pcplantdb

["John Howe" <warlock@arashi.com>]

> I mentioned this because of earlier comments from John S that root access
> might
> be required to create Zope products, something he implied you would be
> doing a lot of.

Once again, it depends on the security model that Zope is installed with.
As I set it up for Chad, he "owns" the entire instance of his Zope. Common
Products are installed on a server level, and that is inherited by the
Zope instance.

Another model is to only give limited access to the instance and make all
Product installs go through a Configuration Change Management model. I
prefer the former model as to grant autonomy to clients.

> What do you mean by moderating system? Seems all that would be necessary
> is a translator,
> as data is always just data which those remote nodes would be inputting.
> Their bioregion would
> have its own peer review process to screen and evaluate data.

I had the impression that new entries into the core database would go
through some sort of moderation, or at least have some subject matter
expert review before blessing it as new valid content. Or this would be a
simple sanity check to prevent trolls from populating the database with
garbage test entries.

> So with my Linux login shell account I would or would not have access to
> my Zope instance?
> Would I install Plone there or have to login to the Zope server to do it
> then call it from my
> html page?

Yes, depending on security, you should have read and some write
permissions to your own Zope instance parent directory under shell. Plone
can be set up globally, which you inherit, then it is a simple matter of
activating it through the Zope Management Interface (ZMI). If Plone is not
supplied from your parent admins, then you could install into your
personal Products instance and start from there. I should document how it
is currently setup on arashi.com then....

> Many of the Linux techies I know prefer Debian.

The install can be a pain, then all joy once it is installed.

> What is Fedora? I will need a real easy install so I may go for Linux
> though I hear Mandrake
> is easy. I just need access to a linux command line to manage my data
> filesystem (for now at least).

RedHat phased out active support for RedHat 9 last April, 2004. RedHat
"10" became the Fedora project ( community supported ). RedHat makes it's
bread and butter from supporting it's Enterprise Releases.

> I hear SUSE is good also.

I have used SUSE in the past. Once you grok the internals of Linux basics,
the distributions become issues of process and asthetics.

> I hear that BSD is light years ahead of any Linux version; FreeBSD is not
> quite
> as finished but nearly as good.

<joke>
Never get into an arguement with a BSD zealot >;}~ BSD has been around
since the beginning of time ( Un*x time that is ).
</joke>

> I have multiple drives for this machine, 200 and 250 gigs. Currently the
> Win 2000 boot drive is a 36 gig SCSI
> with a companion SCSI 36 gig Drive D. With Win 2K on Drive C could I wipe
> Drive D and install Red Hat there with GRUB as boot manager
> - all this without deinstalling Win 2K and formatting Drive C?

Yes, I would leave C: alone. You could test your Grub setup first via a
floopy disk first ( as per the link I provided earlier ) before replacing
the master boot record on C: with Grub. That would be the first step I
would take, then adding Linux/BSD to D: should be quite easy. Linux and
BSD should be able to mount the windows drive ( read-only ), so you could
share data that way. ( Read-only for NTFS, Read-write for FAT16/32 ).

This is a how-to link if you want to leave the MBR on C: alone ( use
native Windows boot-loader ) and have grub control D: operatings systems.
Like they say in perl, TIMTOWTDI ( there is more than one way to do it ).

http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Howe, B.S, M.A.
http://www.arashi.com/
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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the
mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
 -- Albert Einstein