MishMash: Beware the OSX case insensitive filesystem (Zope/Plone, Ubuntu, OS X, and virtualisation)

I've just lost a couple of hours trying to trace a problem I was experiencing installing some Zope/Plone software. This post is for the record, in case someone else (my future self included) tries to solve the same problem using the Google method.

I was installing on Ubuntu 9.04, running as a guest in VMWare Fusion 2 on Mac OS X 10.5. I was working on the Mac OS filesystem, mounted in the virtual machine using the VMWare HGFS driver.

The problem, I think, was that my OS X installation uses a case insensitive filesystem, and the tools running on Ubuntu expect it to be case sensitive.

The fix is to keep everything on the virtual machine's virtual hard drive. Unsatisfying, because that way I can't synch as easily with my work desktop and my working files are split up.

Case insensitive filesystems *grumble* *grumble*.

The error messages I encountered follow for Google's indexing pleasure. First, on trying to run ArchGenXML:

ndph@ndph-ubuntu:/mnt/hgfs/ndph/projects/hinf-comm/archgenxml$ bin/archgenxml
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "bin/archgenxml", line 16, in ?
    import archgenxml.ArchGenXML
  File "/mnt/hgfs/ndph/projects/hinf-comm/archgenxml/eggs/archgenxml-2.4.1-py2.4.egg/archgenxml/ArchGenXML.py", line 22, in ?
    import archgenxml
  File "/mnt/hgfs/ndph/projects/hinf-comm/archgenxml/eggs/archgenxml-2.4.1-py2.4.egg/archgenxml/ArchGenXML.py", line 25, in ?
    import utils
  File "/mnt/hgfs/ndph/projects/hinf-comm/archgenxml/eggs/archgenxml-2.4.1-py2.4.egg/archgenxml/utils.py", line 15, in ?
    from archgenxml.interfaces import IOptions
ImportError: No module named interfaces

Next, on trying to start an instance of Plone configured using the listen buildout:

ndph@ndph-ubuntu:/mnt/hgfs/ndph/projects/hinf-comm/listen-p3.1-remember$ bin/instance fg
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "bin/instance", line 61, in ?
  import plone.recipe.zope2instance.ctl
 File "/mnt/hgfs/ndph/projects/hinf-comm/listen-p3.1-remember/eggs/plone.recipe.zope2instance-3.3-py2.4.egg/plone/recipe/zope2instance/__init__.py", line 17, in ?
  import zc.buildout.easy_install
 File "/tmp/tmpjcLFGO/zc.buildout-1.3.0-py2.4.egg/zc/buildout/easy_install.py", line 32, in ?
 File "/mnt/hgfs/ndph/projects/hinf-comm/listen-p3.1-remember/eggs/setuptools-0.6c9-py2.4.egg/setuptools/package_index.py", line 2, in ?
 File "/usr/lib/python2.4/urllib2.py", line 108, in ?
  import cookielib
 File "/usr/lib/python2.4/cookielib.py", line 35, in ?
  from calendar import timegm
 File "/usr/lib/python2.4/calendar.py", line 8, in ?
  import datetime
 File "/mnt/hgfs/ndph/projects/hinf-comm/listen-p3.1-remember/parts/zope2/lib/python/DateTime/__init__.py", line 13, in ?
  from DateTime import DateTime
 File "/mnt/hgfs/ndph/projects/hinf-comm/listen-p3.1-remember/parts/zope2/lib/python/DateTime/DateTime.py", line 21, in ?
  from datetime import datetime
 File "/mnt/hgfs/ndph/projects/hinf-comm/listen-p3.1-remember/parts/zope2/lib/python/DateTime/DateTime.py", line 21, in ?
  from datetime import datetime
ImportError: cannot import name datetime

MishMash

August 09, 2009

Beware the OSX case insensitive filesystem (Zope/Plone, Ubuntu, OS X, and virtualisation)

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