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Deployment on a Windows VPS

Added by Dave Soane about 5 years ago

Hi Guys,

I am so close to launching my new social website (which you will all be invited to join!), but I am having trouble deploying anything on the server I have hired. Please tell me what I need to do.

It's a Windows VPS (Server 2016), with HostWinds. I have copied an FTP client onto it and that runs fine. But when I try and run a Hello World app that I produced with Wt, and which runs fine on my machine, it doesn't run at all. Nothing. Nada. It quits immediately without any error message.

The HostWinds people tell me I must install IIS and set it up with that. But many places on the wiki (and Roel most recently), have said that IIS is not essential, and they make it sound like using the built-in HTTPd is simply a case of copying the exe to the server and running it. I am SURE there must be more to it than that. But what???

Thanks,

Dave.


Replies (4)

RE: Deployment on a Windows VPS - Added by Roel Standaert about 5 years ago

Hello Dave,

Are you starting it by double-clicking the exe or from the command line (cmd.exe or powershell)? You don't get any output? One possibility may be that you're maybe missing some DLLs? Did you build Wt with the binary release for Windows? I often use Dependency Walker on Windows to check whether I've got the right libs: http://www.dependencywalker.com/.

RE: Deployment on a Windows VPS - Added by Dave Soane about 5 years ago

Hi Roel,

Thanks for the ideas. Unfortunately, no luck.

I have tried both double-clicking and from cmd.exe

I am familiar with the missing DLL problem, and on my machine this program will tell you what is missing. It makes no difference whether I supply all the DLL's that it needs to run when it's on my machine, or not.

Yes, I built this with the binary release for Windows.

I did try DependencyWalker, but I don't think it's going to help. I copied another EXE file from elsewhere and that ran fine. But if I opened that program in DependencyWalker, it came up with hundreds of problems. Even though it ran fine. So I don't know which problems in DependencyWalker to take seriously.

I attach a screenshot. Initially I tried it from a batch file (runprog) that supplied the parameters. The second time I just ran TestSetup on its own.

Thanks,

Dave.

WtTestOnVPS.png (6.74 KB) WtTestOnVPS.png Screenshot of two attempts to run TestSetup from cmd.

RE: Deployment on a Windows VPS - Added by Roel Standaert about 5 years ago

Can you take a screenshot of dependency walker? Maybe first do "collapse all" and then just expand the top-level item, because it looks like by default it expands everything.

Dependency walker has not been updated to support Windows API-Sets, so it complains about those. Someone created a replacement that is being actively developed: https://github.com/lucasg/Dependencies

If you built it with the binary Wt release for Windows, then you should place the DLLs for Wt and its dependencies in a place where your program can find them (e.g. next to the executable in the same directory). You can also install the binary release on that system, but then you'll need to make sure Wt's bin directory is on your PATH.

RE: Deployment on a Windows VPS - Added by Dave Soane about 5 years ago

Success!

I did the "collapse all" thing and found the two DLL's that I'd left out. Still not sure why it didn't tell me itself, but anyway.

And then it ran. And once I'd allowed the program through the Firewall, it worked!

Thanks for your help, Roel!

Dave.

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