Coherence Windows Installation Guide

This document gives a brief overview on how to install Coherence on Windows.

Downloads

There is a set of Dependencies that Coherence needs to be able to run. First, we need to download them.

• Python: download the standalone installer for Python 2.5 (Coherence does not yet support 2.6/3k)
• Twisted: download the latest version of Twisted for Python 2.5 (the optional libs are not needed)
• Easy Install: download the latest installer (not the eggs) for Python 2.5

All the other dependencies will be installed later using Easy Install.

Installation

Install the dependencies in the same order as above. First Python, then Twisted and Easy Install. As all of them are standalone installer just click yourself through the wizard and be happy. The next part is a bit more tricky and requieres some basic knowledge of the (windows) command line. In this example it we assume that Python is installed at c:\Python25\. Start the command line and change it to the Python Installation directory. There is a directory called Scripts. Change into this directory. In there is a executable called easy_install.exe. We will use it to install latest coherence and its dependencies:

cd c:\Python25
cd Scripts
easy_install.exe Coherence

This may take a while and will download the basic dependencies and Coherence itself (the latest release).

Testing the installation

If nothing went wrong we can directly test the Coherence installation with the command line:

cd c:\Python25
python.exe Script\coherence

This will star the basic coherence framework without any backends or plugins and you should get this kind of output:

no config file 'C:\\Documents and Settings\\ben\\.coherence' found
WARN  coherence                   Nov 01 13:54:13  Coherence UPnP framework version 0.5.8 starting... (coherence\base.py:251)
WARN  webserver                   Nov 01 13:54:13  WebServer on port 2603 ready (coherence\base.py:106)

Now start your favourite browser (I hope it is not IE!) and browse to localhost:2603. Coherence - if not told otherwise - will choose the port randomly so you have to replace it with the number of your output. You should see this in your browser:

Coherence - a Python DLNA/UPnP framework for the Digital Living

Note: you could stop Coherence by pressing CTRL+C

Further

This is it. The basic system is in place and you can now set up your configuration file at

Setup configuration

The configuration on Windows is located in the Home-Directory and called .coherence. For XP this is something like C:\\Document and Settings\\$USERNAME\\. For example the user ben has C:\\Documents and Settings\\ben\\.coherence. You'll not be able to create that file with the normal explorer (a filename with only an extension is not allowed there). A work around is to just start your favorite editor with the file name as the argument and save it. For example with notepad for the user 'ben':

cd 'C:\Documents and Settings\ben'
notepad.exe .coherence

Then you can copy paste a windows example configuration:

logmode = warning               # none, critical, error, warning, info, debug
logfile = coherence.log
#interface = eth0
#serverport = 30020             # if not specified or set to 0
                                # coherence will let the OS choose the port

#controlpoint = yes             # if set to yes coherence will activate its
                                # internal ControlPoint

web-ui = no                     # set this to yes to enable some interactive
                                # Web-UI

[plugins]
    [[FlickrStore]]
        name = Flickr Images
        proxy = yes             # if set to yes coherence will fetch the images
                                #  from Flickr for your client
        refresh = 60            # check every 60 minutes with Flickr for new images in the set

Note: the gstreamer and dbstore plugins are not included. They are not working with our current setup.

Installing optional dependencies

Some plugins need further optional dependencies that are not automatically installed by easy_install (as they are optional). For example if you want to install the "netifaces" or nevow (Nevow seems to be broken on Windows atm), you could simple use easy_install from the command line again:

cd c:\Python25\Scripts
easy_install.exe netifaces

Simple Coherence Autostart at startup

PLEASE, someone tell me a nicer way to do that.

Copy-Paste the following into a file called 'coherence.bat'.

cd c:\Python25\
python.exe Scripts\coherence

And move that file into Start->Programms->Startup. Now it will be executed at next start up. You will see a command shell show up.