Installing paab and Plone from scratch

Follow this how to if you need to install a Plone with paab from scratch. This document assumes you'll use a NEW Plone instance to run paab.

Purpose

If you need to setup a new plone instance to get paab working. This document is for you.

Prerequisities

In this document i'll use buildout. I strongly recommend using buildout instead of Linux distribution packages, source code installations and any other way to install Plone.

Before start buildout installation, be sure to meet these dependencies:

  • Python 2.4
  • PIL (Python Image Library)
  • Subversion client
  • C Compiler

Don't be afraid to use buildout, it's a very simple mechanism to recreate Plone instances and it will make your life better, believe me! :D - just follow these very simple steps.

Step by step

  1. Download  paab.buildout package
    $ svn co https://svn.plone.org/svn/collective/paab.policy/buildout/ paab.buildout
  2. Run bootsrap
    $ cd paab.buildout
$ python2.4 bootstrap.py
  3. Run builodut and build the instance. This step will take a while because it will download and prepare all needed dependencies, by default it makes a local installation and all the files are stored and organized inside your current directory.
    $ ./bin/buildout -v
  4. Start instance
    $ ./bin/instance start
  5. In your web browser write
     localhost:8080/manage
  6. You'll be asked for a user and password, try with
    user: admin
password: admin
  7. Inside the zmi, create a Plone site
  8. Then go to the Plone site. Click on Portal Setup, then go to Add-on Products, select Paab Policy and click on Install.

 

Further information

If you want to learn more about buildout i recomend these great documents:

  • Managing projects with zc.buildout
    Learn about eggs, setuptools and dependency management, and how to use zc.buildout to set up a development environment.

  • Using Add-on Products
    There are many third-party add-on Products for Plone that can give you additional functionality, often at the click of a button. However, not all Products are created equal. Knowing how to install, test, evaluate and extend them is important. Read on. The Part 3 describes in general the instructions of this how to.

 

Troubleshooting

If you couldn't get paab working and have any question about this howto, don't hesitate to contact me.