> On Aug 31, 2024, at 9:11 PM, Roger via Freedos-user > <freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > > Using FreeDOS 13, first installed within Qemu (host Linux) using FreeDOS > Full USB image, and getting the following error with fdnpkg: > > c:\ fdnpkg update <package name> > > "Error: Package contains a file that already exists locally:" > > > If I'm not mistaken, fdnpkg will not automatically upgrade already > installed packages due to already existing files and being "afraid" or > overwriting files? As such, I need to manually remove each package > prior to upgrading each package name? > > (Already ran into a nightmare with accidentally manually > uninstalling/removing fdnpkg files, leaving the system broken.) > > To me, this doesn't sound like the intended operation of fdnpkg, or is > it? > > Roger
Recently, a minor issue was discovered in the installer with I/O redirection. It was inserting a space in some of the path information got used to install packages under some situations. The issue has been fixed in recent versions of the installer. I know that sounds kind-of vague and weird. But, the issue itself is kind-of weird and vague. Basically, the issue only effected installation from the USB media. When installing from USB, the boot disk is drive C: and FreeDOS get’s installed to drive D:. That’s just how the BIOS and DOS iterate the drives when booting from USB. But, everything needs configured for later when you boot from the installed system as drive C:. So, everything needs installed to D: but configured as if it were drive C:. So, the installer set’s up the config files and such for being drive C:. It also uses a special option in FDINST (part of FDNPKG) to tell it to do the same. FDINST installs the packages to drive D: and set’s up the list of files for each package under \FREEDOS\APPINFO\*.LST with information for drive C: using the FDNPKG.CFG file to also remap paths in the zip archive into actual directories. Some of those remapped paths are based on environment variable settings. For example... During the install, %DOSDIR%=D:\FreeDOS. So, files in the zip archive directory under a BIN path get mapped to %DOSDIR%\BIN. That in turn get’s expanded to D:\FreeDOS\BIN. The files go to that directory and FDINST generates the file list with C:\FreeDOS\BIN. All of that works fine. But there was a small issue in the generation of the install path target. A space wasting included at the end of the environment variable. It was causing the expansions to be similar to D:\FreeDOS \BIN instead of C:\FreeDOS\BIN. This did not cause a problem for FDINST when installing the packages. Nor, was it a problem for most of the other programs that use those lists to find package related files. However, it did cause issues with FDNPKG (and FDINST) when removing or upgrading packages. The extra mid-path trailing space is not an exact match and would cause the original files to not be removed. Because it is the only time the drive needs “faked”, this only effected the USB installer. Neither of the CD install media need to do that. Although it uses a completely different installer, the Floppy Edition does not need to fake drive C: either. Anyhow, the issue was fixed recently and the newer FreeDOS Interim Test Builds no longer have that problem. There have been many fixes to lots of different aspects of FreeDOS since the 1.3 release that was just over 2.5 years ago. Things like FORMAT, FDISK and many other core programs have been updated since that time. Although there is no official timeline set for the release of the next version of FreeDOS, the Interim Test Builds are released on or about the 1st of each month. Although they are primarily for testing purposes, the Interim Test Builds contain the latest versions of the packages provided with FreeDOS and other improvements and fixes. Since some of the changes need much testing, the Interim Builds are considered “unstable” and may have other issues that are yet to be discovered. But, those builds are the latest greatest versions of the OS. If you’d like to help testing for issues, the Interim Test Builds can be downloaded from https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/test/ <https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/test/> Actually, FreeDOS T2409 should be released in a few hours. :-) Jerome
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