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Some help with [re-]installation please
- From: Chris Green <chris at areti dot co dot uk>
- To: cygwin-xfree at cygwin dot com
- Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 14:34:30 +0000
- Subject: Some help with [re-]installation please
- Reply-to: cygwin-xfree at cygwin dot com
- Reply-to: chris dot green at isbd dot co dot uk
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.
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? There are a number of different directories, one
for each FTP site I've used.
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 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?
... 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???
--
Chris Green (chris@areti.co.uk)