How do I install PIA 2.9 on windows?

[Locutus]

I downloaded PIA v2.9 since I saw that it was officialy released. I'm having problems getting autom8 0.33 to work on Cacti 0.87g, and found the following forum post, detailing that I install PIA 2.9 and should then use Autom8 0.35b7: http://forums.cacti.net/viewtopic.php?f ... &start=105


The readme file that comes in the 2.9 compressed file download simply says the following about installing it:
**************
Drop the patch into your cacti directory, and then use this command on unix
to patch your cacti files.

patch -p1 -N < cacti-plugin-0.8.7g-PA-v2.8.diff
**************

However, on windows, I am unable to find any "patch" application. I did a search under the PHP install drive, and under the IIS root directory (where cacti is actually installed) drive for *patch*.*. The only files that were returned were:
cacti\plugins\autom8\patches-087d\ -
cli.patch
host.php.patch
lib_api_automation_tools.php.patch
lib_api_device.php.patch
lib_api_tree.php.patch
lib_data_query.php.patch
lib_html_utility.patch
lib_template.php.patch
and cacti\plugins\manage\patch architecture\patch.png

The readmy file points to a URL for further install instructions (http://cactiusers.org/wiki/PluginArchitectureInstall), which doesn't actually exist it simply takes you to:http://docs.cacti.net/plugins. From there the installation link takes you to: http://docs.cacti.net/manual:087:1_installation.9_pia.

These instructions also do not provide any instructions for how to install PIA 2.9 on a windows machine.


I have thus far been unable to locate any kind of 'patch' application to feed the .diff file to.

Thinking that perhaps "patch -p1 -N --dry-run < cacti-plugin-arch.diff" was passing the argument 'patch -p1 -N --dry-run' into the 'cacti-plugin-0.8.7g-PA-v2.9.diff' file. So I tried running:
cacti\cacti-plugin-0.8.7g-PA-v2.9.diff patch -p1 -N --dry-run

This came back saying that the OS doesn't know what to do with a .diff file.



It mentions to just over-write a bunch of files if you have a fresh install. Unfortunately, I've just spent the last 2 weeks getting my current install working and populated with stuff.


Can someone point me in the right direction? I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,

[Locutus]

Anyone?


I'd be fine if you told me to RTFM, as long as you pointed me to a manual that listed valid instructions for Windows installation. I have yet to find one. It's not for lack or trying, I spent 4 hours last Thursday trying to locate instructions that would work on Windows.


Alternatively...
If someone can validate that the location of files mentioned in the highlighted section (taken from http://docs.cacti.net/manual:087:1_installation.9_pia):
There are two ways of install the Plugin Architecture. The first way is by using the patch files. A patch file contains the difference between the original files and the “new” files, which makes them very small as they only contain exactly what we need to make the changes. The other way is by using the pre-patched full files. These files are the full install of the necessary files with the patch already applied to them. With these you can directly override the files already in your Cacti directory. I only include the files that are necessary to change, so you don't have to override every file in your Cacti install.


The reason I ask, is because the directory under the 2.9 extracted files has a very large number of files. The above statement makes me think it should only contain the files with content that has changed. However, I ran a file comparison tool against the directory structure under the 2.9 patch and my current Cacti installation. Although the file size was different for almost every file, the actual content was identical (I imagine this stems from ASCI vs. Unicode carriage return characters possibly being slightly different in size). So it seems there are files that are included, but have no difference in actual content... If I get a positive confirmation that I only need the files which are actually different, I can perform a line by line merge of the 2 versions, taking all changes from the newer ones.


If Someone can help me with either of the 2 above issues, I'll be able to move forward.


Thanks,

[Locutus]

I got this working by using a text comparison tool. Just validated it didn't update any settings that were configurable.

Seems to work.