Installing Python on a Windows 2000 Server

[Mike Moum]

Hi,

I'm a civil engineer who also doubles as chief programmer for technical
applications at my company. Most of our software is written in Visual
Basic because our VP in charge of I.T. likes to have "consistency", and
at the moment we're a Microsoft shop. He has assigned me the task of
developing an new application, the exact nature of which is not
important for my question. I told him that, in my opinion, that Visual
Basic was not the best choice for developing this application, and that
I wanted to use Python. After a bit of discussion of the pros and cons,
he said to go ahead. I managed to keep my jaw from hitting the floor. :>)

We have a central server array running Windows Server 2000 (I think
that's the right name; networking is not my specialty, but it's
definately Windows). Some of our workstations run Windows 2000; others
run Windows XP Pro. I would like to install Python on the server, and
run the application that I'll be developing from the workstations,
without having to install any Python components on the workstations
themselves. In other words, the Python executable, and the various
libraries, dll's, and what have you, as well as the application that I'm
developing, should all reside on the server. The only thing on the
workstations would be a shortcut to myapplication.py.

Does anyone know whether it is possible to do this? I've done some
Google searching, with no conclusive results, and poked about on
python.org, but haven't really been able to find anything. Normally I'd
be happy to just try it out and see what happens, but we're breaking new
ground here (this is an amazingly big step for our hide-bound IS
department!), so I'd like everything to go as smoothly as possible.

TIA,
Mike

 

[Steve Holden]

Hi,

I'm a civil engineer who also doubles as chief programmer for technical
applications at my company. Most of our software is written in Visual
Basic because our VP in charge of I.T. likes to have "consistency", and
at the moment we're a Microsoft shop. He has assigned me the task of
developing an new application, the exact nature of which is not
important for my question. I told him that, in my opinion, that Visual
Basic was not the best choice for developing this application, and that
I wanted to use Python. After a bit of discussion of the pros and cons,
he said to go ahead. I managed to keep my jaw from hitting the floor. :>)

We have a central server array running Windows Server 2000 (I think
that's the right name; networking is not my specialty, but it's
definately Windows). Some of our workstations run Windows 2000; others
run Windows XP Pro. I would like to install Python on the server, and
run the application that I'll be developing from the workstations,
without having to install any Python components on the workstations
themselves. In other words, the Python executable, and the various
libraries, dll's, and what have you, as well as the application that I'm
developing, should all reside on the server. The only thing on the
workstations would be a shortcut to myapplication.py.

Does anyone know whether it is possible to do this? I've done some
Google searching, with no conclusive results, and poked about on
python.org, but haven't really been able to find anything. Normally I'd
be happy to just try it out and see what happens, but we're breaking new
ground here (this is an amazingly big step for our hide-bound IS
department!), so I'd like everything to go as smoothly as possible.

TIA,
Mike

Mike:

Well done, sounds like you are in for a big success!

What you describe sounds like a pretty normal setup, assuming that there
is a network share accessible to all desktops that the Python binaries
can be located on.

Windows XP and 2000 run the same Python binaries, so there shouldn't be
any problems. If I'm wrong this message will bring Tim Peters into the
conversation, and his opinion can safely be regarded as authoritative
(right, Tim?).

regards
Steve

 

[Serge Orlov]

Hi,

I'm a civil engineer who also doubles as chief programmer for
technical applications at my company. Most of our software is written
in Visual Basic because our VP in charge of I.T. likes to have
"consistency", and at the moment we're a Microsoft shop. He has
assigned me the task of developing an new application, the exact
nature of which is not important for my question. I told him that, in
my opinion, that Visual Basic was not the best choice for developing
this application, and that I wanted to use Python. After a bit of
discussion of the pros and cons, he said to go ahead. I managed to
keep my jaw from hitting the floor. :>)
We have a central server array running Windows Server 2000 (I think
that's the right name; networking is not my specialty, but it's
definately Windows). Some of our workstations run Windows 2000; others
run Windows XP Pro. I would like to install Python on the server, and
run the application that I'll be developing from the workstations,
without having to install any Python components on the workstations
themselves. In other words, the Python executable, and the various
libraries, dll's, and what have you, as well as the application that
I'm developing, should all reside on the server. The only thing on the
workstations would be a shortcut to myapplication.py.

Does anyone know whether it is possible to do this? I've done some
Google searching, with no conclusive results, and poked about on
python.org, but haven't really been able to find anything. Normally
I'd be happy to just try it out and see what happens, but we're
breaking new ground here (this is an amazingly big step for our
hide-bound IS department!), so I'd like everything to go as smoothly
as possible.

Try Movable Python http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/movpy/
When you will be creating a shortcut to you application it shouldn't
point to yourapplication.py directly but rather at
\\yourserver\movpy\movpyw.exe \\yourserver\yourapp\yourapplication.py

Serge.

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22Martin_v=2E_L=F6wis=22?=]

We have a central server array running Windows Server 2000 (I think
that's the right name; networking is not my specialty, but it's
definately Windows). Some of our workstations run Windows 2000; others
run Windows XP Pro. I would like to install Python on the server, and
run the application that I'll be developing from the workstations,
without having to install any Python components on the workstations
themselves. In other words, the Python executable, and the various
libraries, dll's, and what have you, as well as the application that I'm
developing, should all reside on the server. The only thing on the
workstations would be a shortcut to myapplication.py.

I would encourage you to try an "administrative" (or "network")
installation. On the server, run msiexec /a python-2.4.1.msi.
This will unpack the MSI file, and create a new one. You need
to make the resulting installation a network share.

Then, on each workstation, you install the msi file on the share,
and specify that you want to run Python from the network share.

This mode of installation is only available since Python 2.4, and
very few people are probably using it, but I'd like to hear whether
it works (it should, in principle).

Regards,
Martin