Re: Install problem on XP SP2

["Aaron W. LaFramboise" <aaronpurpleleaf4 at aaronwl dot com>]

Aaron W. LaFramboise wrote:

> I've been unable to successfully install Cygwin on an XP SP2 machine 
> after several tries.

I have been able to install successfully, after repeated attempts. 
However, I have not really resolved the problem.

Apparently, and I've had problems with this in the past, not all 
packages are downloaded during the 'download all packages' stage.  This 
can happen for various reasons, none of them very obvious.  Sometimes 
you can fix this by doing a second download pass, where it will pick up 
the ones it missed.  Sometimes this doesn't work, mysteriously. 
Hypothetical reasons: broken mirror, local system problems, random 
setup.exe bug, interference with existing installation, high humidity.

Bug 1) Packages are silently not downloaded, when the user assumes that 
they are.

*** If there's a problem with a mirror or the local system, or something 
else that causes the download to not work, there needs to be a very 
visible warning.

Bug 2) There is no md5sum for the entire repository, meaning there is no 
way for the user to personally verify that a mirror has the correct 
stuff, or that his download was correct.

*** The md5.sum in sourceware.org should include the entire release 
folder, rather than just setup.*, so people can verify file integrity, 
as well as confirming that they have all of the files they need to have.

Bug 3) If the user has requested a full install, but a package is 
missing, this error is ignored silently.

*** This is the most serious problem, and likely the cause of many of 
the mysterious install failures that are never analyzed, or are blamed 
on virus checkers etc.  When a package is requested, but the matching 
package file is missing, a very serious error message needs to appear, 
and setup.exe should abort.

It's possible I've fundamentally misunderstood the operation of 
setup.exe in some way or another; in fact, as a user of it since the 
beginning, I believe this is probably likely.  If so, I apologize, but 
nonetheless, this utility needs to be fixed so that these problems won't 
happen; or alternately be replaced by a more mature, better maintained 
alternative.

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