Installation Problem

MichaelW · October 21, 2006, 04:06:18 AM

I finally decided to give GeneSys a try, but I ran into a problem. At the end of the installation I got a message box titled "Easy Installation System" with an error icon and the message "Error", but no indication of what the error was. The setup looked OK to casual inspection, and the editor ran OK, but none of the examples (that I tried) would build. I eventually determined that I needed to run setup.bat to build the libraries, and this corrected the problem with building the examples, but after several installs I still have no idea what is causing the installation error. I have doubts that my system is causing the error, because I cannot recall having any other installation fail.

[CONSTRUCTIVE_CRITICISM]
If GeneSys is aimed at beginners, it should not have problems like this. There are no instructions, at least that I have found, that specify which components are necessary, how GeneSys should be installed, what the installation is supposed to do, how it can fail, and what to do if it does fail. It is not reasonable to expect a beginner to troubleshoot something like this.
[/CONSTRUCTIVE_CRITICISM]

Vortex · October 21, 2006, 09:19:45 AM

Hello MichaelW,

Thanks for your feedback. Kindly, can you give us information about your OS? I doing my tests on a Win XP HE SP2 machine. You are right about the lack of setup instructions. I prepared a quick installation guide, can you have a look at this one?

http://vortex.masmcode.com/GeneSys/Guide.htm

Naturally, this guide will be improved to cover installation failure issues. Michael, can you send me a screenshot displaying that failure message? This would support the next versions of the installation guide.

My email address : vortex_1 at hotmail dot com

PBrennick · October 21, 2006, 10:26:14 AM

Michael,
CONSTRUCTIVE_CRITICISM is by definition a welcome thing and anything that serves to improve our product is something that we will always embrace. I have to say that the installation is unremarkable and you are the first to report a problem. There was an issue as to the method I am using that f0dder did not like but you are the first to report a failure. I will look at the source to refresh my memory as to what that message is reporting and will let you know. Is this a reproducable error on your system or did it just happen the one time?

Just to be clear about one thing, a beginner in assembly does not mean that the user has no computer skills and it is not fair to them for anyone to give that impression.

Thank you for trying GeneSys and we will work out these problems.
Paul

Vortex · October 21, 2006, 10:37:14 AM

Quote from: PBrennick on October 21, 2006, 10:26:14 AM
Just to be clear about one thing, a beginner in assembly does not mean that the user has no computer skills and it is not fair to them for anyone to give that impression.

Paul is right here, a beginner in assembly is someone who has computer skills above the average.

PBrennick · October 21, 2006, 10:48:58 AM

Michael,
You need to download GeneSys again. You should delete the install and delete the downloaded archive. The problem is the archive is slightly corrupt. My software is aborting the install at that point but it needs to report the error in a better manner. The probability of reproducing (or even getting) this type of problem is very low but there is no way that I can prevent this type of problem. Chances are that you will not be able to reproduce a bad download either.

If you wish to look at my source code please give me an email address to send it to.

MichaelW · October 21, 2006, 11:38:04 PM

Sorry, I'm running Windows 2000 SP4, on a very stable, trouble-free system. I had already tried downloading GeneSys.zip again, and several other things in an effort to determine what the problem is. I just tried again with a fresh download, which BTW is the same size as the previous one, and the installation still fails. When the failure occurs, the current volume is shown as data.rar, and immediately before the failure the overall progress reaches 101%. The attachment is a screen shot of the final state. I have tried shutting down my firewall and AV, uninstalling WinRAR, and copying setup.exe and data.rar to the target directory and running setup from there, and in all cases the installation still fails. By modifying setup.bat in data.rar I have determined that it is not being executed. After the failed installation I can run setup.bat and it will (apparently) complete the installation without problems.

I was not trying to suggest that all beginners in assembler have no computer skills, or even poor computer skills, just that some beginners have poor computer skills.

[attachment deleted by admin]

PBrennick · October 22, 2006, 01:39:22 AM

Michael,
I cannot reproduce your problem and no one else except you seems to have this problem so it leads me to only one conclusion. If the download which should be 3,831,722 bytes wide is correct then it has to be something with your system. I wonder if it is a path issue. Can you check if there is another copy of setup.bat in your path somewhere? I can make a build that uses a unique name instead of setup.bat if this is the case. It has to be something silly such as that, especially since the error is so reproduceable.

data.rar unpacks to 3,832,472 and you do not need to install/uninstall winrar, I have unrar.dll packed into the exe. It is unpacked and then used to unpack the archive.

Thank you for your patience and your clarification about newbies. That explanation makes more sense in terms of who you are and how helpful you are to others. It has not escaped our notice.

Paul and Erol

hutch-- · October 22, 2006, 03:52:00 AM

Paul,

I just downloaded the installation. The main site was very slow so I cancelled it and got the download from the mirror. Apart from some cranky logic of selecting where I wanted to put the project, it installed fine and everything seems to work well. GeneSys is shaping up into a very slick looking project, keep up the good work. :U

I am using Win2000 SP4 with the last rollup added to it.

MichaelW · October 22, 2006, 09:21:16 AM

There is no setup.bat on my path, but my system apparently is the problem. I did a bare installation of the same Windows 2000 on a spare system, and on that system the GeneSys install succeeded, and the examples built OK.

I also tested the GeneSys install under Windows 98 SE and it failed to create the include files and the libraries. I managed to overwrite my notes and screenshots when I installed Windows 2000 on the system (duh), but the problem was the FOR loop in BUILD.BAT. It seems that Windows 98 SE will not accept the parenthesized commands following DO, and cannot process the ~n modifier. I can split the FOR loop up, like so:

Code Select


FOR %%L IN (*.def) DO DEF2INC.EXE %%L
FOR %%L IN (*.def) DO ..\bin\POLIB.EXE /MACHINE:IX86 /DEF:%%L /OUT:%%L.lib

And this will allow the batch file to run without error and create the include files OK, but without the ~n modifier the library names have a ".DEF" between the base name and the extension. After manually removing the ".DEF" in the library names I could build all of the examples that I tried without problems.

Vortex · October 22, 2006, 09:39:18 AM

MichaelW,

Thanks for your feedback. It looks like that NT based system's batch file syntax is not compatible with 9x's. We are going to fix it. Thanks for the info you supplied us.

PBrennick · October 22, 2006, 10:14:49 AM

Michael,
Thank you for going to such lengths to help us. Since XP is a bridge between NT and 9x, that may be why the problem escaped our notice. That modification to build.bat was not in the initial version so I am going to roll back to an earlier version of build.bat. Once I have done that, I will report it here and perhaps you can test it one more time.

I regret allowing myself to be led to this new version of build.bat. Now, that I know that these fancy commands can cause problems, it will take a very convincing story to get me to go back to using 'for' logic again!

Paul

PBrennick · October 22, 2006, 10:20:37 AM

Hutch,
As always, thank you very much for your help in testing and also for your good words. They mean a lot to Erol and me.

Paul and Erol

PBrennick · October 22, 2006, 10:28:55 AM

Michael,
Okay, I have updated the installation and uploaded it. This version of build.bat is a lot larger (over 7k) because it uses no 'for' logic to parse each DEF file, instead, each file has its own entry.

In looking over my source, I could not find anything reporting an error other than a corrupt archive. Now, in hindsight, the strange error message makes sense to me as it is from the system and not from setup.exe. I was going nuts trying to find an error message without an explanation message. Blame MS for that one, I think.

We have finished the Guide and I am adding it to our webpage right now. Thank you for pointing that out. Docs are a weak point for me and that is a problem.

Paul

MichaelW · October 22, 2006, 11:33:36 AM

[offensive comment removed]

Is there some reason why a batch file is a better choice than just encoding the functionality into the setup program?

Vortex · October 22, 2006, 12:27:39 PM

Michael, do you mean using something like masm32.lib's shell function? That's can be done but the batch file system appears to be a solid one. Paul and me, we will try to see what we can do.

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Installation Problem