Re: Error "Installation aborted by the user" during "D3_setup"

Good to exchange notes with you again, my friend.

I really do understand your position. Not for D3 but for other
products you'll find complex grep statements, regular expressions,
even Makefile's or shell scripts that need to be modified to install
some product (usually open source). It can be very confusing and it's
unfortunate that we now need to come to grips with detailed OS-level
nuances (aka voodoo) that we never needed with native MV
implementations. I freely admit that I glaze over when I start
looking at FLOSS that expects me tweak C code or rebuild a kernel.

However, in this case I'm afraid we are in disagreement. It's not the
job of the DBMS provider, nor the provider of any software, to educate
the user, especially the Value-Add-Reseller and support provider,
regarding the underlying OS. You will not find an explanation of
"init s", nor "cd" nor "mount" in any installation documentation for
any product. It's assumed that someone installing server software
will know these commands or do the research upon encountering
unfamiliar commands. And sure, we all forget commands that we don't
use that often. For this incident I'd say this is all just a case of
"use it or lose it", you've slapped your forehead with the "oh I get
it" as all of us do from time to time. It's OK to let this one drop
rather than petitioning the developers to make changes.

About the specific error message you received - D3 expects to be in
single-user mode during the installation. No provision is made in the
installation scripts for a system that is not in single user mode
because the docs explictly state "Return to the root directory and set
single-user mode". Once the script is executed, if anything fails the
script will simply respond as best it can to the failure of whatever
the last command was that executed. It seems the engineer who wrote
the script assumed that if the system is in single user mode, the only
way for some specific step to fail would be if the user aborted it.
While all of us could easily question such assumptions and would
prefer an explict "Step X failed", we're never going to get "Step X
failed because the system is in single user mode".

This is open to contention but I would ask why any developer should
write specific code to investigate the cause of a problem down to the
point where it questions whether the user was following explicit
directions. Yes, you and I would probably take the time to do this
but we expect companies like RD have more important things to do than
to second-guess the users. We've always been comfortable with
messages like "[3] verb?" when what we really mean is "[3] command not
found in the master dictionary, please enter a valid command, checking
the reference manual if required, or consult with your support
provider for assistance." I'm all for being user-friendly but there's
only so far that developers should go.

In this particular case neither the installation procedure nor the
related documentation has changed in the area being discussed since I
worked on it with the TechPubs department and our QA team about 10
years ago. At that time we very carefully ensured that every required
step was covered, and even added many helpful warnings at points where
there might have been confusion. Some people could even question
those helpful tips as being condescending or just fluff that bloats a
10 minute process into over 100 pages of detail. Since then, VARs and
experienced end-users have been using those docs to install their
systems with virtually no problems related to the docs - had there
been confusion in all of these years it would have been changed since
a new doc is generated with details for every new release. In this
particular case I don't think any changes to the software or docs are
warranted.

Best,
T



"Mike Wooding" wrote:

"Tony Gravagno" wrote
cd /
init s
/tmp/D3_setup

Tony, also respectfully, as you may remember from our conversations in the
past, but I'll restate for the avoidance of doubt, I am a long way from
being the most knowledgeable poster here on all things RedHat.

However, since encountering this problem, I have done some further reading.
I knew that "init s" took the system in single user mode, but I did not
realise that the result of that is to open a root shell on /dev/console.

Of course, I know that now, so if nothing else, I have learnt from the
experience.

Now, would it be too much to ask for RD to have thrown me a bone here? When
referencing the install procedure, could they not explicitly state that it
must be run from the console? As it is so critical, and as others, like me,
may not realise the full implications of "init s", would that not be the
sensible thing to do?

And whilst we're discussing this, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on
the actual error message encountered. In case you've forgotten, the
verbatim message was, "Installation aborted by the user". RD are clearly
checking all is well before proceeding. I wasn't on the console, all wasn't
well so the install process aborted.

Some might argue that as I wasn't running the process from the correct
place, I had in fact aborted the process, and so RD's error message is
correct.

But, it is my firmly held belief that an error message something like,
"D3_setup must be run from the console" would be both more accurate and more
meaningful.

I will of course contact RD in the morning and file action items suggesting
the documentation and error message are changed. Care to wager a beer on
whether or not they'll make it into the next release (or the one after that,
if you like)?

With Kindest Regards

Mike


.

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