Whichever method you used to install Zope and create a server instance (see Installing Zope and Installing and Zope with zc.buildout), the end result is configured and operated the same way.
Your instance’s configuration is defined in its etc/zope.conf file. Unless you created the file manually, that file should contain fully- annotated examples of each directive.
You can also pass an explicit configuration file on the commandline:
$ /path/to/zope/instance/bin/zopectl -c /tmp/other.conf show
...
Config file: /tmp/other.conf
When starting Zope, if you see errors indicating that an address is in use, then you may have to change the ports Zope uses for HTTP or FTP. The default HTTP and FTP ports used by Zope are 8080 and 8021 respectively. You can change the ports used by editing ./etc/zope.conf appropriately.
The section in the configuration file looks like this:
<http-server>
# valid keys are "address" and "force-connection-close"
address 8080
# force-connection-close on
</http-server>
The address can just be a port number as shown, or a host:port pair to bind only to a specific interface.
After making any changes to the configuration file, you need to restart any running Zope server for the affected instance before changes are in effect.
To run Zope without detaching from the console, use the fg command (short for foreground):
$ /path/to/zope/instance/bin/zopectl fg
In this mode, Zope emits its log messages to the console, and does not detach from the terminal.
Once an instance home has been created, the Zope server can now be started using this command:
$ /path/to/zope/instance/bin/zopectl start
During startup, Zope emits log messages into /path/to/zope/instance/log/event.log. You can examine it with the usual tools (cat, more, tail, etc) and see if there are any errors preventing Zope from starting.
Note
For this to work on Windows, the Zope instance must be installed as a Service. This is done with:
bin\zopectl install
If you later want to remove this Service, do the following:
bin\zopectl remove
For the full list of options available for setting up Zope as a Windows Service, do:
bin\zopectl install --help
zopectl can be linked as rc-script in the usual start directories on linux or other System V unix variants.
You can use zopectl interactively as a command shell by just calling it without any arguments. Try help there and help <command> to find out about additionally commands of zopectl. These commands also work at the command line.
Note
On Windows, a Service can be installed and set to start automatically with the following:
bin\zopectl install --startup=auto
Once you’ve started Zope, you can then connect to the Zope webserver by directing your browser to:
http://yourhost:8080/manage
where ‘yourhost’ is the DNS name or IP address of the machine running Zope. If you changed the HTTP port as described, use the port you configured.
You will be prompted for a user name and password. Use the user name and password you provided in response to the prompts issued during the “make instance” process.
Now you’re off and running! You should be looking at the Zope management screen which is divided into two frames. On the left you can navigate between Zope objects and on the right you can edit them by selecting different management functions with the tabs at the top of the frame.
If you haven’t used Zope before, you should head to the Zope web site and read some documentation. The Zope Documentation section is a good place to start. You can access it at http://docs.zope.org/