[viff-devel] error while installing viff

[Martin Geisler]

"Amitabh Saxena" <amitabh123 at gmail.com> writes:

Hi Amit, thanks for trying out VIFF!

> After following all the instructions, at the testing phase, I keep
> getting the error "This application has failed to start because
> libeay32.dll was not found". (when I try to run the millionaire
> program).

I'm not using Windows, so I hope one of the Windows guys can give a
better answer. But a google search seems to indicate that this is part
of OpenSSL. I would have expected that this dll was installed with
pyOpenSSL, but maybe you need to install OpenSSL too?

> However, the following command runs without any problem:
>   python generate-config-files.py -n 3 -t 1 localhost:9001
> localhost:9002 localhost:9003 (assuming there is a space after 1)

Yes, there should be a space, I have just updated the instructions to
(hopefully) be more clear, they should be uploaded by now.

Btw, that command runs because it does not use the pyOpenSSL bindings.

> Another problem with VIFF installation: In the instructions, its
> mentioned "Download and Install VIFF". I did so by running the usual
> .exe installer. However, there is no viff/apps directory created by
> this.
>
> The IS a viff/apps directory in the zip file viff-tip. However, no
> install instructions are given for this, so I placed it in the usual
> location as per common sense.
>
> Question: Which is the viff installer.. the exe or the zip or both?
> and how to install viff properly?

Right, I agree that this is confusing! The problem is that Python
knows how to make source distributions -- that is the .zip, .tar.gz,
and .tar.bz2 files. And then it can also make a binary Windows
distribution, but, as you found out, that package contains no
documentation or examples. The idea is that the binary distribution
could contain pre-compiled C extensions and stuff like that.

We should definitely update the installation guide to reflect this!

-- 
Martin Geisler

VIFF (Virtual Ideal Functionality Framework) brings easy and efficient
SMPC (Secure Multi-Party Computation) to Python. See: http://viff.dk/.