[openbeos] Second patch release bug & Michael Phipps status
- From: "Daniel Reinhold" <danielr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Public OBOS mailing list" <openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 06:28:54 CST
Ok folks, here's the lowdown...
The second patch release has been posted on the Sourceforge Files page.
It is called 'OpenBeOS-20020315' and you don't want to run it.
Let me repeat: DO NOT RUN THIS INSTALL!!!
The installer has a serious bug: all the system files are moved from
the standard location (/boot/beos/system) on the boot drive. It makes
the partition unbootable. The files are all still there -- at /boot/
home/Desktop/OpenBeOS/Saved Files/system. Unfortunately, /boot/beos/
system is left empty.
It appears to be a case of moving files instead of copying them.
Whatever the foulup, you cannot boot the partition after running the
install and re-starting the machine. Michael Phipps was bitten by this
himself and is thus now without a working BeOS system. He tested the
installation on his one and only BeOS partition (tisk, tisk) which is
now unbootable. He was able to send me an email from his wife's
machine, but he has asked me to let everyone know that he will be
unavailable thru email for a few days until he has this fixed.
Unfortunately, as project admin, he's the only guy with the power to
remove the patch file from the Sourceforge page, so we'll have to stare
at it for a few days.
If you have a second BeOS partition, then it's no big deal to fix the
problem. Just mount the troublesome drive while in the other partition
and copy all the system files back. For example, the following command
line should do it:
cp -rf "/BOOT/home/Desktop/OpenBeOS/Saved Files/system" /BOOT/beos
only replace 'BOOT' with the real mount name for the volume that the
install was run on.
If someone downloaded this patch, installed it on their one and only
BeOS partition (as Michael did), then they've got a definite problem.
If they have a valid R5 CD that can be booted from, great -- just boot
from this and do the copy command as above. Michael evidently can't go
the CD route because his dual processor machine won't let him (not sure
why). People in this circumstance will have to find a way to boot a
BeOS partition so they can copy the system files back. One route, if
need be, would be to download the BeOS Personal Edition for Windows (or
Linux) and use that to boot from. There are probably other, more
drastic recovery techniques that are too ugly to mention. I'm not going
to worry about this too much yet, tho: I'm not sure that anyone
(besides Michael) has been bitten by this. Nobody may have even noticed
the new patch download file was there yet anyway.
Anyway, that's the scoop.
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