Subject: setup snapshot 2.358 observations
From: "Cliff Hones" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 16:03:25 +0100

Using setup snapshot version 2.358 on an old NT-SP6a machine:

. The text on the "view" button becomes unreadable after the first
  time it is clicked.  [I think this is an old problem, but I've not
  seen it mentioned for some time, and I didn't see it in the WISH/TODO
  list.]

. I do not understand the logic behind checking MD5 sums when doing
  a local install but not when doing a download.  If I want to uninstall,
  reinstall or add a package which I know is already in my local directory
  I used to select "Install from Local Directory" as it was quicker.
  Now, I have to wait a few minutes for all MD5 sums to be checked (I have
  a slow machine).  If I use "Install from Internet" I have to wait a second
  or two for the mirror list and setup.bz2 to download, but there is no
  long wait for MD5 checking.  Can setup leave MD5 checking until the
  installation phase, after package selection, and check only those
  packages about to be installed?  If any checks  fail it could report
  the problem, possibly delete the offending file(s), and return to the
  package selection dialog.

. There is a problem with cancelling setup while it is running postinstalls.
  Running the postinstall of package texmf on my machine takes far too long
  (it may not finish - I've not had the patience to wait).  I pressed "cancel"
  after several minutes.  This caused install to immediately report
  "Installation complete".  Suspecting that other postinstall scripts hadn't
  run, I re-ran setup, selecting reinstall of package "cygwin".  Setup now
  reported that I needed to reboot to complete the installation.  It also
  re-ran the texmf postinstall, so I cancelled again.  Task manager showed
  a number of cygwin processes running after exiting setup (sh's, ls and sed)
  which I forcibly killed - I assume those left from the first cancelled
  setup were the cause of the reboot request on the second run.  Setup
  is now in a state where it will always try to run the texmf postinstall
  (as texmf.sh is in /etc/postinstall) but as it does not believe texmf is
  installed texmf cannot be selected for uninstall.  Manual intervention taken
  to fix this - I edited texmf.sh to make it exit early, ran setup which now
  completed the texmf postinstall and other pending ones, then uninstalled texmf.  
  Points of interest here:  (i) Pressing Cancel during Setup's
  postinstall phase (a) does not kill the postinstall shell,
  and (b) displays installation complete, even though there are
  un-done postinstall scripts left.  (ii) I can't see how to
  rectify a stuck postinstall without manual intervention.
  (iii) there may be a problem with the texmf postinstall script.

Having said all that, I'm glad to see many other improvements to setup.

Cliff Hones.

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