A device driver as BLODA?

[Richard@KarmannGhia.org]

Hello All,

For weeks I've been pondering all the troubles I've had with setup, 
spurred by all the conversations that have happened recently about 
packaging, etc, and the occasional comments about BLODA. I have sometimes 
figured Cygwin's setup program is a member of BLODA - it certainly has 
been anything but reliable in my personal experience. And all too often 
it's between me and my enjoyment of Cygwin. (I maintain a fleet of Windows 
boxes with Cygwin, no two of which are identical.)

I've forgotten who wrote it, but I especially appreciated the email in my 
in-box this morning about how to tell when Cygwin installation scripts go 
wrong, where the list of scripts is, etc, because, frankly, when a Cygwin 
installation goes wrong (and when doesn't it?) I seldom have time to track 
down exactly why - I just try, try again, with different versions until it 
works or I give up and try another day. (One MAJOR headache here is the 
download process, no fixed starting point to know you got everything.) 
...And so it was this morning I decided to re-convince myself I didn't 
have any BLODA problems... MAYBE all those issues "weren't Cygwin's 
fault?"

I was surprised to find "ATI Catalyst", and even MORE surprised to find 
"NVIDIA GeForce" on the list, both as "some versions".

I haven't any idea why the Catalyst product would want to hook into things 
that would interfere with Cygwin, but I did have problems with it - it 
would crash the machine sometimes! - so I deleted it.

But the description, "NVIDIA GeForce" has me a bit confused because I 
thought that was the maker's name for a series of video cards (hardware) 
and possibly the device drivers that enable them to do magic things, like 
provide a display consisting of six monitors as my "desktop." ...I use 
this hardware! And, certainly, I use the NVIDIA drivers for it.

This raises two primary questions (and a few related ones):

1) How can I confirm I do or don't have an NVIDIA GeForce BLODA issue? (Is 
there really a device driver level issue?) And;

2) Might "we, the community" develop a BLODA-checker to help the 
installation process? I'm thinking that whenever a new item is discovered 
to put on the BLODA list, a small "here's how you know you have this 
software" script is written that could become a part of the Cygwin install 
process. There's already a script walker for scripts in a directory - 
maybe it could be harnessed to run a list of BLODA-checkers. Sure, there's 
a back-log of already known BLODA, most of which I have never even heard 
of before (probably not alone on that!), but if we can have scripts 
created on an on-going basis - say, when new BLODA are discovered and put 
on the list - eventually the backlog would get caught up...

Given all the complaints out there about the installation / setup process, 
I have to believe that I'm far from alone in thinking that there's likely 
a strong link between installation troubles and BLODA.....

Regards,
Richard

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