Don’t ask why, but I was attempting to install Apache 2.2 on my Windows desktop tonight. Unfortunately after double-clicking the installer, it would give me the following error:

After quite a bit of hunting I found a rather odd solution. If you disable all of your network interfaces (I had two running) and try the installer again… it seems to work fine.

I have no idea why that works.

This looks interesting:

DirectPython is an open source C++ extension to the Python programming language which provides basic access to DirectX (9.0c) API, including Direct3D, DirectSound, DirectShow and DirectInput.

There are a few screenshots to look at as well.

Tim Golden’s Python Stuff is a list of helpful links that he has compiled, mostly having to do with using Python on Win32.

Via: Nikos Kouremenos

I’ve been playing with Cacti this week. The project has come a long way from when I first started using it, and I would now consider it one of the most powerful (free) monitoring/graphing packages currently available.

So tonight, now that all my Linux boxen are being monitored, I wanted to add my single Windows box. It turns out there is a SNMP component included in Windows 2000, you just need to install it. Here’s how to do it.

1. Find your Windows 2000 install CD. You’ll need it.

2. Start, Settings, Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, Add/Remove Windows Components

3. Select Management and Monitoring Tools

4. Hit Details, and check the box for Simple Network Management Protocol

5. Hit OK and Next, and walk through the installation wizard.

That’s it. Add the box as a new host device in Cacti using the Windows 2000/XP SNMP template and you are all set. Gotta love those pretty rrdtool graphs!

Now that I’m doing quite a bit of my Python work in Windows, I’ve been forced to use the cmd.exe shell. I’m used to using Bash, usually though PuTTY, so it’s not an easy or pleasant transition for me. One of the reasons is that by default Windows doesn’t have any command autocompletion by tapping the tab key. I could have sworn it used to work, but I guess not. Either way, it’s just silly to have to type out the huge filenames.

Well tonight I downloaded Tweak UI 1.33 (works fine in Windows 2000) and found out that you can indeed enable autocompletion:

Set both of those to “Tab” and you are all set. Not bad.

Richard Dooling wrote a quick guide showing how to install ActivePython and write the basic Hello World program in about seven minutes. For some reason it’s quite popular on Digg right now.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This was originally posted in April 2006 and has been deprecated. Check out my new/revised Django on Windows guide instead.

Django, TurboGears, Pylons, Zope, Quixote , Web.py…

There has been a proliferation of Python web frameworks lately, possibly due in part to the success of Ruby on Rails. I don’t claim to be an expert in web applications, but I have been playing around two of the frameworks: Django and TurboGears. I don’t think TurboGears could be any easier to install, and Django isn’t bad either. But getting an entire stack together to run Django on Windows could be non-obvious to a newcomer. So I decided to put together a tutorial on how to start from scratch and end up with a working Django install.

This guide covers installing Python (and required modules), Postgres, Apache, mod_python, and Django. Also, it includes steps to confirm that Django is working properly post-install. It does not, however, cover how to actually build web applications with the Django framework, as that is well beyond the scope of this guide. However, I do recommend checking out the official tutorial.

There are quite a few steps, so let’s get started…

(more…)

Pywinauto enables you to automate the Windows GUI. There are some known issues with IE, but it sounds pretty cool overall.

Nate pointed out a quote that I thought was worth repeating.

Quoth Paul Graham (emphasis added):

Lately companies have been paying more attention to open source. Ten years ago there seemed a real danger Microsoft would extend its monopoly to servers. It seems safe to say now that open source has prevented that. A recent survey found 52% of companies are replacing Windows servers with Linux servers.

More significant, I think, is which 52% they are. At this point, anyone proposing to run Windows on servers should be prepared to explain what they know about servers that Google, Yahoo, and Amazon don’t.

Indeed.