[tex-live] Re: TeXsetup.exe / Win95(b) installation problem [TeXLive 7 - 9/2003]

George N. White III aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca
Tue Dec 30 13:08:48 CET 2003


On Tue, 30 Dec 2003, Fabrice Popineau wrote:

> > Hello folks, I have some "fatal" problem installing TeXLive 7 (9/2003)
> > on an old Windows'95-Box (Win95B=OSR2):
>
> > TeXsetup.exe (without any parameters) just silently exits after a few
> > seconds of deep thinking(?). [And no log files are created.]

I've installed TL2003 far too many times on Win95B machines, starting with
the beta test versions.  Installing TL2003 does appear to stress PC
hardware -- two cheap clone machines failed while doing ls-R's (both with
Win98, one from a disk failure covered under warranty and the other
from a terminal case of overheating not covered under warranty).

Something like what you describe happened when I tried to browse for
internet mirrors, but I haven't had problems installing from a CD.  You
should backup your "texmf-local" directory, uninstall the old version,
remove all the old files, and make sure all the TL variables (PATH, etc.)
are not set in autoexec.bat.  Early on some ConTeXt perl scripts failed
when using the default location (C:\Program Files\TeXLive), so now I
install to C:\TL2003.  I do the initial install using the "install"  CD
and then the fptex upgrades (from Dec. 18th), which appear to have fixed a
problem with the package selection options in TeXSetup.  If you write down
the initial path settings for the CD-ROM version of TeXSetup you could try
running the current version for the initial installation with the same
settings.

Rather than risk another ls-R, I just copy our texmf-local tree
from a unix box and replace the (empty) tree created by TeXSetup.

> All I can suggest regarding win95 is to install Internet Explorer 4.0
> latest release. If it still doesn't work with 4.0, then switch to 5.5.

We have direct internet access and run IE 5.50.4807 SP2 with customized
"security" settings.

> I must say I have not tested TeXSetup against win95 recently, only
> against win98.
>
> > P.S.: Links to documentation on how to install manually (on Win32) or
> > what TeXsetup really does are very welcome, too, especially those
> > "handcoded"? configuration steps beyond TPM-handling, i.e. PATH and
> > environment variable settings, config file modifications etc.  I guess
> > the Un*x scripts won't work despite of win32-gnus (bash, perl and
> > friends), right?
>
> No chance. Actually, I usually consider cygwin to be more a nuisance
> than a help. Native Gnu win32 apps are useful, but not for fptex/texlive
> installation.

When I was trying to get the ConTeXt scripts working I used Active State
perl, but the included perl has been working fine provided I avoid paths
with spaces.

> >   I actually started trying to update my TeXLive 6b installation, but
> > beside broken links the old TeXsetup was unable to handle the "new"
> > TPM format; the new TeXsetup in turn just seemed to be unaware of my
> > old installation, so I resorted to burning another fresh half a GB :-)
>
> Sorry, but TeXSetup/2003 is not able to handle an upgrade from any
> previous version.

I must say that we have had very few problems with TL2003 on linux or SGI
Irix.  It is too soon to know if the Dec. updates to fptex are as robust,
but we currently have 6 Win32 installs (2 Win95, 2 WinXP, and 1 each
Win2K and Win98) that appear to be working well.  Some of these systems
also have Y&Y TeX and or MikTeX installed.

--
George N. White III  <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
  Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada


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