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* Re: Anecdotal: Rebase and Visual Studio 2015 and /etc
@ 2016-07-01 22:13 KARL BOTTS
  2016-07-01 22:47 ` Warren Young
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 17+ messages in thread
From: KARL BOTTS @ 2016-07-01 22:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: cygwin


> A VS installation shouldn’t affect the rebase setup of Cygwin.

I'm with you.  But it did.  I am not blaming Cygwin; I am a friend of Cygwin.


>> Eventually, I reinstalled a fresh cygwin

> Did you install all the same things, or a minimal install,

Most of the same packages, but a from-scratch install.  And it is a pretty
light Cygwin: no gcc, no X, no Apache, no databases, no LaTeX...


>> 1) After you do the full rebase, before you even start anything cygwin,
reboot
>> Windows, then start a bash or something. Reboot Windows, early and often,
>> whenever upgrading anything.

> I’ve never had to resort to such voodoo to keep Cygwin going. The
standard
> schedule of reboots due to Patch Tuesday has been sufficient.

I resort to such voodoo to keep Windows going.  Windows is much better than
it used to be, but I still say: whenever you feel nervous about the state of
Windows, reboot it.  You will feel better, even if it doesn't.
Voodoo is not always sufficient: silver crosses and garlic help, too.


BTW: I use Cygwin32 on Windows-64.  I'm happy with that.  Windows itself also
uses lots of 32-bit components even under Win-64.  In fact, VS itself is
a (very large) 32-bit app.  There are good reasons for that, for them and for
us.
Basically, that 32-bit software runs so smoothly under an opsys running on
Intel64,
is one of the latter's best features.


> Cygwin should never cause a Windows box to become unbootable. It simply
> doesn’t get its hooks into the system deeply enough to cause such
trouble,

I concur wholeheartedly: Cygwin is delightfully non-intrusive, given what it
does.
I have never seen Cygwin hose Windows: only the reverse.
MS should take a lesson.  In fact, I think they are trying: they claim that
the
next VS will be "XCOPY deployable", which means what sane software, such as
Cygwin,
has always been.  Mostly, it means they have to rip out all the dependencies
on
the goddamn Registry.  Which will require many thousand kiddy-coder-hours,
methinks.


>> And, it moves DLLs around, even installs more, on the way back up.

> “It” being Windows, or Cygwin?
> If the former, new Windows DLLs shouldn’t interfere with Cygwin DLLs,
unless
> by some wild coincidence there is an overlap in memory load spaces.

"It" being Windows.  That is why you get the screen after
install-stuff-then-reboot,
"Configuring windows, please don't turn off your machine", and so forth.
Among other things, they are delay-replacing DLLs (for which there are
special
Windows syscalls).  Also, they "rebase" lots of DLLs, notably .NET.Framework
parts, to try to optimize load time, by avoiding runtime fixups: they don't
really use PIC code, if at all.  Given all that, it does not seem to me that
some load-address conflicts would be a "wild coincidence".


> Because Satya Nadella has been in charge for only about two years now.

You think he's in charge?  Ha-ha, I bet so did he, when he took the job.
But he is trying to change a corporate culture, without breaking too many
eggs.
Good luck to him.  Heroin might help.
 

---
Karl Botts, kdbotts@usa.net


--
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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Re: Anecdotal: Rebase and Visual Studio 2015 and /etc
@ 2016-07-05 12:12 KARL BOTTS
  2016-07-05 12:27 ` Achim Gratz
  2016-07-05 23:13 ` Warren Young
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 17+ messages in thread
From: KARL BOTTS @ 2016-07-05 12:12 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: cygwin


Karl Botts>> I use Cygwin32 on Windows-64.

Warren Young> Then you’re artificially making rebase’s job harder.
> The list of 32-bit-only Cygwin packages is tiny these days, and you’ve
just
> rebuilt your Cygwin environment. With my new find-cyg-roots script, you
could
> rebuild your current 32-bit environment under Cygwin 64 quickly. 
> That should prevent the reoccurrence of the rebase problem.


Your recommendation makes total sense.  I will do it soon: not today, but
soon.

I am just a little nervous.  I have been using 32-bit Cygwin for at least 15
years, and being without it throws me into a tizzy.  (I barely know how to use
WindowsExplorer.)  Are there any gotchas I should know about?


Please keep us up to date with your valuable scripting efforts.  I have
checked your script, emails and the followups into revision control, for my
own purposes.  I'll let you know how it goes.  Maybe eventually we can get
your work up on the Cygwin web site?


---
Karl Botts, kdbotts@usa.net


--
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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread
* Anecdotal: Rebase and Visual Studio 2015 and /etc
@ 2016-06-29 13:21 KARL BOTTS
  2016-06-29 13:36 ` Eliot Moss
                   ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 17+ messages in thread
From: KARL BOTTS @ 2016-06-29 13:21 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: cygwin


A couple of weeks ago I installed Visual Studio 2015 (aka VS14) onto a machine
that was already running Windows 10 and had VS2013 (aka VS12) on it.  The
machine was once updated from Windows 7, but that was months ago, had been
fine.  It is a huge install -- 20GB disk space, more than an hour, a couple of
reboots.

After that, I had the now semi-familiar problems with cygwin -- "cannot fork,
cannot load dlls", that kind of stuff.

I went thru several variations of the rebase procedures, following various
advice on cygwin web site, and emails from this list.  I could not get cygwin
back to fully normal.

Eventually, I reinstalled a fresh cygwin, right after a reboot, rebooted
again.  Now all has been good for a couple weeks.

I have a couple of anecdotal impressions, from this experience and others:

1) After you do the full rebase, before you even start anything cygwin, reboot
Windows, then start a bash or something.  Reboot Windows, early and often,
whenever upgrading anything.  This has helped me before.  I suspect that I
forgot it this last time.  I _suspect_ that had I followed that, I would not
have had to reinstall cygwin.  Maybe.

2) I always have cygdrive-prefix set to /, so that I can do, e.g. "cd /c". 
But when you reinstall cygwin, you must do it again with "mount -c".  And then
immediately do "mount -m > /etc/fstab", so that it sticks.  Then, you should
patch up the symlinks in /etc/{hosts,services,couple-more}; find them with
readlink.  There are some more in some fonts dir, but I ignore those: don't
care.

3) Once you have a cygwin you like, you can _usually_ copy it to other hosts. 
Use cygwin cp or tar.  Do not use XCOPY: does not handle links right. 
ROBOCOPY can be used in a pinch.  What goes wrong, maybe one time in four, is
rebase troubles: goto (1).  Once you know you can copy cygwin from host A to
host B, you can generally do it again, to keep cygwin up to date across hosts.
 I _think_ that once you have a DLL-load-address compatible install of cygwin
across several hosts, you can freely copy between them.

4) Keep yourself a list of cygwin packages you know you need, keep it small if
you can.  Makes a cygwin install much easier.  I have maybe 30.  I just enter
then in to the cygwin-setup GUI: is painful, but reliable.  I have had trouble
with the "setup -P", sometimes, but I think you could get that to work.

5) Again, reboot Windows between any steps.  Maybe not always necessary, but
can't hurt: you want to know that it _will_ reboot, anyhow.  And, it moves
DLLs around, even installs more, on the way back up.  You want to be sure it
has done all that.

6) Once you get this all working, it is pretty reliable: I have to fuss with
this stuff maybe a couple times a year.


Cygwin is worth it.  I still don't understand why MS did not just help cygwin
get a better installation/maintenance procedure, and fix the damn fork
problems, instead of going down the UbuntuOnWindows path.  But that's another
discussion... 


---
Karl Botts, kdbotts@usa.net


--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 17+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2016-07-06 12:39 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 17+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2016-07-01 22:13 Anecdotal: Rebase and Visual Studio 2015 and /etc KARL BOTTS
2016-07-01 22:47 ` Warren Young
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2016-07-05 12:12 KARL BOTTS
2016-07-05 12:27 ` Achim Gratz
2016-07-05 23:13 ` Warren Young
2016-06-29 13:21 KARL BOTTS
2016-06-29 13:36 ` Eliot Moss
2016-07-01  6:35 ` Andrey Repin
2016-07-01 19:35 ` Warren Young
2016-07-01 22:40   ` Warren Young
2016-07-01 23:38     ` Warren Young
2016-07-03 14:02       ` Ken Brown
2016-07-05 13:59         ` Ken Brown
2016-07-05 20:09           ` Ken Brown
2016-07-06  5:17         ` Warren Young
2016-07-06 11:44           ` Vlado
2016-07-06 12:39           ` Vlado

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