Installing OmeroGrid on Windows XP

Unlike all other supported platforms, the bin/omero script and OmeroGrid are not responsible for starting and stopping the OmeroBlitz server and other processes. Instead, that job is delegated to the native Windows service system. A brief explanation of doing this via the sc command is provided below.

Limitations

• This has only been tested on 32bit installations.
• The processor.py functionality will not be available on Windows in milestone:3.0-Beta3. See #1004 for more information.

Requirements

First, all of the requirements on OmeroInstallWindows should be fulfilled. The JBoss server should be able to contact a Postgres installation with an OMERO database. Then,

• Install Ice 3.2.1 from ZeroC. The test installation used the Ice-3.2.1-VC80.msi package.
• Install Python. The test installation used Python 2.5 from Active State. 2.5 is required.

Configuration

Because all OmeroGrid paths must be absolute under Windows, several files must be two files must be edited for server to start properly:

etc\Windows.cfg

Configuration file appended to the icegridnode --Ice.Config=... executable on Windows. Contains paths for log output, and for finding templates.xml.

templates.xml

Shared templates used in all OmeroGrid applications. The path definitions for both OmeroBlitz and for processor.py must be made absolute.

Installation

Installation is similar to the non-Windows platforms. From the installation directory:

   python bin\omero admin start
   python bin\omero admin deploy
   ...
   python bin\omero admin stop

The first command installs OmeroGrid as a Windows service with the name OMERO.master, and then calls start. Any further calls to admin start will fail since the application is already installed as a Windows service. Simiarly, admin stop first stops the service, and then calls uninstall. This can also only be done once.

All other interaction with the Windows service should take place via sc.

  sc start OMERO.master
  sc stop OMERO.master
  sc delete OMERO.master
  sc query OMERO.master

More information on the permissions necessary for the service, changing the user it runs as, etc. are available under WINDOWS_SERVICE.txt under your Ice installation, most likely C:\Ice-3.2.1\WINDOWS_SERVICE.txt

Using Windows GUI tools

Once the python bin\omero admin start command has installed the OMERO.master service, you can use Windows service tools:

• From the Control Panel
  
• Open the Administration Tools (here in Classic View)
  

Services Tool

• Then open the Services executable
  
• Here you can see OMERO.master running and also stop it
  
• And can edit its runtime properties
  
• Like which user it starts as
  

Event Viewier Tools

• Then go back to the Administration Tool window and open the Event Viewer
  
• where status events from OMERO.master will registered (though the log output from the server is in the configured directory)
  
• The server's running.
  

However, a bug in Windows will prevent the OMERO.master service from being removed while the service GUI is open. Close the GUI to finish the operation.