Adventures with P2P and Scripts in Windows

Tino, thanks so much for your reply.  This listserve is very helpful

 

>Please tell us what this means "... not succeeded in getting it to
>work..."

 

I had the postgres server installed and working on one machine, but could not access it from the other machine using rekall or pgexplorer  (UNTIL I thought to check the windows XP fire wall, and change it from highest protection to zero protection... and then everything worked like a charm, based simply on following Tony Caduto's excellent instructions on changing the PG .conf file.

 

 

 

>do you get a response
>to the ping <ip> command from client to server? Are you able
>to use other services from the client to that server?

 

You must understand something. I am an old man who has a little job in the office of a very poor company always teetering on the verge of chapter 11 bankruptcy, so there is absolutely no money to by a copy of MS Access, or hire a consultant, or anything else.  I am teaching myself Postgresql at home, just for fun, because I used to program in RPG and Cobol years ago, and I want to see what this SQL world and open source is like.  So, given my circumstances, I am making miraculous progress. IF I had a job as a computer programmer, with a company with money, and some training, and resources and advice, and peers to give assistance, then I would not have such tremendous difficulties with such simple things. But my only resource is the several books I can afford to purchase, one on Postgres, one on Access VBA, and then google search engine, and this excellent listserve.  I have heard the word "ping", but I dont know how to do it, I know what it means. If I hadnt stumbled across the DOS ipconfig command, I would not know enough to learn it local ip intranet address of these p2p connected machines.  And I watched a fax/copier technician hook up a printer/fax to the network, and assign an ip address...

 

If I DID know all these fancy things, then I wouldnt get so stuck and frustrated.

 

 

>I assume all of the boxes are windows? If yes, which version?
>If XP, which servicepack? Did you check the XP built in Firewall?

 

BINGO! You hit the nail on the head. I knew enough to turn of the AVG antivirus (free) and the Sygate free fire wall which I had installed, but suddenly it dawned upon me to look at the XP (Home edition, not professional, my Dell at home has professional XP with MS Office and Access, at work we spent $80 on Star Office, because they cant afford M$)...

 

>Just a sidenote (not an actual problem but worth to know imho):
>192.0.0.0/8 isnt really a private subnet.

>192.168.0.0/16 is.
>10.0.0.0/8 is
>and 172.16.0.0/12 is.

 

If I knew all these fancy things, I wouldnt have so many problems every step of the way, but yes, ipconfig seems to return such numbers as 192.0.0.191 (or whatever i cited in my previous post, and that is the sort of quad address they chose for the fax printer feature)...

 

What I REALLY NEED right now is a working example of a REKALL python script which could do SQL pass through to the Postgres engine which is now working on the P2P. I really like Rekall, but it is frustrating that there are no examples.

 

I DID Succeed in doing the sort of things I want in VBA script in MSAccess, but that does me no good at work because we cant get the money to purchase copies of Access.

 

I own a copy of Visual Basic, and if I could find a good example of accessing the postgres in vba through the odbc driver, then I could do what I want, compile it, and put it on the work stations.

 

It would be difficult for me to personally spend $400 or so dollars right now for something like Realbasic or Powerbasic, but I have a feeling that one of those could provide me with the working examples I would need to talk to postgres from the workstation.

 

I know this sounds dumb, and you are all going to laugh at me, but I want one work station to be able to add a row to a table to indicate a telephone message, date time, caller company, phone number.... and I want some OTHER workstation to be in a continuous look, polling that same table for a new row... and when it FINDS such an added record, it will display a big message on the screen, and blink, and perhaps beep....  and the owner of the company would see that, and pick up the correct phone line, and the message would get logged into an historical table, which would become part of a contact management system, ... because right now, the same thing is done with people running back and forth with little slips of paper from a message book (with carbon copy), and then they get keyed (sometimes) into Act Contact management.  BUT, now that I have postgres working, and I am pretty good with programming in Basic dialects,... I have everything I need to make this work EXCEPT, I do not have an example of a script that talks to Postgres.    If all else fails, I guess, I will personally scrape together the money to get RealBasic or Powerbasic,.... or perhaps I will purchase a copy of Access, and try to get a prototype working in that fashion.

 

It is really ashame about Rekall and python, ... that there are no good tutorials. I dont see any reason in the world why I couldnt do what I want with Rekall, but,... the problem is getting the correct information.  I did try to open a Rekall form, saved to disk, to look at the code and perhaps puzzle out how to write a script in Rekall that would go into a continuous loop, looking for that new record added to a table.....

 

Perhaps someone knows an example of talking to postgres via odbc in PEARL, since I have a book on Pearl, and I feel comfortable that I would work with it....

 

Or even php.... I made a lot of progress last year with php and apache and mysql... i had a cheap website that suppored php and mysql, and i made it do a lot.....  DO YOU THINK that php language, on a windows desktop, could run as a continuous script and poll a table for additions, and do what I want... or would it somehow time out after a period... (remember, this is on a windows desktop, and not some internet server...) 

 

Now that you folks know what I am trying to accomplish, and that I am just a hobbyist working alone with no other resources... perhaps you can think of something to help me... and most importantly, provide a working example that will be a script running in a look and doing a sql pass through to postgres odbc,.... and then processing the results....

 

> I followed Tony's suggestions
> namely
> In pg_hba.conf
> I added
> host all all 192.0.0.101/32 md5
>
> (my client machine is 192.0.0.101)
> and I changed postgresql.conf to say
> listen_addresses = '*'
> ========================
> PG Explorer on my client is asking for:
> COMMON NAME: ??? (I am uncertain about this)
> HOST: 192.0.0.9
> Default database: ??? (I am uncertain about this)
> Database port: 5432

Common Name is probably just a handle you give
to your database. Default database is the one
where the first connect is made (similar to
pgadmin if you look there) which is template1
usually. You can also just use your created
database there.

> ======================================
> I know absolutely ZERO about any of this stuff.
> All I know is to go to the DOS prompt and key in
> IPCONFIG  and it tells me, on the machine I want to
> use as client,  IP Address 192.0.0.101, subnet mask
> 255.255.255.0  default gateway 192.0.0.254
>
> and on the machine which has postgresql for
> windows, if I do ipconfig, it says...
>
> IP address 192.0.0.9
> subnet mask 255.255.255.0
> default gateway 192.0.0.254
> Our company has ZERO money to give to consultants,
> so please dont suggest that. If I cant figure out
> how to make this work, then we just live without
> it. But it would give me a tremendous sense of
> personal satisfaction to prove to myself that
> postgresql can work on this little p2p network, and
> I could do one or two useful things to help the
> office. 
> 
> There MUST be some little command I can run to tell
> me the secret numbers and how to plug them into the
> config files for postgresql. It can be rocket
> science. 
> 
> I can tell you that we have a Xyzel router to bring
> in the DSL, and a Cisco Linksys hub... if that gives
> any clues.

I wonder how the DSL is any related to that problem.
I'm not sure I understand the p2p term in your case
either. (I know P2P as point-to-point)
Maybe you can give us an ascii art drawing or your
setup (where it works and where not)

[Server (ip)] -+-- [Client1, works (ip)]
               +---[Client2, does not work (ip)]

or something.

HTH
Tino