[erlang-questions] erlsrv fails with boot error when using argument "-run application start <appname>"

[Dave Cottlehuber]

On 20 April 2012 14:14, Art Beall <arthurbeall@REDACTED> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Thanks in advance for any help for an erlang newbie.
>
> We've developed an erlang application using OTP. It receives tcp messages,
> stores the data in ets, and provides a simple http api for returing the data
> as a JSON object.
>
> It works just fine undef werl. We are testing under windows 7.
>
> But when we use the erlsrv command to create/start the application is dies
> with an init error, terminating in do_boot. I've tried with both boot files,
> the start_clean and start_sasl, using a debug log file.
>
> We've tried various combos of options and arguments. eunit tests will run
> under the service, normal functions will run. But anything having to do with
> OTP seems to fail.
>
> Any help would be appreciated!
>
> Thanks
>
> Art
>
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Hi Art,

At a glance nothing specific comes to mind, so some quick notes to help:

Use erl.exe for services not werl.exe, take a look at the bottom part
of http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/Quirks_on_Windows for more info on
erlsrv setup. When troubleshooting erlang services on windows, I
usually use the debugmode flags in the service args (-debugtype
console) so that I can see and interact directly
with the console on startup. Usually this is enough to understand
what's missing as you can type in stuff like this to load & start your
apps:

application:load(crypto).
crypto:start().

Take a look at http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi?path=/couchdb/packages/win32/1.2.0/setup-couchdb-1.2.0_otp_R15B.exe
specifically at bin/couchdb.bat to see how we do it in CouchDB. Are
you sure that path & permissions are correct? Are there no sneaky DLLs
like openssl ones hiding in the system path? There are some
not-so-well-known bugs in how windows resolves DLL loading.

A+
Dave