From: andrewd@tamsun.tamu.edu (Andrew T Duchowski)
Subject: Re: 3,0 installation woes
Organization: Texas A&M University, College Station
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 17:04:10 GMT

In article <1992Sep28.064542.12171@doberman.uucp> doberman!mike@esunix.sim.es.com writes:
>In article <1992Sep28.050130.23485@athena.mit.edu> shanega@athena.mit.edu  
>(Shane G. Artis) writes:
>> 
>> Hi, I have a pair of questions for sysadmin types.  Any hints or
>> clues would be very helpful.
>> 
>> First, I'm trying to install 3.0 on my station from handmade floppies
>> created using tar and split from a 3.0 optical disk mounted on another
>> machine (I am fully licensed for 3.0, but I didn't buy the CDROM drive
>> and there's no word on when 3.0 will be available in floppy format).
>> I know my NeXT well enough to do a good job getting all the important
>> files needed to boot the machine and run NeXTSTEP - at least I thought
>> so.  I tar-ed the new machs, the libs, the shlibs, the usr and bin
>> directories and created new device drivers using MAKEDEV (while booted
>> from a floppy) into the appropriate locations, wrote a new boot block
>> to the hard disk so it would boot the new mach, and then rebooted.
>> The machine came up in singleuser mode just fine, but when I tried to
>> start up the windowserver (by exiting singleuser mode) I got a mouse
>> cursor and nothing else.  The mouse cursor went away and then returned
>> periodically, along with a bit of disk action, but no windowserver.
>> Rebooting back up into NeXTSTEP 2.1 and looking at the private/adm
>> messages file gave me one clue.  The final line in the file before the
>> most recent booting messages was:
>> 
>> loginwindow: Cannot find windowserver port!
>> 
>> What does this mean I'm missing or doing wrong?  I think everything is
>> all there, but maybe I missed a file somewhere.  I'm pretty sure my
>> permissions are all set correctly and so on.
>> 
>> 
>> The second (and simpler) question I have is: Has anyone connected a
>> Sun brand CD-ROM drive to their NeXT and successfully used it to
>> install 3.0?  Are the drives compatible and the CD formats compatible?
>> 
>> Thanks for any help!
>> 
>> Shane
>
>Well, I had the same problem even WITH the CD-ROM.  It turns out (after
>some panicked and adreneline-filled moments) that one of the files
>installed by the 3.0-prep floppy didn't install correctly.  Here's how
>I managed to resolve it:
>
>- Boot single-user from semi-corrupted hard disk (if this doesn't work,
>  boot single-user from anything and mount the hard disk).
>
>- Mount the 3.0-prep floppy (I forgot its official name, but it has the
>  kernel and a few other files that it installs).
>
>- Go into the installation package, copy the stuff into /tmp, and
>  uncompress (and untar, if necessary...again I forgot the exact
>  details, and the floppy isn't handy).  Compare using diff or cmp
>  the files with their "installed-and-corrupted" counterparts.  The
>  one that I found to be faulty was /usr/lib/NextStep/WindowServer.
>  There is also /usr/lib/NextStep/PS.VM.
>
>- Copy the new file(s) in /tmp over the corrupted one(s).  Reboot.
>
>- Cross fingers, burn incense, etc.
>
>Hope this works for you...I can't think of a reason that this could
>have occurred, but I guess we're just lucky :-).
>
>Good luck,
>
>-Mike
>
>--
>Mike Panzitta
>Doberman Systems
>doberman!mike@uunet.uu.net (NeXTMail)


-- 
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Andrew Duchowski      _/_/  _/_/_/   _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/  _/    _/  _/_/_/
Texas A&M University   _/_/  _/  _/ _/   _/  _/   _/_/_/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/   _/
andrewd@cs.tamu.edu  _/  _/  _/  _/ _/   _/  _/   _/       _/ _/ _/ _/   _/
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin