" program environment called Wine Tools that I believe would also work to get the MDAC_TYP.EXE components working correctly, but have not been able to get that to work on Puppy Linux so far.

I have some ideas about next things to try, notably I'm going to try a Puppy Linux variant called pcPuppyOS that has Wine and Wine Tools pre-configured.

Does anyone on the forum know anything about how to configure native Windows odbc drivers with Wine on Linux?

 

Jerry

I've enquired on the Firebird support list a few days ago but haven't had a reply.

That'll be a toughie.

Jason:

That'll be a toughie.

 

 
I tried another wine odbc trick today. This time I made a full installation of MS Office 2003 into wine 0.9.53 running in Puppy Linux. To my surprise, it installed fine. Some stuff doesn't work right, like MS Access will launch but crashes upon trying to open any databases. Word, Powerpoint, and Excel all work fine. How about that. It didn't help my Firebird odbc problem, however. I was hoping that MS Office would install some more odbc components that would make in possible for me to launch odbcad32.exe, the odbc administrator applet, but it still crashes with not being able to launch the SQLManageDataSources applet. I tried some more tricks with the command line program odbcconf.exe, but could not successfully install the Firebird odbc driver yet.

It's a little thing that will drive me crazy occasionally until I solve it, and I'm pretty sure one of these days I will solve it.
 

From the Firebird odbc developer's list

Yes. It's possible. =))

I successfully setup my application to work under wine with Firebird ODBC Driver.

For that i install odbc, mdac28 and native firebird driver under wine.

Then I setup "Data Source" with odbcad32.

P.S. I install odbc and mdac using "winetricks" script \ 
(http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks) - very usefull.

 

Graham:

It was in reply to my question

The script Dan Kegel calls winetricks (that he sent to Graham) did help me to overcome some problems I was having setting up ODBC with the Firebird ODBC driver on Wine.  After some more consultation with Graham on chat and a fair bit of hacking today, I now have the Synapse server working on Puppy Linux using the latest version of Wine, ver 0.9.55 (they release a new version weekly).  The synapse client works easily under Wine of all versions I have tried, no hacking required.  I will do some more testing to make sure this arrangement is stable and confer with you all to figure out how to post this Live CD.   Puppy Linux is cool, and unique amongst the gobs of Linux distros.  It will run in all kinds of configurations, but is "intended" to run completely in RAM, so is generally lightening last, even on older more limited hardware.  It will boot from a USB keydrive, save to the same DVD/CD it was booted from in multi-session and many other nifty tricks.  It generally does a great job of hardware detection.  Anyway, I will personally enjoy having the Synapse server running on a Linux Live CD.

I'd love to experiment with Linux and Synapse.

I'd only need the Client thus far. 

This is a pretty important breakthrough.  Obviously we need to test the solution to see how stable it is, but if it works well, then we can distribute a working solution on a Live CD so that users can be up and running in minutes with less powerful hardware, and without the need for Windows 2003/2008 as a server.

Graham:

This is a pretty important breakthrough.  Obviously we need to test the solution to see how stable it is, but if it works well, then we can distribute a working solution on a Live CD so that users can be up and running in minutes with less powerful hardware, and without the need for Windows 2003/2008 as a server.

 

I did some testing with synapse-server.exe running on the new SynapseDirect-PuppyLinux Live CD.  I was able to easily connect to it with the synapse client running on one of my home network machines on Win2k.  Works great, and very fast I might add.   Adds data and saves it fine- everything appears to work fine so far.   I created a couple of nice launch icons for the Puppy Linux desktop.  Firebird has to be manually launched every time the Live CD is booted -- minor inconvenience to me, but I created a nice launch icon to make it easier.

The SynapseDirect- Puppy Linux Live CD is running all in RAM, but can mount any file system attached to the computer, such as any hard drive, USB keydrive, USB hard drive or whatever.  If someone wanted to literally have their "office in a box" they could use a USB hard drive system (say, one of  those new terabyte USB "book" hard drive systems you see that are popular now), either boot from it (with the SynapseDirect-PuppyLinux CD file system installed) or boot from the SynapseDirect-PuppyLinux CD itself and mount the "book" drive, make a symbolic link from appropriate spot in  the home file system to their ...\REMR.FDB file and everything would be saved to the attached USB hard drive.

 I personally use this method with a small 2.5 inch 160 gig USB hard drive to a "foreign computer" at my work.  Works great.


 

jparkdo:

  Firebird has to be manually launched every time the Live CD is booted -- minor inconvenience to me, but I created a nice launch icon to make it easier.

How about trying to see if you can get Firebird running natively on Linux, and that should solve the automatic launching of Firebird.

I think the path to the server would then be

localhost:/path/to/remr.fdb

I think you have to run it as root, and to start with the classic architecture.

Graham:

jparkdo:

  Firebird has to be manually launched every time the Live CD is booted -- minor inconvenience to me, but I created a nice launch icon to make it easier.

How about trying to see if you can get Firebird running natively on Linux, and that should solve the automatic launching of Firebird.

I think the path to the server would then be

localhost:/path/to/remr.fdb

I think you have to run it as root, and to start with the classic architecture.

 Later I will try getting the Linux version of Firebird to work.  At this point it's just a matter of having to launch two applications instead of one to start the synapse server, and both lauch very quickly.  I put an obvious help document on the desktop to assist new users.  I have both the Synapse Client and Server working on the same Live CD so it can be used for either purpose.