Me:
Hi—I’m a total end-user trying to get this up and running.  I followed the directions for the all-in-one install here, and everything went smoothly, or so it seemed.  When I run the tracks_start.bat.bat it seems to go as intended up until the very end—the cmd screen that’s supposed to stay open fills up with text (too fast to read, so I don’t know if it’s the *right* text) and *closes*.  http://localhost:3000 gets me “server not found” messages.  As I understand it, that window needs to stay open, but like I said, it happens so fast (almost immediately after the “Start Tracks and MySQL server?” dialogue) I don’t even have a chance to see if there’s an error reported.

Any suggestions?

Jims:
Tell me: at what point does the problem command screen show up?  Are you left with a browser window open with the Uniform Server admin page still showing?  Do you see a command screen showing the Webrick server starting? Or is it this screen that is faulty? 

Also make sure all your popup blocker, virus, firewall software is not blocking the Uniform Server. Port 80 needs to be allowed. Localhost needs to have Popups/Active content enabled or allowed.

Make sure you have downloaded and installed MySql.rb also. I have found that when its missing, the Tracks command screen will throw up a bunch of text, groaning that the database isn’t responding. Describe the sequence in a little more detail.  Feel free to move over to the forum for future posts…

OK, I get “echo on”, “cd \Uniform Server3.32\“, “TrackServerStart.vbs”, then the prompt for the drive letter (“W”), then the prompt to start Tracks and MySQL, a quick cmd window pop-up (unreadable), the server homepage comes up in my browser, there’s another quick cmd opened and it and the original cmd close.  If any text is coming up on the original cmd, it’s too fast for me to see—I think that’s where the Webrick output belongs, so it may well be that this is what’s not working, but I have no idea how to troubleshoot that (it’s not showing as a process, if that helps).

I did add the MySQL.rb file—I followed the installation instructions exactly.  I thought that might have something to do with it, so I even re-downloaded it and copied it over again, just in case it had gotten corrupted somehow the first time.  I am not running any anti-virus or firewall, and the only resident anti-spyware is Windows Defender.  I used netstat to check the ports, and no other software is opening port 80. I admit that I’m not sure how to check or allow active content/pop-ups on localhost.  The only other thing that seems out of line is that PhpMyAdmin isn’t working, either—which again points to a MySQL issue, but…

I appreciate the help.  I’d rtfm but, well, it doesn’t appear there *is* a fm just yet. I’ve covered about everything I can find (including the 5 or so posts in the forum) and simply don’t know enough to figure this out.

Actually, I got PhPMyAdmin to work, and the Tracks db seems to be installed fine, so that’s not the issue.

OK, I got it working.  When I did “rails -v” is showed rails wasn’t installed, so I reinstalled rails from ruby, and I rebooted.  I don’t know which of these was the magic step, but in any case, it’s working.  Thanks!

Dustin:

1) Good work!  Very nice trouble shooting. I’m not exactly sure how you came to test rails, but it seems that did it. I definitely could not have diagnosed that from here.

2) Thank you for such a detailed description of the problem. That is likely to help future users who may run into the same thing.  The original installation required an install of rails from Ruby, but bsag’s most recent version of Tracks - I am told - included an installation of rails so maybe there is something I am missing in what I have packaged up. Whwn I tested my installation, I started fresh with everything, including Ruby, and I didn’t run into it.  You are the first to mention it.

In any event, thanks for the info.

You know, when you don’t have the slightest idea what you’re doing, you google and google and try whatever comes up Actually, I had tried to install using the 30-odd step installation instructions and given up, before I found the all-in-one installation.  So I’d already learned kind of what the steps are: install the server, install ruby, install gem, install rails, install tracks.  I figured one of those things was messed up, so I just checked each thing until something came up goofy.

That said, I’m inclined to think it was the reboot that did the trick—reboots are magic!

I am not so saavy at all this but I am having the exact same issue. Where can I locate rails which you reinstalled?

Thanks all of you in advance for the help.