BurningDogBlog

I often use Mambo for my websites - open source php software that runs on a mysql database. This runs great on my Mac - apache, php, mysql - close to the LAMPstand (haha). A guy at work has also just converted to Mambo, except he's running it on Windows. No problem - except the Windows install for php and mysql under IIS is a mission. I gave up last time I tried it. Luckily he has a free app called "XAMP" which automates this for you and installs apache too. Great! So he's got this huge work deadline for 10:30 today and suddenly his webserver and database stop working. And he can't resurrect them. Reboot doesn't work. Installing the XAMP software on TWO other Windows computers doesn't work. Copying the database folder onto a Unix-based mysql install doesn't work (different character sets). So in other words, his demo fails. What amuses me is that this software didn't start on it's own, didn't start when manually started, didn't start when started as a Windows service - and all it would say is that it couldn't open port 11016. So, reboot, do it all again, check firewalls, disable anti-spyware etc etc. Still no luck. There was no way to get at the database which he'd spent ages getting right. And all I'm thinking is: "Drop Windows, install Linux, or get a Mac."

Technorati Tags: mysql, windows, bad design, php, mambo