setup 2.871 fails from command line on Windows 7 with "setup-x86.exe has stopped working"

[MORGAN Marc <Marc dot MORGAN at csem dot ch>]

Hi,

Setup of cygwin keeps failing when called from the DOS command line on my Windows 7 PC (which has a Cygwin 1.7.x installed in a separate root directory).

Even running just "setup-x86.exe -h" gives a "setup-x86.exe has stopped working" pop up message after having displayed the help message.

I'm trying to use it to do a quiet install of all packages from my local package directory which installed interactively correctly on another Windows XP PC.
Setup starts by asking for my password to validate admin rights. Then it gives 2 fail messages about missing files: /etc/setup/installed.db and /etc/setup/timestamp
Nonetheless, the installation process runs: adding dependencies, extracting files and running postinstalls. But I get 2 "setup-x86.exe has stopped working" pop up messages in this case (close to the beginning and end of the installation run)

I've tried with and without the --packages option. I couldn't find any documentation for setup so there is no way of knowing what happens when the option is not used. I tried with just Cygwin* packages or with my full list of packages explicitly on the command line. When I run "cygcheck -c" at the end, some packages are clearly missing from the list.

Am I the only one experiencing this problem? What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance,
Marc

PS: and BTW the answer on the Cygwin web site about "Q: Is there a command-line installer?" does not make sense to me. "[...] The basic reason for not having a more full-featured package manager is that such a program would need full access to all of Cygwin's POSIX functionality. That is, however, difficult to provide in a Cygwin-free environment, such as exists on first installation. [...]" If setup can install Cygwin interactively from a Cygwin-free environment, what should keep it from doing it from the DOS command line too?



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