Topic: PCLaw and E-Smith

[Dan Williams]

Has anyone here ran, or run with the PCLaw data files, or even the program for that matter installed on E-Smith?
I have carefully reviewed the tech notes at http://www.pclaw.com/ and they clearly indicate that:
"PCLaw is not designed to work in this environment; this includes UNIX servers and stations, Linux servers and stations and Appliance storage devices that plug directly into the network."
The part that cracks me up is they say it is ok to use it in peer to peer on OS as crappy as Win95. Anyway jus tcurious if anyone has tried this. I am not willing to take responsibility by experimenting at the clients location without asking a few questions.
Dan

[Jim Danvers]

Can't say as I have, but what you might try to do is see if you can obtain the installation media from the client and install it on a test environment...  just try it.   I would expect that if it just some app that has data and possibly some executables that need to run, so long as there is no need for them (executables) to run ~on the server~ (in the servers local environment, aka as some service or otherwise) that it should work fine.   If on the other hand it is a straight up windows only thing that does ~need~ to run, or have pieces of itself registered with the local server, on the backend... then you might be hosed.

Good luck....

-=- jd -=-

[Doyle Glaze]

I have had a law firm running PCLaw on a e-smith server for the last 2 years without any problems. I have even upgraded from 5.0 to 5.1.2 then on 5.5.


Doyle

[Dan Williams]

Hi Doyle,
That is great!
Could you elaborate a little please?
What Version? How many Users?
How did you do it as far as the install etc?
What I am wondering is, did you install it locally on the users PC, and then move the data file to an I-Bay?
Did you do any changes to SAMBA settings or anything like that?
Dan

[Chris Woods]

I've supported PC law in a 15 user environment on NT4.  But PC law does not require anything as far as NT support, there are no DLL's or anything like that.  The database files just have to reside on a network share mapped to a drive letter on the client side.  Being large large piece of @!#$ that the application is there is no advantage whatsoever to having it installed under NT because the updates are always applied to the individual computers.

Anyways,

Hope that helped,

CHris

[Dan Williams]

Hi Chris,
Which version of the PCLaw are the clients running?
I agree it is a "large piece of @!#$" but I just want to assure that I can make it work properly, and reliably with no support issues from Alumni.
So the way I see how it should be done is to install the Application on the PC's locally, and then create an IBAY to hold the data, and map a drive to the client for the IBAY.
Is that what you have done there?
Thanks,
Dan

[Chris Woods]

I dont recall what version it was but it was the newest two months ago.

[James Douglas]

look at timematters, i think theres a linux/mysql version too

[Peter Sander]

I have 12 Users accessing PCLAW with the data files quite happily on a shared IBAY, SME 5.5 then upgrade to 5.6 for the past 11 months. the only problems I have encounted was with the Consultant saying it can't be done, and making sure RAV Antivirus excluded the mapped drives.
feel free to Email me if you have any questions.

[Peter Sander]

I have 12 Users accessing PCLAW with the data files quite happily on a shared IBAY, SME 5.5 then upgrade to 5.6 for the past 11 months. the only problems I have encounted was with the Consultant saying it can't be done, and making sure RAV Antivirus excluded the mapped drives.
feel free to Email me if you have any questions.

[Dan Williams]

This is all great to hear, I really appreciate it.
Yes we are getting the same snub nose attitude from the consultants / support people as well. Seems to me they would do there 25,000 plus installations a lot of good, to research the use of this on Linux. I am betting in time, they will.
Thanks again,
Dan

[Dan Williams]

Hello,
I have had 8 users accessing an I-bay on sme that had the "shared" components of PCLaw installed  in this i-bay.
The i-bay is mapped back to Win2KPro PC's as drive "F".
The version of PCLaw is 6.20.
PCLaw recently release 6.60.
When we run this installer/update (both at the Business server, and my "test" server) the Installer handles all the local stuff "C:\whatever" no ptoblem, but when it tries to update the shared components on the "F" drive (the i-bay) it complains that
"The file F:\filepath\plap32.dll" could not be opened, please check that your disk is not full and that you have access to the destination dir. Access is denied.
I then change the permission on that file and it gets past it on to the next etc. Something very strange, it seems as if something in the updater changes permissions on the fly.
I have tried several methods with the -bays etc with no success at all.
Any suggestions?

[Doyle Glaze]

PCLaw creates a dir called common. Try renaming the dir and then do the upgrade. I have the same problem. I just remove the common dir with only has the install and help files.

[Dan Williams]

Hello Doyle,
I did as you said, I renamed F:\Common, to F:\Old_Common.
Ran the updater from the local pc, and got quite excited to see it creatin the new folders on the F:\ drive, then about 80% it compained about F:\Common\lessons being read only.
Very bizaar, I am at a loss.
Dan

[Doyle Glaze]

Try again and also rename the workstation setup.exe that it creates and when it asks to install the demo data and the lessons say no.

[Dan Williams]

Hi,
I have beat this to death and it does not work reliably, no idea why, but it doesn't.
I realize this is not a PCLAw support forum, but am going to post the following in hopes that the "concept" may help others with the same or similar problem.
The way that PCLaw works in a network environment is tha tit expects one pc to be set up as a server. Then other PCs connect to that shared folder as drive "F" or whatever and run their insalls/updates etc from there. The files are insalled locally to the pc, but this is what they are after.
So what I have done is exactly that, however then told PC law to look at drive "G" or whatever which is the IBAY on mitel where the data files are.
So you have two mapped drives to satisfy the problem.
Dan