Re: Some help with [re-]installation please

[Brian Ford <ford at vss dot fsi dot com>]

Since none of this is really specific to Cygwin/X, I've redirected this
thread to the main cygwin list.

I'll take a stab at a few of these, but there are parts I am not
sure of either.

On Wed, 10 Mar 2004, Chris Green wrote:

> I had a disk disaster over the week-end, a disk 'optimiser' made my
> 160Gb main drive very optimal by wiping it completely.  I was fairly
> well backed up etc. but it takes a while to get everything back to
> normality.
>
Yep.  My 160Gb main drive in a brand new Dell box died in less than a
month.  I had just got the box up and configured, but I had no backups yet
:(.  So, I sympathsize.

> I found re-installing cygwin and cygwin/X a bit confusing so would
> appreciate some comments and help.
>
> I had all the ftp'ed files left from installing cygwin previously
> sitting in a directory on a networded drive, could I have used these
> to re-install cygwin rather than downloading everything again?  If so,
> how does one do it?
>
Yes.  Choose "Install from Local Directory" instead of "Install from
Internet", and point setup there.  Keep in mind, however, you would have
missed out on all the new and exciting updates :).

> There are a number of different directories, one for each FTP site I've
> used.
>
This is the part I am not sure how to handle.

> As it was I chose an FTP site (the last one I had used I think) and
> re-downloaded from there, or did I?  If I accept defaults does it just
> download only the files which have been updated and install the rest
> from the previously downloaded files on disk.
>
I think it uses the "Local Package Directory" that it prompted you for as
a cache.  So, I think the answer is yes.

> I really find the window where you select what to download, etc.
> *very* confusing, some of the wording is very odd.  Two examples from
> the User's Guide which I find difficult to understand are:-
>
>     You can change setup.exe's view style, which is helpful if you know
>     the name of a package you want to install but not which category it is
>     in. Click on the View button and it will rotate between Category (the
>     default), Full (all packages), and Partial (only packages to be
>     upgraded). If you are familiar with Unix, you will probably want to at
>     east glance through the Full listing for your favorite tools.
>
> So what does 'Partial' mean?  I can see that Category means all
> packages sorted into types, Full means all in alphabetical order but
> what does Partial mean?  Does it mean only display packages that I've
> got already?
>
I found it confusing at first too :).

No, it is more of a view of what is to come ie. the packages that you or
it have selected to upgrade/install.  Does that help?

> ... and the second (and more confusing for me) bit is:-
>
>     Once you have an existing Cygwin installation, the setup.exe chooser
>     is also used to manage your Cygwin installation. Information on
>     installed packages is kept in the /etc/setup/ directory of your Cygwin
>     installation; if setup.exe cannot find this directory it will act just
>     like you had no Cygwin installation. If setup.exe finds a newer
>     version of an installed package available, it will automatically mark
>     it to be upgraded. To Uninstall, Reinstall, or get the Source for an
>     existing package, click on Keep to toggle it. Also, to avoid the need
>     to reboot after upgrading, make sure to close all Cygwin windows and
>     stop all Cygwin processes before setup.exe begins to install the
>     upgraded package.
>
> What on earth does "To Uninstall, Reinstall, or get the Source for an
> existing package, click on Keep to toggle it.", mean???
>
Did you try it?  Clicking on Keep transitions it to Uninstall, Reinstall,
Source, etc.

-- 
Brian Ford
Senior Realtime Software Engineer
VITAL - Visual Simulation Systems
FlightSafety International
Phone: 314-551-8460
Fax:   314-551-8444