johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu (12/28/90)
In article <40101@nigel.ee.udel.edu>, johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu writes...
[far more than anyone really wants to know about Installers from Hell]
I just got a phone call from Marco Gonzalez of Aladdin Systems, Inc.
(Mr. Gonzalez is one of three 'software engineers' who wrote StuffIt
Deluxe. The others are Danny Lovato, and the 'Chief engineer' Ray Lau.)
Mr. Gonzalez agreed to let me paraphrase his explanation of the Deluxe
Installer problem that I and a few other netters have reported. If this
explanation is technically unsatisfying, the problem is probably my typing
or recollection of the phone conversation, and not with Mr. Gonzalez.
Executive Summary: The problem is real, but very obscure. It will not
affect this week's release of StuffIt Deluxe version 2.0, a free upgrade
for those who have registered Deluxe 1.0. Details follow:
1) Mr. Gonzalez *did* try to reply to my e-mail messages to "aladdin"
<aladdin@well.sf.ca.us> and failed due to a mail routing problem.
That's fair enough: my initial attempt to send mail to <aladdin@well.uucp>
failed for the same reason. ( I had previously stated that Aladdin
had failed to reply to my e-mail, which was received.) When they
did not get a reply to either of my messages, Mr. Gonzalez called
me directly, using the phone number given in my .sig file.
2) A very small number of users have reported an installer problem similar
to mine. I won't quote the number Mr. Gonzalez used, but it is indeed a
very small fraction of the > 20,000 copies of StuffIt Deluxe which have
been sold to date. The problem is real; it does not result from user
error, init conflicts (as far is known), or failure to follow the
installation instructions given in the manual (which are straightforward
and unnecessary for experienced Mac users).
3) The problem has been seen by testers at Aladdin, but cannot be
consistently duplicated because it appears to involve a strange interaction
between the installer application and a system (or toolbox) call that handles
bad disk sector information for the installer disk. It is not clear whether
the problem is a bug in the installer application, or in the Apple system
software. This apparently occurs only in "strange circumstances".
Mr. Gonzalez stated that the Installer has been re-written to work around
this problem; the StuffIt Deluxe version 2.0 free upgrade disks (which begin
shipping this week) use a new version of the installer and several improved
features, including faster stuffing/unstuffing.
[ Technical note: I may have stated this backwards; a previous posting
suggested that a bad sector problem on my hard disk could have caused
the difficulty. At any rate, I checked both my hard disk and the Installer
floppy with Apple Disk First Aid, and with a borrowed copy of SUM II.
Neither utility found a problem with either disk; although Disk First
Aid claimed that the Deluxe disk was a 'Disk with Bad Name'. ( I don't
mean to imply that that is relevant, but that is what it said.) ]
4) In one of my previous postings, I guessed (and labelled it as such)
that the Installer was simply a scripted, self-unstuffing archive.
I also implied that this called into question the reliability of the
scripting features (which I like) in StuffIt Deluxe. This is not true,
according to Mr. Gonzalez. The Deluxe Installer is more elaborate,
and was specifically written to correctly handle situations such as
those I encountered. (These seemed to involve the installer's attempt
to replace previously installed versions of the "StuffIt-installed"
files and folders.)
If the problem is genuinely 'obscure' it may not merit continued use
of net bandwith; please follow-up by e-mail.
Aladdin's net address are <aladdin@well.uucp>, and <aladdin@well.sf.ca.us>.
They offer excellent phone support at (408) 685-9175, 9 to 5 Pacific time.
-- Bill (johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu)
-- 38 Chambers St.; Newark, DE 19711; (302)368-1949johnston@f20.n226.z1.FIDONET.ORG (johnston) (12/28/90)
Reply-To: johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu
In article <40101@nigel.ee.udel.edu>, johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu writes...
[far more than anyone really wants to know about Installers from Hell]
I just got a phone call from Marco Gonzalez of Aladdin Systems, Inc.
(Mr. Gonzalez is one of three 'software engineers' who wrote StuffIt
Deluxe. The others are Danny Lovato, and the 'Chief engineer' Ray Lau.)
Mr. Gonzalez agreed to let me paraphrase his explanation of the Deluxe
Installer problem that I and a few other netters have reported. If this
explanation is technically unsatisfying, the problem is probably my typing
or recollection of the phone conversation, and not with Mr. Gonzalez.
Executive Summary: The problem is real, but very obscure. It will not
affect this week's release of StuffIt Deluxe version 2.0, a free upgrade
for those who have registered Deluxe 1.0. Details follow:
1) Mr. Gonzalez *did* try to reply to my e-mail messages to "aladdin"
<aladdin@well.sf.ca.us> and failed due to a mail routing problem.
That's fair enough: my initial attempt to send mail to <aladdin@well.uucp>
failed for the same reason. ( I had previously stated that Aladdin
had failed to reply to my e-mail, which was received.) When they
did not get a reply to either of my messages, Mr. Gonzalez called
me directly, using the phone number given in my .sig file.
2) A very small number of users have reported an installer problem similar
to mine. I won't quote the number Mr. Gonzalez used, but it is indeed a
very small fraction of the > 20,000 copies of StuffIt Deluxe which have
been sold to date. The problem is real; it does not result from user
error, init conflicts (as far is known), or failure to follow the
installation instructions given in the manual (which are straightforward
and unnecessary for experienced Mac users).
3) The problem has been seen by testers at Aladdin, but cannot be
consistently duplicated because it appears to involve a strange interaction
between the installer application and a system (or toolbox) call that handles
bad disk sector information for the installer disk. It is not clear whether
the problem is a bug in the installer application, or in the Apple system
software. This apparently occurs only in "strange circumstances".
Mr. Gonzalez stated that the Installer has been re-written to work around
this problem; the StuffIt Deluxe version 2.0 free upgrade disks (which begin
shipping this week) use a new version of the installer and several improved
features, including faster stuffing/unstuffing.
[ Technical note: I may have stated this backwards; a previous posting
suggested that a bad sector problem on my hard disk could have caused
the difficulty. At any rate, I checked both my hard disk and the Installer
floppy with Apple Disk First Aid, and with a borrowed copy of SUM II.
Neither utility found a problem with either disk; although Disk First
Aid claimed that the Deluxe disk was a 'Disk with Bad Name'. ( I don't
mean to imply that that is relevant, but that is what it said.) ]
4) In one of my previous postings, I guessed (and labelled it as such)
that the Installer was simply a scripted, self-unstuffing archive.
I also implied that this called into question the reliability of the
scripting features (which I like) in StuffIt Deluxe. This is not true,
according to Mr. Gonzalez. The Deluxe Installer is more elaborate,
and was specifically written to correctly handle situations such as
those I encountered. (These seemed to involve the installer's attempt
to replace previously installed versions of the "StuffIt-installed"
files and folders.)
If the problem is genuinely 'obscure' it may not merit continued use
of net bandwith; please follow-up by e-mail.
Aladdin's net address are <aladdin@well.uucp>, and <aladdin@well.sf.ca.us>.
They offer excellent phone support at (408) 685-9175, 9 to 5 Pacific time.
-- Bill (johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu)
-- 38 Chambers St.; Newark, DE 19711; (302)368-1949
+ Organization: Univ. of Delaware, CCM
--
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