Re: Legacy Installation of XFree86/Cygwin vs. Setup.exe XFree86 Packages
I haven't seen an answer to this one yet. Is that because no one knows? I'm in the same boat. -matt wilkie Randall R Schulz wrote: Hi, I installed XFree86/Cygwin via the semi-manual procedure that predates the release of Setup.exe packages. I want to know how I should handle switching over to the Setup.exe-based installation of XFree86/Cygwin. Should I just download the packages and install over the existing XFree86/Cygwin installation? (I always download binary source packages and then separately install only the binaries, keeping the sources in tarball form until I should happen to need them). If it matters, I've installed a couple of separate XFree86 software packages (XFig and the NCAR Graphics and NCL systems). The NCAR software installation isn't trivial, so if I could avoid having to redo it, that would be preferable. Thanks. Randall Schulz Mountain View, CA USA
RE: Legacy Installation of XFree86/Cygwin vs. Setup.exe XFree86 Packages
No one knows. You can install with setup.exe over top of your last installation, but you need to install *at leat* the same packages that you installed manually, else you won't get updates for all XFree86 packages, and you won't be able to uninstall all packages with setup.exe. Other than that, I don't think it will cause big problems, but someone should test it out and report back to us. Harold -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Matt Wilkie Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 5:32 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Legacy Installation of XFree86/Cygwin vs. Setup.exe XFree86 Packages I haven't seen an answer to this one yet. Is that because no one knows? I'm in the same boat. -matt wilkie Randall R Schulz wrote: Hi, I installed XFree86/Cygwin via the semi-manual procedure that predates the release of Setup.exe packages. I want to know how I should handle switching over to the Setup.exe-based installation of XFree86/Cygwin. Should I just download the packages and install over the existing XFree86/Cygwin installation? (I always download binary source packages and then separately install only the binaries, keeping the sources in tarball form until I should happen to need them). If it matters, I've installed a couple of separate XFree86 software packages (XFig and the NCAR Graphics and NCL systems). The NCAR software installation isn't trivial, so if I could avoid having to redo it, that would be preferable. Thanks. Randall Schulz Mountain View, CA USA
Re: Legacy Installation of XFree86/Cygwin vs. Setup.exe XFree86 Packages
Matt, Well, after waiting a while for some feedback, I took the plunge. I don't think there's a problem but... When (or after) I run XFree86/Cygwin, my system develops serious stability problems. The last time it happened, I first noticed that my dual-CPU system was showing only one CPU in the Task Manager Performance tab. That scared me, so I decided to reboot. More problem symptoms followed. When the boot process completed the hardware scan and got to the point where the Welcome to Windows 2000 low-resolution splash screen would be taken down and the monitor resolution switched, I instead got a long period of disk activity, which I took to be an automatically invoked file system check (I have all NTFS systems, so I'm not used to this happening and it alarmed me). There was no indication of what was happening (as their ordinarily would be for a checkdsk, either manually requested or automatically invoked). However, once that was done, the system booted normally. Nonetheless, I don't like things like this happening to my system. Now, I assume XFree86/Cygwin has no kernel or driver components and that this symptom points to a problem in the driver for my Matrox G400 MAX (which is the latest driver). Over the past couple of years since I've had this card, I've found that new Matrox drivers improve upon the old ones (they've fixed some odd symptoms in Java GUIs and in Mozilla) without any down-sides, but it appears that's not so this time. Anyway, unless someone tells me that these symptoms really could have been the result of problems in XFree86/Cygwin and that re-installation using Setup.exe over an older manual installation could lead to this, I'm assuming my XFree86/Cygwin installation is OK. I downloaded and installed all the XFree86/Cygwin packages, by the way. However, I'm loath to use XFree86 while this problem lurks. I have comprehensive daily backups and all, but tempting fate like this is not my idea of a thrill (that's what bicycling in urban traffic is for)... Randall Schulz Mountain View, CA USA At 14:31 2002-05-09, Matt Wilkie wrote: I haven't seen an answer to this one yet. Is that because no one knows? I'm in the same boat. -matt wilkie Randall R Schulz wrote: Hi, I installed XFree86/Cygwin via the semi-manual procedure that predates the release of Setup.exe packages. I want to know how I should handle switching over to the Setup.exe-based installation of XFree86/Cygwin. Should I just download the packages and install over the existing XFree86/Cygwin installation? (I always download binary source packages and then separately install only the binaries, keeping the sources in tarball form until I should happen to need them). If it matters, I've installed a couple of separate XFree86 software packages (XFig and the NCAR Graphics and NCL systems). The NCAR software installation isn't trivial, so if I could avoid having to redo it, that would be preferable. Thanks. Randall Schulz Mountain View, CA USA
RE: Legacy Installation of XFree86/Cygwin vs. Setup.exe XFree86 Packages
Randall, theres nothing in X or Cygwin that could cause a CPU to disappear on you. Rob
RE: Legacy Installation of XFree86/Cygwin vs. Setup.exe XFree86 Packages
Robert, No, I really didn't think so, but I was hoping that if someone saw the symptoms and the specific graphics hardware I was using they might have a specific recommendation or some diagnostic information for me. And I assume that the _apparent_ loss of a CPU was not actually that, but rather the result of some stray reference clobbering a kernel data structure. Judging from the later symptoms, there was damage to some data structures that got written to disk, too. Randall Schulz Mountain View, CA USA At 20:07 2002-05-09, Robert Collins wrote: Randall, There's nothing in X or Cygwin that could cause a CPU to disappear on you. Rob
Re: Legacy Installation of XFree86/Cygwin vs. Setup.exe XFree86 Packages
Randall R Schulz wrote: More problem symptoms followed. When the boot process completed the hardware scan and got to the point where the Welcome to Windows 2000 low-resolution splash screen would be taken down and the monitor resolution switched, I instead got a long period of disk activity, which I took to be an automatically invoked file system check (I have all NTFS systems, so I'm not used to this happening and it alarmed me). There was no indication of what was happening (as their ordinarily would be for a checkdsk, either manually requested or automatically invoked). However, once that was done, the system booted normally. Nonetheless, I don't like things like this happening to my system. Actaully, I think the long delay was the copy-on-reboot stage of the cygwin upgrade. I vaguely remember something about XFree needing to update a LOT of in use files, so setup puts those files in the copy-on-reboot list. Fonts? Anyway, copying hundreds of files, one at a time, can take a while... We should probably warn people about this; they could really scrog their cygwin if they interrupt the copy-on-reboot. --Chuck
RE: Legacy Installation of XFree86/Cygwin vs. Setup.exe XFree86 Packages
-Original Message- From: Charles Wilson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, May 10, 2002 2:09 PM Actaully, I think the long delay was the copy-on-reboot stage of the cygwin upgrade. I vaguely remember something about XFree needing to update a LOT of in use files, so setup puts those files in the copy-on-reboot list. Fonts? Anyway, copying hundreds of files, one at a time, can take a while... X appears to have a lot of read only files, which setup fails (don't know why) to delete, so falls back to copy-on-reboot replacement. Rob
RE: Legacy Installation of XFree86/Cygwin vs. Setup.exe XFree86 Packages
-Original Message- From: Randall R Schulz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, May 10, 2002 2:41 PM To: Charles Wilson Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Legacy Installation of XFree86/Cygwin vs. Setup.exe XFree86 Packages Charles, Wouldn't that copy-on-reboot processing wait until I logged in the first time? It happens before the GUI comes up. Rob
Re: Legacy Installation of XFree86/Cygwin vs. Setup.exe XFree86 Packages
Okay, thanks Harold (and the others who've chimed in in other messages). I'll let you know what happens. It will take awhile though, I have to go find someone with bandwidth and cdburner. :) cheers, -matt Harold Hunt wrote: No one knows. You can install with setup.exe over top of your last installation, but you need to install *at leat* the same packages that you installed manually, else you won't get updates for all XFree86 packages, and you won't be able to uninstall all packages with setup.exe. Other than that, I don't think it will cause big problems, but someone should test it out and report back to us. Harold
