setup-x86_64.exe (bug ?): Cannot write to /usr/bin/cygwin1.dll - cyserver squatting it...

setup-x86_64.exe (bug ?): Cannot write to /usr/bin/cygwin1.dll - cyserver squatting it...

[Mainz, Roland]

Hi!

----

The Cygwin installer "setup-x86_64.exe" has problems updating cygwin1.dll when cygserver is running:
---- snip ----
Unable to extract /usr/bin/cygwin1.dll -- error writing file
---- snip ----

The fix is to do a $ sc stop cygserver # as Administrator, then "setup-x86_64.exe" can write to that file, and after "setup" is done do a $ sc start cygserverr # as Admin again.

... is it possible to modify "setup-x86_64.exe" to stop cygserver before doing the installation process and re-start it after it ? That would make the installer a bit more user-friendly...

Versions:
---- snip ----
$ uname -a
CYGWIN_NT-10.0-19045 futuramapainmonster4 3.5.0-0.461.g324ace778f70.x86_64 2023-11-14 17:30 UTC x86_64 Cygwin
$ ./setup-x86_64 -V
Cygwin setup 2.926
---- snip ----

----

Bye,
Roland

i. A. Roland Mainz
Entwickler Steuerungssoftware
TEE

ROVEMA GmbH

Industriestr. 1, 35463
Fernwald, Germany
 T  +49 641 409 528
 @ Roland.Mainz@rovema.de
 
www.rovema.com



ROVEMA GmbH
Industriestrasse 1, 35463 Fernwald, Germany
Geschäftsführer:
Christoph Gusenleitner
Dr. Dirk Panhans
Handelsregister-Eintrag/Commercial Register: Amtsgericht Gießen, HRB 8551
USt.-Ident./VAT ID No.: DE 301 430 123

Re: setup-x86_64.exe (bug ?): Cannot write to /usr/bin/cygwin1.dll - cyserver squatting it...

[Andrey Repin]

Greetings, Mainz, Roland!


> Hi!

> ----

> The Cygwin installer "setup-x86_64.exe" has problems updating cygwin1.dll when cygserver is running:

You should stop ALL Cygwin processes before starting setup.exe.
This is documented.

> ---- snip ----
> Unable to extract /usr/bin/cygwin1.dll -- error writing file
> ---- snip ----

> The fix is to do a $ sc stop cygserver # as Administrator, then
> "setup-x86_64.exe" can write to that file, and after "setup" is done do a $ sc start cygserverr # as Admin again.

> ... is it possible to modify "setup-x86_64.exe" to stop cygserver before
> doing the installation process and re-start it after it ?

There's no reason to do so, as there's no easy way to detect beforehand, if
you actually need to do so.

You could have cygserver running from one Cygwin setup but installing to the
different one. And so on.


-- 
With best regards,
Andrey Repin
Wednesday, November 15, 2023 19:59:00

Sorry for my terrible english...

Re: setup-x86_64.exe (bug ?): Cannot write to /usr/bin/cygwin1.dll - cyserver squatting it...

[Martin Wege]

On Wed, Nov 15, 2023 at 6:05 PM Andrey Repin via Cygwin
<cygwin@cygwin.com> wrote:
>
> Greetings, Mainz, Roland!
>
>
> > Hi!
>
> > ----
>
> > The Cygwin installer "setup-x86_64.exe" has problems updating cygwin1.dll when cygserver is running:
>
> You should stop ALL Cygwin processes before starting setup.exe.
> This is documented.

This is not helpful. Cygwin setup-x86-64.exe not being able to update,
because SOMETHING is locking cygwin1.dll is in the top 50 of your IT
support, right followed by the question of IT support whether
"updating to WSL" will solve the situation for them permanently.

>
> > ---- snip ----
> > Unable to extract /usr/bin/cygwin1.dll -- error writing file
> > ---- snip ----
>
> > The fix is to do a $ sc stop cygserver # as Administrator, then
> > "setup-x86_64.exe" can write to that file, and after "setup" is done do a $ sc start cygserverr # as Admin again.
>
> > ... is it possible to modify "setup-x86_64.exe" to stop cygserver before
> > doing the installation process and re-start it after it ?
>
> There's no reason to do so, as there's no easy way to detect beforehand, if
> you actually need to do so.

sc query cygserver is EASY to detect.

IMO Cygwin needs a serious effort towards
user-friendliness-by-default. Right now Cygwin is a specialist
environment which requires half an university degree to get it
working, and that makes me unhappy because your work is GREAT

>
> You could have cygserver running from one Cygwin setup but installing to the
> different one. And so on.

Seriously, who has TWO Cygwin setups on one machine? Also, sc query
can handle those cases too.

Thanks,
Martin

Re: setup-x86_64.exe (bug ?): Cannot write to /usr/bin/cygwin1.dll - cyserver squatting it...

[Brian Inglis]

On 2023-11-16 00:03, Martin Wege wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 15, 2023 at 6:05 PM Andrey Repin wrote:
>>> The Cygwin installer "setup-x86_64.exe" has problems updating cygwin1.dll when cygserver is running:
>>
>> You should stop ALL Cygwin processes before starting setup.exe.
>> This is documented.
> 
> This is not helpful. Cygwin setup-x86-64.exe not being able to update,
> because SOMETHING is locking cygwin1.dll is in the top 50 of your IT
> support, right followed by the question of IT support whether
> "updating to WSL" will solve the situation for them permanently.
> 
>>
>>> ---- snip ----
>>> Unable to extract /usr/bin/cygwin1.dll -- error writing file
>>> ---- snip ----
>>
>>> The fix is to do a $ sc stop cygserver # as Administrator, then
>>> "setup-x86_64.exe" can write to that file, and after "setup" is done do a $ sc start cygserverr # as Admin again.
>>
>>> ... is it possible to modify "setup-x86_64.exe" to stop cygserver before
>>> doing the installation process and re-start it after it ?
>>
>> There's no reason to do so, as there's no easy way to detect beforehand, if
>> you actually need to do so.
> 
> sc query cygserver is EASY to detect.
> 
> IMO Cygwin needs a serious effort towards
> user-friendliness-by-default. Right now Cygwin is a specialist
> environment which requires half an university degree to get it
> working, and that makes me unhappy because your work is GREAT
> 
>>
>> You could have cygserver running from one Cygwin setup but installing to the
>> different one. And so on.
> 
> Seriously, who has TWO Cygwin setups on one machine? Also, sc query
> can handle those cases too.

There may be critical or just really long Cygwin processes running that should 
not be killed because somebody wants to upgrade.

Shutting down processes, including services, has to be left to the users or sys 
admins who understand whether the circumstances are suitable to kill processes 
to do an upgrade.

I have a privileged Scheduled Task to run to clean up known background processes 
and shut down Cygwin services, then I check in TaskMgr if anything is still 
running from that Cygwin root path, before I run my Cygwin Setup script, which 
does more checking and shut downs of X servers and clients, and checking and 
reporting on processes from that Cygwin root running in background or Scheduled 
Tasks, before it will launch the latest downloaded Cygwin Setup in semi-attended 
-M, --package-manager mode, to give me time to resolve any remaining issues 
before telling Cygwin Setup to proceed.

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis              Calgary, Alberta, Canada

La perfection est atteinte                   Perfection is achieved
non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter  not when there is no more to add
mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retirer     but when there is no more to cut
                                 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Re: setup-x86_64.exe (bug ?): Cannot write to /usr/bin/cygwin1.dll - cyserver squatting it...

[Bill Sharp]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1038 bytes --]

On Thu, 16 Nov 2023 at 07:50, Brian Inglis via Cygwin <cygwin@cygwin.com>
wrote:

> On 2023-11-16 00:03, Martin Wege wrote:
> > This is not helpful. Cygwin setup-x86-64.exe not being able to update,
> > because SOMETHING is locking cygwin1.dll is in the top 50 of your IT
> > support, right followed by the question of IT support whether
> > "updating to WSL" will solve the situation for them permanently.
>
>
> There may be critical or just really long Cygwin processes running that
> should
> not be killed because somebody wants to upgrade.
>
> Shutting down processes, including services, has to be left to the users
> or sys
> admins who understand whether the circumstances are suitable to kill
> processes
> to do an upgrade.
>


I actually agree with both of you to an extent.

However I would like to suggest the correct enchancement here would be for
setup to check for any running cygwin processes and then barf a warning
onto the user, referncing the appropriate documentation, before allowing
them to proceed.

Kind regards

Re: setup-x86_64.exe (bug ?): Cannot write to /usr/bin/cygwin1.dll - cyserver squatting it...

[Jon Turney]

On 16/11/2023 15:50, Bill Sharp via Cygwin wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Nov 2023 at 07:50, Brian Inglis via Cygwin <cygwin@cygwin.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> On 2023-11-16 00:03, Martin Wege wrote:
>>> This is not helpful. Cygwin setup-x86-64.exe not being able to update,
>>> because SOMETHING is locking cygwin1.dll is in the top 50 of your IT
>>> support, right followed by the question of IT support whether
>>> "updating to WSL" will solve the situation for them permanently.
>>
>>
>> There may be critical or just really long Cygwin processes running that
>> should
>> not be killed because somebody wants to upgrade.
>>
>> Shutting down processes, including services, has to be left to the users
>> or sys
>> admins who understand whether the circumstances are suitable to kill
>> processes
>> to do an upgrade.
>>
> 
> 
> I actually agree with both of you to an extent.
> 
> However I would like to suggest the correct enchancement here would be for
> setup to check for any running cygwin processes and then barf a warning
> onto the user, referncing the appropriate documentation, before allowing
> them to proceed.

Well, what is supposed to happen at the moment (since [1]), for 
processes in the current user's session at least, is better than that - 
we check if a file we want to replace is actually in use by a Cygwin 
process and offer to terminate that for you.

If that isn't working, that would probably be a bug, and we'd like to 
hear about it.

[1] https://cygwin.com/pipermail/cygwin-apps/2013-February/031448.html


I realize this is all well-intentioned, but this discussion is not 
actually contributing very much.  As always, the difficulty in making 
this change is not working out what setup should do, but that someone 
has to do it.  (A situation unfortunately so common, we have an acronym 
for it: [2])

[2] https://cygwin.com/acronyms/#SHTDI

Re: setup-x86_64.exe (bug ?): Cannot write to /usr/bin/cygwin1.dll - cyserver squatting it...

[Jon Turney]

On 16/11/2023 07:03, Martin Wege via Cygwin wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 15, 2023 at 6:05 PM Andrey Repin via Cygwin
> <cygwin@cygwin.com> wrote:
>>
[...]
>>
>>> ---- snip ----
>>> Unable to extract /usr/bin/cygwin1.dll -- error writing file
>>> ---- snip ----
>>
>>> The fix is to do a $ sc stop cygserver # as Administrator, then
>>> "setup-x86_64.exe" can write to that file, and after "setup" is done do a $ sc start cygserverr # as Admin again.
>>
>>> ... is it possible to modify "setup-x86_64.exe" to stop cygserver before
>>> doing the installation process and re-start it after it ?

Yes, the source code is available. :)

>> There's no reason to do so, as there's no easy way to detect beforehand, if
>> you actually need to do so.
> 
> sc query cygserver is EASY to detect.

Unfortunately, this is not what's actually needed: To generically detect 
a service which (is the parent of) a process which has a file which 
setup wants to update open.

That said, I'd certainly be open to patches which improve matters 
without solving the problem with full generality, but just observing 
they are "EASY" doesn't bring them into existence...

Anyhow, you can see the old discussion about how we might add this 
feature back when I added the current limited support for terminating 
processes which have needed files open. starting at [1].

Perhaps someone cleverer or more diligent than me will progress this...

[1] https://cygwin.com/pipermail/cygwin-apps/2013-February/031448.html