I recommend you try the IRC channel if you do need help. We may not respond immediately, but once one of us notices its a lot more interactive.

FWIW - Nikita202 is the only person I now know has this functioniong on Vista. The key part appears to be disabling UAC on the python interpreter (python.exe) and not fpdb.py itself as previously suggested

There also appears to be at least 3 separate issues with Postgres in the last release, meaning we'll probably have to get a paper-bag release out soon.

You echo the frustrations of a lot of users in this thread, but until someone new steps up to fix the installer issues the difficulties in installing fpdb aren't likely to change.

Of the 5 primary devs on the project, only 2 run windows and neither of those run Vista. Its annoying for users, but until a dev decides to upgrade to Vista, or someone new joins the dev team it's likely to remain a second class OS to the fpdb project[1].

We aren't unsympathetic to the difficulties in installing fpdb. Without commercial tools and a lot of time installing a program of this nature with multiple independent but hgihly coupled components is a real pain in the ass under windows. So much so that no-one has attempted it more than a couple of times. Take a look at the install forums for PT(esp v2) or HEM to take a look at the number of issues that can occur during an install. Its scary and time consuming.[2]

Given that most of us only spend a couple of hours a week actively developing fpdb, spending multiple weeks banging ones head re-inventing the installer wheel isn't at the top of anyones list.

Cliffnotes:
- Installers are hard and time consuming
- Nobody is working on making that easier at the moment.
- Sorry

Sorrow

[1] And the rest of the windows community according to anyone i've ever know to actually run it. Hopefully for everyones sake it dies the same death as WinME. Only my humble opinion ofcourse.
[2] Look at the number of issues installing and updating the Stars or FTP client that occur so regularly - thats with paid devs and an application that is highly self contained in "Program Files" and only supports one platform.

I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to answer. Also, your honesty is refreshing. I will still follow the thread, and for now will hope that as the program develops it will find another developer with Vista who can help us. The people that made Vista need to rethink that application, but I doubt that will happen.

Thanks,

Dog

I run Windows, do not have Vista, have absolutely no knowledge on creating an installer.

Here's what I remember doing:

Install Python
Install PyGTK
Install MySQL
Download FPDB
Edit FPDB config file
Run FPDB.

At some point, I also dug out the other libraries needed for graphing, however, I don't have those anymore, since I upgraded to Python 2.6, and haven't gone looking for those yet, if they are out there.

I would only be of help once you actually get it to the point where you have everything needed to make it work, honestly. And as far as I know, I've addressed all the problems that have been posted from people who did manage to get that far - please correct me if I'm wrong. It should be working fine in Vista, under any regular user account, at this point, as far as I know. However, if not, I did recently learn some new techniques for doing some of the things that we do specifically in Windows, and I haven't bothered to implement them, because afaict it isn't necessary to change anything in there yet .. but if it is, i'll be more than happy to. At least, once everyone else's trees are in a state where I can upgrade, since I'm stuck on the last release right now

Had problems with the hud for the first time, may be cause of the multitabling, i had 4 ps tables and 1 ftp table.
Here is the message from the console

.X Error of failed request: BadWindow (invalid Window parameter)
Major opcode of failed request: 20 (X_GetProperty)
Resource id in failed request: 0x5200003
Serial number of failed request: 4617

Hud didn't appear even after the fpdb restart...

Ive done everything EXCEPT edit the config file, what exactly do i need to do here, also when running, I get this error after i click the fpdb.py icon, a popup says:
mscvr80.dll not found

and error log says:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Documents and Settings\Vish\My Documents\New Folder (2)\fpdb_0.11\pyfpdb\fpdb.py", line 37, in <module>
import gtk
File "C:\Python25\lib\site-packages\gtk-2.0\gtk\__init__.py", line 48, in <module>
from gtk import _gtk
ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.

OK, first, I just tested playing Stars and FTP at the same time and it is working OK for me. I had tested that before, but not recently.

That error is what happens when the HUD tries to talk to a poker client window that has been closed--that is, that window no longer exists. We used to get this error all the time on Linux, but we fixed it. (this is a bug in X, not fpdb, BTW) I have written some code that will eliminate this problem, but IT BREAKS UNDER WINDOWS.

If you can give some more info about what you were doing when you got this, I might be able to put in another work-around.

ok, ive edited the config file so it now contains my password, but get the same error of MSCVR80.dll missing

I noticed some mention of a version 12 & newer installer soon. I was planning an install for the Everleaf support. Are either of those due in the next week or so? If so, I will wait for the most recent release

That's MSVCR80.dll, right? I get that sometimes when I test in XP, even though I have the file. You probably have it too and can find it with the find file thingie. When you do, copy it to the folder where the fpdb.py program is stored. You will still get that message sometimes. If you don't have that file, you can get it here. (and lots of other places)

If you are planning on using postgres, it would be a good idea to wait until I get this bugfix out (probably 0.11.1 instead of 0.12, but that doesn't matter). If you are using mysql, then go ahead and use 0.11.

Do not wait on a better installer.

I am definitely using PostgreSql. Already using it for HEM, PTS & PokerHands. What day are you expecting to release?

Hey Eratosthenes

Is it the normal behaviour that the hud kills itself when the poker window for which it was active is closed? Cause it doesn't happen for me so now i recall that i closed one table but because i was multitabling i didn't closed the hud, there were some other tables over it so it didn't really bother me.
So the hud must have run some minutes and then crashed again, hope that helps to u, don't know any other info to provide.

I finally got this thing running (in Vista, no less) but I am having trouble importing hands. I have a directory with all of my hand histories. I point the bulk importer at it, and the program seems to hang. Question 1: is there some sort of visual feedback that importing is taking place?

I eventually killed the process and tried again with auto-importing. My terminal window started filling with dots, like 1 per second. I don't know if it ever started trying to auto-import hands. Question 2: is there some sort of visual feedback that importing is taking place?

Ok so the two questions are the same, but subtly different I guess (one is about bulk the other about auto). But still, if there isn't visual feedback, there should be. I have no idea what is happening when I start an import attempt and need to know.

Thanks.

That is working, the output is in the console currently, nothing in the GUI.
Auto import looks for updated files (modified since it last checked) in the directories listed in auto-import - these should be the standard Stars/FTP HH folders. A dot means its finished checking hte directory and nothing has changed.

The auto-import will put up the HUD windows if a file is found to have changed, and the main HUD window will update and list the table name.

Just in case that Vista should still be a problem, one solution could be a virtual box to run FPDB on. VMWare is probably the best known application for that. But there are other non-commercial solutions as well. FPDB could be distributed pre-installed on a light-weight Linux installation which runs as a virtual box on Vista. This solution would also make things easier for those who find it hard to install FPDB in the first place.

Just my 2 cents

Hmm... Not a bad idea - but what sort of takeup could you expect from windows users being forced to run a Linux virtual machine for an application - I doubt any licensing from MS would allow us to re-distribute XP from free. Actually - probably wouldn't work. The VM is a container that we can penetrate - we(fpdb) wouldn't be able to find the Table windows to place the HUD.

FWIW - We have also considered py2exe (still considering) and getting things to work with sqlite so a db doesn't need to be installed (some work there, not a lot though)

I doubt that the Linux VM would pose a problem to the Windows user as the app with the Linux environment could be started almost like a normal desktop app. But - argh - I haven't thought about the HUD Oh well, it was just an idea ...

In any case, keep up the good work, guys! I am excited about this project since I discovered it a few days ago.

@ekdikeo (and everybody who can answer my question)

I just wanted to quote myself to restate my question:
Thanks in advance

The MSVCR80.dll is apparently something that sometimes viruses will latch onto, and then virus scanners will remove it, or even some malware programs (like an old version of Windows Defender, strangely enough) will just remove it anyway.

It's not something required directly by fpdb, or python, looks like the Windows GTK is compiled with MS VC.. so, anyway, you can just pick that up from any of a zillion places that have that file, and you should be good for that.

FileNotFound: what stats is it that you are wanting? and right, the popup is only customizable via changing the code right now.

Gorgonian: set it for 10-second scans, set your auto-import folder to the folder where your stars histories go when you play, start autoimport, and start playing. The "." on the console window, as was said earlier, is an indicator that nothing was imported, because nothing it scanned had changed.

NightSky: No one ever seems to answer me when I ask as to whether we got the "close hud when table closes" working in Linux, but last I knew, the huds did not close when the table was closed, so if you closed the table after the last hand history was written to disk, but before fpdb imported it, without closing the hud, then it would import the hand, try to update the hud, the hud would check the position of the table, and since it's checking a window that doesn't exist anymore, X kills fpdb. Windows, we check the position of a table that doesn't exist anymore, and we get an error back, not a "OMG KILL THIS PROGRAM NOW!"

I wan't the position dependet stats, raise/fold/check... (in the popup) and so on.
Thank you for the information that this would only work by changing the code.

Then again, I would like to request that feature

OK, This is not exactly an installer package, but I did put together a zip file of all of the files that I used to get it working when I upgraded to Python 2.6, on Windows. Graphs will not work with this setup, until someone gets a working version of MatPlotLib with all the support functions. This zip also does not include FPDB itself, a database, or GTK. just all the stuff needed to get Python working with it.

So, in addition to these files, you'll need to also get .. FPDB, GTK, MySQL (or PGSQL, if/when that works fully)

http://redir.zombiebytes.com/fpdbstuff.zip

I think the order of installation should go something like:

python-2.6.1.msi
MySQL-python-1.2.2 ...
pywin32-213.win32-py2.6.exe
pygtk-2.12.1-3-win32...
pycairo-1.4.12-2.win32-...
pygobject-2.14.2-2.win32...
numpy-1.3.0-win32-superpack...


... i've got stuff i've got to get to doing right now, but i'll try to pick up the mysql and gtk installer and put them in here as well, and then maybe i can at least throw together a dumb bat file to install them all serially, so it won't be super simple, but at least it can be done in one pack, and with a whole bunch of "Next" clicks.

Thanks for the efforts on the installer. Think I'll wait for the total package and then give it one more try and see what happens. I have both MySql and Postgres. When I am installing it, will it "seek out", or read my drive, and ask me to choose which database I wish to use, and is one more stable than the other?

Dog

afaik there are problems with using postgres, but i'm not sure when they were introduced, so maybe Erastothenes can talk about that. My experience is that MySQL works fine. It really doesn't have anything in the way of GUI configuration, everything is configured in a text file that it will store in your Application Data folder\fpdb\HUD_config.xml

(so for me it's "c:\documents and settings\eric\application data\fpdb\hud_config.xml")

I'm uploading the bigger pack right now.
This includes MySQL, Python, GTK, all the Python stuff needed to talk to all of that, and FPDB.

http://redir.zombiebytes.com/fpdb-01...2-complete.zip

Unzip it somewhere.
Run Install.bat
Run through the dozen or so install programs it will run
Unzip FPDB_0.11.zip to somewhere you want to keep it
Run the FPDB.PY file that came out of FPDB_0.11.zip
Edit %APPDATA%\fpdb\HUD_config.xml to taste (make sure that you have included your MySQL username and password, I think it's in the section at the end)
Re-Run FPDB.PY
Select Database->Create or Recreate Tables

I think that will do it. I haven't tested this on a clean machine that didn't already have fpdb up and working, but it seems to work.


BTW, if anyone wants to put this file up somewhere else, I'd appreciate it, give me a link to it, and i'll edit this post to point to it ..

Well.... It looked like it was going to work, and then....sigh... nothing

I followed all the instructions. Entered my password into the config file which was located in the same subdirectory as yours. I had to remember to "run as administrator" on python.exe file before it would work. Anyway, got to the instructions to "Re-run FPDB.py" and nothing, absolutely nothing.

I went to the CMD line and went to the directory and tried funning fpdb.py from there to see any error messages... none. I would enter the file name, hit the return, the mouse hour glass would show it was busy, and then nothing. It just sat there on the command prompt line. I even thought it was a "reboot" thing and rebooted the whole thing, same results. When I tried to run it from the directory by double clicking, again the mouse pointer switched to an hour glass, then nothing. No errors, it just didn't open anything. It didn't ask me to create any database as I expected the next step to do.

So, am I missing something here? The only thing I changed in the config.example file was to change "My Password" to my actual password, then did a save-as to the config file itself, which looked fine.

It acts/pretends like it's working (like my ex wife), but no open program appears. Anyone got any ideas what's wrong, or a step I've missed. At least I'm not getting errors when I tried to start fpdb.py from the command line. It just looks at me blankly(like my exwife), and but does nothing (also like my ex-wife).

Dog

ps. the installer package did work great though, no problems there at all. Thanks for that part. Like I mentioned, for others, remember to "run as admin" on the python.exe file

Postgres: Postgres support in version 0.11 is broken. I am working on fixing that now, but the bug is winning. MySQL support is fine.

Vista: As mentioned earlier, none of the developers have Vista. Getting fpdb to work on Vista should not really be a problem, but until someone decides to be the Vista Champion for this project, Vista users are more or less on their own. (We'll help all we can. I have downloaded the Windows 7 RC, which I believe to be Vista compatible. I have not installed it because I have not figured out how without hosing my current installation.)

Installer: The installer that is available for download on the SourceForge site does not work with Vista and will display an error message and halt when Vista is detected. That installer does detect MySQL and do some simple set up--it doesn't try to detect Postgres. Vista users should use the files ekdikeo posted. Some public spirited Vista user that gets it working should document his success on the wiki.