BOINC 5.8.17 non-installation on Mac OS X.3.9
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BOINC 5.8.17 non-installation on Mac OS X.3.9
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Send message Joined: 17 May 07 Posts: 8 
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I downloaded the latest BOINC software for Mac via the SETI home page pointer. When I run the installer, it does not recognize any of the disks on the system as a legitimate target for installation. Is this a known issue with 10.3.9? Have I missed something blindlingly obvious to everyone else? NB: The download page states that this version is for 10.3.9 and higher, so I don't expect that to be the problem. ID: 10306 ·  |
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Send message Joined: 5 May 06 Posts: 50 
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I downloaded the latest BOINC software for Mac via the SETI home page pointer. When I run the installer, it does not recognize any of the disks on the system as a legitimate target for installation. I installed BOINC v5.8.17 on a G4/733 running Mac OS 10.3.9 just a week ago, and didn’t have any such problem. Anything non-standard about your disk configuration, e.g. a software RAID? 
ID: 10317 · |
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Send message Joined: 17 May 07 Posts: 8
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I installed BOINC v5.8.17 on a G4/733 running Mac OS 10.3.9 just a week ago, and didn’t have any such problem. Anything non-standard about your disk configuration, e.g. a software RAID? Nothing non-standard, unless having an external Firewire drive counts. (That would be unfortunate, since I have a 10.4 installation there, for experimentation.) I'm on a G4/450 with 2 IDE and 2 SCSI drives, DVD-RAM and Zip, all internal; 1GB RAM. I've had the system since the G4 series first came out, 7 years ago, and no software problems that have been due to hardware. At least now I know it's my setup. ID: 10352 · |
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Send message Joined: 5 May 06 Posts: 50
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At least now I know it's my setup. I suppose you’ve run Disk Utility to verify the directory structure & permissions? Does Startup Disk show your 10.3.9 system as selected? (Sorry, clutching at straws here.) ID: 10372 · |
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Send message Joined: 17 May 07 Posts: 8
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Startup Disk is happy, Disk Utility permissions verification passes. I also tried running the installer under X.4.8, and was allowed to choose the boot disk for installation, but the installer errored out. The frustrating thing is that I haven't been able to download work for more than a week now, even though the servers are (I believe) back up. Otherwise, I'd never have even tried the new software. Grr. ID: 10399 · |
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Send message Joined: 16 Jun 07 Posts: 1 |
I found out about the new stable version of BOINC (5.8.17) and decided to upgrade (I was running 5.8.something before). I'm running OSX 10.4.9 on an Intel iMac. When I go to run the installer, it always fails. I tried the unstable version and it fails to install too. And then I tried the "older" version that's available and that fails now, too. It seems that I can't help SETI@Home anymore until this gets resolved, and I'm assuming the problem isn't on my end. I have the installer log pasted below (sorry that it's long; text size reduced to prevent it from taking the thread over). Maybe someone can make a suggestion? Jun 16 19:19:51 Jetfire : @(#)PROGRAM:Install PROJECT:Install-143 DEVELOPER:root BUILT:Dec 1 2006 18:50:40\n Jun 16 19:19:51 Jetfire : @(#)PROGRAM:Installer PROJECT:Installer-95 DEVELOPER:root BUILT:Mar 28 2007 20:38:30\n Jun 16 19:19:51 Jetfire : Hardware: iMac5,1 @ 2000 MHz (x2), 1024 MB Jun 16 19:19:51 Jetfire : Running OS Build: 8P2137 Jun 16 19:19:51 Jetfire : BOINC Manager Installation Log Jun 16 19:19:51 Jetfire : Opened from: /Users/spekkiomofw/Desktop/boinc_5.8.17_macOSX_universal/BOINC Installer.app/Contents/Resources/BOINC.pkg Jun 16 19:19:52 Jetfire : It took 0.225960 seconds to finish launching. Jun 16 19:19:53 Jetfire : Distribution: BOINC Manager Jun 16 19:19:53 Jetfire : Installation checks completed successfully. Jun 16 19:20:08 Jetfire : admin auth received to install Jun 16 19:20:08 Jetfire : ================================================================================ Jun 16 19:20:08 Jetfire : User picked Easy Install Jun 16 19:20:08 Jetfire : Choices selected for installation: Jun 16 19:20:08 Jetfire : Install: "BOINC Manager" Jun 16 19:20:08 Jetfire : BOINC.pkg : edu.berkeley.boinc : 5.8.17.5.8 Jun 16 19:20:08 Jetfire : ================================================================================ Jun 16 19:20:08 Jetfire : It took 0.000538 seconds to summarize the package selections. Jun 16 19:20:08 Jetfire : Starting installation: Jun 16 19:20:08 Jetfire : Preparing volume "C" for installation Jun 16 19:20:08 Jetfire : Configuring volume "C" Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : Preparing local booted disk Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : Create temporary directory "/private/tmp/BOINC.pkg.26100LXuI8M" Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : Processing BOINC Manager: Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : Initialize patching Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : Determining files to install Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : Evaluating versions of bundles Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : Evaluating custom file version checking Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : Configuring deferred files Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : Assembling temporary receipt Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : Performing pre-extraction actions Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : ==== It took 0.014689 seconds to check for prebinding Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : Creating destination path Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : Extracting files Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : 123 files looked up in 0.00 seconds. 123 files written in 0.22 seconds. Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : 0 kilobytes installed. Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : run postinstall script for BOINC Manager Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : postinstall[26106]: csh: set: Variable name must begin with a letter. Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : postinstall[26106]: Jun 16 19:20:09 Jetfire : Install failed: The following install step failed: run postinstall script for BOINC Manager Jun 16 19:20:10 Jetfire : Private/Total = (5.3MB, 64.5MB), Heap/Total = (2.1MB, 17.5MB), Regions(malloc, private) = (25, 34) Jun 16 19:20:10 Jetfire : It took 1.445053 seconds to unsuccessfully install "BOINC Manager" (1 pkg(s)) Jun 16 19:20:10 Jetfire : It took 1.003792 seconds to Configuring volume "C" (dm prepare*disk) Jun 16 19:20:10 Jetfire : It took 0.438401 seconds to Install BOINC Manager: 22 elements Jun 16 19:20:10 Jetfire : It took 0.437052 seconds to unsuccessfully Install package BOINC Manager Jun 16 19:20:10 Jetfire : It took 0.120559 seconds to Assembling temporary receipt Jun 16 19:20:10 Jetfire : It took 0.243472 seconds to Write files Jun 16 19:20:10 Jetfire : It took 0.034791 seconds to run postinstall script for BOINC Manager ID: 10971 · |
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Send message Joined: 17 May 07 Posts: 8
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[I downloaded 5.10.7 and tried it out yesterday. It still fails in the same way on 10.3.9 (no selectable disk), but it *does* install on 10.4.8. I'm not ready to move to Tiger from Leopard, but at least I know that I'll be able to re-join the SETI community if I do. UPDATE FOR THOSE STILL READING: NOT A BOINC ISSUE! My apologies to everyone who puzzled over this. As I noted previously, the error reported in the OS X.4 installer log was that the postinstall script was suffering a C-shell error, but no one could tell me where to find the script in question. (I was wrong in my conclusion regarding Mac OS X.4.8, by the way. I could select the disk drive, but the installation failed later (where I could not select the disk at all in earlier versions of BOINC).) I tried running the command-line version of BOINC, and turned in one result to SETI@home doing that, but ye gods what a monster to adminster. This experience showed me that if I were ever to run this again I had to commit to an OS upgrade. I went out and bought a new 36GB SCSI disk drive and installed it into my 7 year old Mac and installed Mac OS 10.4 onto it. After getting all the very latest updates, including compiling a new version of Emacs while I was at it, I was ready to try again. I found the temporary directory into which the installer unfolded things, and located the postinstall script. It's extremely simple, and the error message I received made no sense, as there is no "set" command in the script. But. BUT! My shell on my Mac is tcsh, for historical reasons. I moved to bash in my professional life a long time ago, but didn't feel like schratzing around with getting it compiled for the Mac. I have a lot of old habits embedded in my .cshrc, such as shortening paths to the last two elements in my prompt, and creating an alias of the "cd" command which does that shortening on the fly. The alias uses a "set" to do that, so after a little bit of experimenting, I simply renamed my .cshrc to .cshrc.NOT and re-ran the BOINC installer. IT WORKED! The problem is that if tcsh is invoked as csh on the Mac, it does not allow the tcsh extensions to be used, and the postinstall script starts with a "#!/bin/csh" line. The cd command in the script tried to use my alias (which it should not have done, but that's a different rant for another time), and that is where the syntax error in a "set" came into a script that didn't have a "set" in it. C-shell should never be used in production scripts. There was nothing in this script that could not have been handled by the original Bourne shell. So I lost two months trying to diagnose a problem, annoyed any number of people, and am not too happy with the BOINCsters for that. Rich Alderson Server Engineer, PDPplanet.org Project Vulcan, Inc. Seattle, WA PDP-10 programmer, EMACS maintainer, historical linguist ID: 11341 · |
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Send message Joined: 17 Jul 06 Posts: 287
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C-shell should never be used in production scripts. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I've changed the installer to use the default sh shell (which is actually bash) beginning with the next release. Please let me know if this solves your problem. I think my use of csh was a holdover from scripts I had written for OS 10.2, where tcsh was the default shell. Apple changed the default shell to sh (bash) with OS 10.3. This change is mentioned in Apple's Technical Note tn2124. Cheers, --Charlie Charlie Fenton BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer ID: 11595 · |
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Send message Joined: 17 Jul 06 Posts: 287
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I've changed the installer to use the default sh shell (which is actually bash) beginning with the next release. I have now released BOINC version 5.10.16 for the macintosh to alpha test. You can download it here. Please let me know if this fixes your problem. Cheers, --Charlie Charlie Fenton BOINC / SETI@home Macintosh & Windows Programmer ID: 11829 · |
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Send message Joined: 12 Aug 07 Posts: 2 |
OK, I'll admit I was stupid in not checking for updates to BOINC (I'm running 4.43 :blush: ), but now I have a real pickle. Running a PowerPC Mac, 10.3.9, and *none* of the GUI installers will let me install. I get that %^&%* stop sign and "Null" when I try to select my hard drive. I've never taken the time to sit down and learn command line. Please help. ID: 12039 · |
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Send message Joined: 12 Aug 07 Posts: 2 |
OK, I'll admit I was stupid in not checking for updates to BOINC (I'm running 4.43 :blush: ), but now I have a real pickle. Never Mind (tm). It's amazing what happens when you actually *read* the ReadMe files. Trashing the BOINC.pkg in "Receipts" took care of it. ID: 12040 · |
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