RE: Problems with Cygwin Installer

["Dave Korn" <dave dot korn at artimi dot com>]

----Original Message----
>From: dirty.harry@juno.com
>Sent: 25 May 2005 16:04

>   I download the  the setup.exe and run it.  I choose either the "Install
> from internet" or the "Download without installing" options, pick a site,
> and am then presented with the package list.  I then proceed to spend
> 15-20 minutes going through the packages I want.  Then when it I click
> Next to begin downloading, I get a Download Incomplete or Installation
> Incomplete message and asks if I want to try again.  I say Yes, pick the
> same site, and then it complains about not being able to download the
> setup.ini file I believe.  Thus I've wasted about half an hour of time. 
> My only solution is  to download everything (which I don't really want to
> do) and then do a "Install from Local Directory".         
> 
> This has been happening for at least the past year and a half and has
> occurred on several computers that I've attempted to install on.  I'm
> very frustrated with this procedure.  Either I'm really doing something
> wrong or there's a very annoying bug that I'm surprised hasn't been
> noticed and fixed.    
> 
> Can someone enlighten me to what may be the problem.


  There is a bug in setup, and you can avoid it by not spending so long in
the package chooser.

  Setup uses windows' wininet functions to retrieve http/ftp URLs; when
fetching files by http, windows will attempt to use a Keep-Alive connection
to save having to repeatedly connect to the same server, but in the 15-20
minutes that you spend in the package chooser, the Keep-Alive connection
setup opened to fetch setup.ini will have been timed out (as inactive) by
the server, and the subsequent attempts to download files fail because the
connection has been closed by the remote end.

  It would be nice if the wininet library automatically re-opened a
Keep-Alive connection.  It is a bug in setup to not notice the connection
has failed and keep trying to use it.

  This came up just recently and I'm quoting from memory and without doing
my background research, so it may not be 100% accurate, but the root cause
(connection times out while you're in the chooser) and workaround (don't
spend so long in the chooser) should be correct!

  I don't know if wininet is clever enough to pool connections between
unrelated applications, but if it is you might be able to keep the
connection alive by browsing round the mirror site in your browser,
requesting a new page every few minutes to keep the connection alive while
you take your time in the chooser.


    cheers,
      DaveK
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....


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