10.1.2 Installer no longer working

T

Toadstool

Registered
Have gone through the process of updating to 10.1.1, security update, Installer update, updating to 10.1.2. No problems, and am happy with the result

Have downloaded quite a few applications from Apple's MacOSX 10 site, all has been going well. However the installer has just developed a problem, when I try to install a product that requires the "installer", it asks me for the ADMIN password, I type it in and then the "Installer" quits or crashes.

I initially thought this might be a disk related problem, and issued a "fsck -y", initially there was a problem, so I issued an "fsck -b 32" to use the alternate supreblock. No problems with any of the installed software, but the Installer seem to be still broken.

Problem is, I can't re-install the "installer" as it requires the "installer" (the sentence does actually make sense).

Anybody got any ideas as to what's wrong or/and how to get out of this.

Thanks in advance. :)confused: )
 
there are several threads about possible causes for your installer not working already on the site. this problem was very common a while back when people were just updating to 10.1.2 without getting all previous upgrades. do a site search for installer or install and see if any of the situations ring a bell. if not come back and tell what you have ruled out and maybe one of us can help.

bottom line is that it is fixable
 
Ed

Thanks for the note, I've had a look around the site and found nothing, so far, that matches my situation.

I have seen a reference to "fsck_hfs", but I am no longer sure its a filesystem related issue as the installed applications are still funtional, it maybe that the installer is nuked in some way. It looks as though I should re-install the installer, but how do I do that without an installer.

I also thought there might be a problem with the portions applied by the "security Update" and tried to re-install that first, no go.

I have not exhausted all options as yet, but I have tried re-installing the installer, same problems, it asks me for my administrator password and then seems to blow itself away with the note "Installer has unexpectedly quit" or something close to that.

It may be that the installer requires specific "libraries" then there might be a problem with these, as some of the Applications like Xtools, XFree86/XonX and others put their own libraries in as well during an install.

Is there a non-installer distribution, ie. a tar file that can replace the "installer", which will not require the installer.

Its a bit woolly, sorry for that.

Thanks again
 
noordkmp - thanks for the Pacifist tip, I downloaded the utility and it looks fine. It finds all the contents of the pkg without problems, however when I try and export it returns and error
-60008. I wonder if there's a damaged library, that both the "installer" and "Pacifist" use.

I have copied the "installer" from the CD and launched that version, same problem, possibly points to a damaged shared library again.

I also had a look at "fsck_hfs", it always seemed to return a problem that was fixable. However rebooting the system seems to crash into PROM mode and is locked there. On power up MacOSX reports it is "checking the system" but no problems were reported.

Unfortunately my turn around is slow, there aren't any Macintoshs at work in 99.9% companies in Aberdeen (Scotland), so I have to wait till I get home with the new ideas.

Thanks for the help though.
 
just an offhand question while we are waiting on your adventures in installation land - have you (or anyone else in europe) ever known anyone with my last name? I have been told it is scottish and dutch german? We used to think it was german but now believe it to be more germanic. couldn't help myself from asking when you mentioned where you are.:)
 
Morning Ed

You're up early, if you're in the US that is?

I have not heard of "Spruiell" (sprool) over here in Scotland, however that does not mean it's not Scottish. I will ask around, the grapevine is usually the best way. I am not Scottish myself but Welsh, and before you ask "Spruiell" is not Welsh.

I have worked in Holland and seen a "vann den Spruiell" I think, which would put into the Dutch category. I would not be surprised to hear that kind of name being used there. However Dutch is almost unintelligible, they could saying anything.
 
actually I am up late, a bad habit of mine.

Very good with the pronunciation. I always tell people it's like a spool of thread with an r in it. I have also been told it means blacksmith. the other sides of my family are Moore and Davis, both from somewhere on the group of islands you're sitting upon:)

Having some Scottish and / or Dutch blood would be fine with me:)

So what is a Welchman doing in Scotland anyway? Besides screwing his installer up:p
 
I work in the Oil business as a UNIX administrator, mostly with SUN,SGI, IBM and Linux kit. I don't like working here much its too limiting for want of a better word, its nearly all MicroSoft and anybody else is considered a freak and won't speak to you.

I spent 7 years in the USA, 2 in Palo Alto/Stanford and 5 in Chicago at the UofC Where I had to start working for a living. I was a Molecular Biochemist but the money?..........so now I work with computers.

I did try to get back a few years ago, working across the Bay at Chiron, but my agency did not handle the paperwork properly (Elan Computing) and so had to come home and work in Holland.

Used to know a few people from "La Honda" if that the correct spelling, used to carshare and comute from Bellmont on 280 across the Bay, I loved it!. I have to wear a tie and dress formally all time here.

I misss the trip to San Gregorio and the beach, passing by Gamello/Obester winery on the way. (must not kill self, must not....)
 
it sounds like you know my neck of the woods here very well. I live north of Half Moon Bay and do most of my commuting to Palo Alto across 92 and 280. but I try to take the trip from San Gregorio thru La Honda at least four or five times a year just for the beautiful scenery.

Seeing as how La Honda is often known as a home for freaks, you should be OK with a Mac in Scotland:p

So where are you with the installer issues?
 
"Half Moon Bay", used to buy vegetables there from a small farm, "crumbs" its beautiful part of the world you are a fortunate man.

The Installer problem is refusing to budge, did not get a chance last night to look at the problem. However over the next few days I should get some real time in on this one.

I tried out "pacifist" to see if it used a different method of extraction, the applications is able to read the contents of the PKGs, but when an export is issued it fails with the error message - 60008. I looked around the site for any other occurences of the error message, none as yet.

The problems seemed to occure around the time I was assessing the qulities of different UNIX X-window packages, XTools, XonX/XFree86 and EXodus. All three packages install pieces of the X-Windows distribution and may cause conflicts. XTools and Exodus cost too much, XonX/XFree86 are PD.

There is a real business requirement to use UNIX X-windows on MaxOSX if there are any inroads to be made fo Apple in the Oil&Gas industry.

Currently SUN, SGI dominate the workstation market for G&G exploration, they cost a packet i.e. 18,000 appx British Pounds. SUN have very poor graphics capability, even the Blade 1000s can't compete with NVIDIA on either a PC or a Mac. A 1,500 pound MacOSX machine looks just fine to me.

We also saved the company around 148,000 Pounds by using LINUX machines, MOSIX kernel forming a cluster, the cluster is about 2.5 time the speed of a 6 CPU/6GB SUN E4500. Crazy or what, its brilliant and a no brainer (which is cool for me, cause I'm not that clever). All this is in the "attainable domain" of MacOSX, PowerPC's are quite a bit faster than Intel machine and could process the numerical stuff even more quickly.

Speak to you soon.
 
too bad about about not having time, i guess.

if it is the farm north of the harbor, then i live almost right next to it. if it is the farm south of HMB, then it is the one i bought a papaya at several months ago. those are the only two stands i know of. i guess there is one other that is on 92, just east of HMB, but i have never stopped there- advertised prices look expensive. however i like buying roses for as little as $4.00 a dozen from one of the growers in that area. helps make the GF happy:)
 
Hi Ed.

I've never seen a Spruiell in Holland, though the ui combination is very Dutch. The double ell could be old Dutch spelling, we don't use that anymore at the end of a word.
Of course we would pronounce your name completely different from sprool, but every Dutch name in the US gets a different pronunciation there... I don't think I can transcribe our pronunciation fonetically in English – how do I record my voice in OS X? In OS 9 I could do it in the sound control panel, but that doesn't seem to work in X's sound preference panel.
I was almost feeling guilty about elaborating very off-topic, but this last question is almost on topic again...
 
I've had installer problems, especially at the point of upgrading to 10.1.2. I'm not much of a Unix geek so my first line of defense is the old stand-by's like Norton and Disk Warrior. I've been able to fix this particular problem, on two different machines, by first running the latest version of Norton (in my case upgraded over the internet) and then Norton.

Let me say that I have partitioned all of the machines at work so that one is for 9 and one for X. These particular apps must run in 9 or from the system loaded onto their CD's, but they do well working on the X partition.

Hope this helps
 
Norton Utilities - I'll try that one, just in case it reports on other issues to do with the filesystem that are not reported by fsck.

Even though a re-install will probably resolve the problem, it seems like overkill. The filesystem checker (fsck -y /dev/disk) reports "no problems".

I do feel this is more subtle than a filesystem problem, but more like a damaged shared library. The installed applications are working fine, and there are quite a few of them loaded, in fact a very large % off of the Apple site.

My configuration is MacOSX 10.1.2 on it's own disk and MacOS 9.2.2 on another disk, and as such there should be none of the more obvious hardware contention issues.
 
Hi Toadstool. Been wondering where you were. Yes the repair utilities like Diskwarrior, Techtool Pro, Drive10 and Norton Utilities are much more advanced than fsck or disk utility. I own the first three, have become disgusted with norton. each of them have their own stregnths and weaknesses. while probably not worth saving you one reinstall unless you have lots to backup, the purchase of any or all of these will save you over and over in the future. it could be worth starting your investment now. techtool pro and and norton include a defragmentation and optimization program. With disk warrior you only get it if you buy the disk. but it is the best optimizer as far as i can tell.
 
Thanks for all of the info. I ultimately ran Norton first (as Disk Warrior would just hang) and then ran DW. After that the update ran just fine.
 
Well I found what was causing the problem, but bot exactly how the cause of the problem came about.

I got some time on the machine this weekend, and found that two links in root were broken, i.e. tmp and var.

The two links read like this:

tmp -> /private/tmp
var -> /private/var

The latter being the most important, as I have 768MB of RAM, and was the cause of the problem. Once relinked the Installer and Pacifist were functional again.

Since the nature of the broken links looks like a damage inode, I would say that a filesystem problem, which has been fixed using "fsck" quite adequately as it does in other Unices, was the root of the problem.

What caused the problem?, well I was installing (X-window clients, XFree86/XonX/Xtools and Exodus) software at the time, the Installer looks like the culprit. I will say that installing software that may well intersect each other packages may cause problems, but only with the packages themselves and not the filesystem.

Anyway I thank you all for the pointers and assistance, cheers.

Robin
 
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