From: doberman!mike (Mike Panzitta)
Subject: Re: 3,0 installation woes
Reply-To: doberman!mike@esunix.sim.es.com
Organization: Doberman Systems
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 92 06:45:42 GMT

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)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin