Unable to run IDLE from 2.3?

[M Wells]

Hi all,

I recently downloaded and installed Python 2.3 for Windows (on XP
professional) and I don't seem to be able to run IDLE from my start
menu? It seems something happens when I click on it (ie I get an
hourglass) but no actual application turns up.

Has anyone else experienced this and can anyone give me some advice on
how to fix it?

Much warmth,

Murray
http://www.planetthoughtful.org
Building a thoughtful planet,
one snide comment at a time...

 

[Bernard Delmée]

Has anyone else experienced this and can anyone give me some advice on

how to fix it?

Works for me, on Win2000. I've never used XP, but I'd suggest:

*) opening a command-prompt box
*) cd'ing to %PYTHON_HOME%\lib\idlelib
(where PYTHON_HOME=C:\python23 unless changed at install time)
*) ..\..\python idle.py

watch out for error messages, and let us know...

 

[Alex Martelli]

<posted & mailed>

I recently downloaded and installed Python 2.3 for Windows (on XP
professional) and I don't seem to be able to run IDLE from my start
menu? It seems something happens when I click on it (ie I get an
hourglass) but no actual application turns up.

Has anyone else experienced this and can anyone give me some advice on
how to fix it?

There are two known causes for this bug:

-- you installed Python in a directory with a space in its path

Workaround: uninstall it, install it again in a directory with
no spaces in its path, e.g. its default C:\Python23

-- you are running a "personal firewall" that is set to inhibit
connections to host 127.0.0.1

Workaround: remove your "personal firewall" or at least reprogram
it so that connections to 127.0.0.1 are allowed; 127.0.0.1 in
TCP/IP means "this very host, me, myself" and therefore there is
no way in which connections to this address can put you at risk.

IDLE 1.0 uses sockets for communication between the 'main' process
and a secondary process that's set up to run code being developed,
and some misprogrammed 'personal firewalls' are known to interfere
with this. In theory, it is conceivable that a bad installation
of "networking" on some Windows machine might cause the same
effect as a misconfigured 'personal firewall', but so far in each
case I've analyzed it did boil down to 'personal firewalls'.


It's not necessarily the case that your troubles come from either
of these known causes, but please check both of them -- if it's
something else again, we'll need to root around for it.


Alex

 

[Kendall Clark]

In addition to the two possible causes Alex spelled out, another common
problem is some *other* program setting up Tcl or Tk environment variables
pointing to an inappropriate version of Tcl/Tk. The installer for Ruby is
the most common culprit for this problem, so if you've installed Ruby that's
probably the cause.

I'm battling what seems to be a related issue on RH 9 (accursed Red Hat!). I
installed 2.3 from src tarball last week, and it worked fine. The new Idle
is very sexy. Yay, idle.

Then last night I decided to upgrade from RH 8 to RH 9 (accursed Red Hat!).
That was a disaster on many fronts (it's not a good thing to have corrup CD
media on the 3rd disc of a KRUD update...argh!), but it also totally trashed
my 2.3's _tkinter.so. Now when I try to rebuild 2.3 from src, I can't seem
to get a _tkinter.so which points to valid tcl & tk libraries (despite using
"--with-libs="" to point to the libtcl & libtk RH 9 installed).

(The extent of my dynamic library fu on Linux is to futz around with
symlinks from the places where _tkinter.so wants to find tcl/tk libs to the
places where they actually are on my RH 9 (accursed Red Hat!) system, then
to rerun /sbin/ldconfig. This "trick" didn't work either.)

So I decided that RH is completely evil (accursed Red Hat!), and I would
just install Tk & Tcl from scratch in /usr/local/lib and rebuild 2.3 using
those libs, like this:

./configure --with-libs="/usr/local/lib/libtcl8.4.so \
/usr/local/lib/libtk8.4.so"

This works, but goddam what a pain in my ass...In case it's now clear by
now: I hate Red Hat (though hitting back at SCO is pretty cool, trying to
keep up with Python on a RH box has been way too painful for far too long).

I recommend repeated playings, at max volume, of Bob Dylan's "Idiot Wind" if
you have to fight this battle -- it seemed to help my mood.

Kendall Clark

 

[Paul Moore]

I recently downloaded and installed Python 2.3 for Windows (on XP
professional) and I don't seem to be able to run IDLE from my start
menu? It seems something happens when I click on it (ie I get an
hourglass) but no actual application turns up.

Has anyone else experienced this and can anyone give me some advice on
how to fix it?

Do you have any form of "personal firewall" software? There is a known
issue when Idle is used with a (misconfigured) firewall. The problem
is that Idle relies on an internal socket connection. If the firewall
is set to block that socket, Idle won't start. There should be no need
to block traffic to IP address 127.0.0.1 (the local machine) so the
firewall settings should be changed to allow this.

For a better explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.3/bugs.html

Hope this helps,
Paul.

 

[Bernard Delmée]

It appears the fact that I also have ruby installed is causing the

problem? Should I uninstall ruby, do you think, and try re-installing
python? I'd prefer to have access to both of them, but Python is the
language I want to concentrate on at present.

I seem to recall ruby defines tcl/tk related environment variables
which may interfere with python. If you are not using ruby-tk,
I don't think you need to de-install but merely un-defining those
variables should correct the situation. I think that's what I did
long ago so I don't see those variable names myself, and can't
be more specific....

HTH,

Bernard.

 

[M Wells]

I seem to recall ruby defines tcl/tk related environment variables
which may interfere with python. If you are not using ruby-tk,
I don't think you need to de-install but merely un-defining those
variables should correct the situation. I think that's what I did
long ago so I don't see those variable names myself, and can't
be more specific....

Hi Bernard,

Worked perfectly!

Removed the ruby variables and now IDLE is running! Thank you to you
(and also to the others that replied) for your help!

Much warmth,

Murray
http://www.planetthoughtful.org
Building a thoughtful planet,
one snide comment at a time...