[52] in installers
Re: New Eudora 3.0.2 Installer
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Scott McGuire)
Mon Apr 14 14:28:42 1997
In-Reply-To: <v03020900af7433445bc8@[18.81.0.181]>
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 14:28:10 -0400
To: Peter Ragone <pragone@MIT.EDU>
From: "Scott McGuire" <smcguire@MIT.EDU>
Cc: installers@MIT.EDU, helpstaff@MIT.EDU
Dear Peter,
> Well, since you asked for feedback, here's some after using the installer
>for about 1 hour or so in various ways.
Thank you for your feedback. I think you'll find the second release of the
Eudora installer (available now) addresses most of your concerns.
>2) The installer gives me the option of installing Eudora into a particular
>folder.
I assume you're referring to the "Select Folder" button, which shows up if
you only have one volume on your Mac. If you have more, the button is
instead a "Switch Disk" button and the "Select Folder" option is at the
bottom of a pop-up menu of volumes.
This is just an option; it's not required.
>As with most of the Mac's installers it doesn't specify whether
>it's going to install the files into that folder, or neatly put them into a
>folder in that folder.
It puts them neatly into a folder ("Eudora Pro") in that folder.
I'll agree that most Mac installers have this ambiguity, and one that it's
not easy to avoid - we are limited by the constraints of the program we
used to develop the installer (VISE).
However, I think we have done the right thing (its own folder).
>This ambiguity leads the typical client to select to
>install this package into the Eudora folder on their hard drive.
I usually assume that installers are going to create their own folder to
put the files in, but that's just my perspective.
The prominence of the "Select Folder" button on single-volume systems is
unfortunate. It's much clearer on many-volume systems that you are not
required to select a folder. We could suppress the "Select Folder" option
altogether, but I think that would inconvenience just as many people.
I have edited the READ ME that the installer displays to explicitly say you
don't need to select a folder, and what the installer does by default.
>The
>installer then puts the Eudora Pro folder into the Eudora folder and the
>client must then drag the contents into the enclosing folder and wonder
>whether to "replace files with same names." Just a little annoyance. I had
>one of our student consultants run the installer and he made the same
>mistake.
Since the installer creates its own folder to put its files in, it
shouldn't be asking to replace files (or just doing it without asking). I
assume you mean after it's installed and they drag the folder around.
>3) The installer has no note that it runs as an ftp client, requires an
>active network connection, and a ball-park figure of how long it'll take to
>download Eudora at 28.8 bps or slower. Alicia said that Scott has put this
>note into the new installer due out Monday.
Actually, the installer has always said clearly on the Easy Install screen,
"This installer requires an active connection to MITnet. Please make sure
you have such a connection before proceeding with the installation."
The Read Me file of the revised installer does include a section about
download times. The web page documentation will also say these things.
>4) For clients who have followed our official directions regarding how to
>set up their Eudora 2.1.4 for multiple users, the 'placeholder file' is not
>handled well during the installation process. The installer insists on
>replacing that file with a Eudora Folder and Settings file.
It would have been nice to have this pointed out to us before the day that
we were prepared to release the revised Eudora installer.
However, I have gone in and fixed it, so now the revised installer checks
for a file named "Eudora Folder" in the System Folder (including an alias
named this), and if it finds one, it will not attempt to install a folder
over it.
>If the client
>elects to "Stop", the whole download is canceled. A costly error for the
>client because even at Ethernet speeds, reinstalling again is a long
>process.
Not strictly true. If a partial install is already on the hard disk - i.e.
files identical to the what the installer is going to install - the
installer will not re-download the files. So as long as the user tells the
installer to place files in the same place and has not thrown out the
partial install, it will not re-download what is there when a new install
is started. (I can see that a user might trash a partial install because
they're not aware of this, however.)
>Nothing about a previously existing multiple user setup is
>addressed in the installer ReadMe file. Will this be addressed on the
>updated web page?
Yes, it is addressed on the updated web page. I have added a statement to
the READ ME the installer displays. It's also mentioned the "READ ME for
Eudora at MIT" (which the installer installs in the Eudora Pro folder).
>5) We need to update the Web page describing the installation process and
>remove the instruction to move the Kerberos Settings file since it appears
>to come with this installation. Alicia said that Phyllis Galt may already
>be working on this change.
Phyllis is revising the Eudora docs, and I have read them over. I don't
remember seeing this in the revisions, so it must have been removed!
>6) "Timeout... Lost connection with the server" error occurred in 2 of our
>5 installations today. Can you think of why this would happen so
>frequently? A similar file corruption error happened a week or so ago with
>this installer on a 7600/120, OS 7.6, and happened twice today with a
>Powerbook 3400/200, OS 7.6 for 3400 v1.0. This is perhaps not as important
>at Ethernet speeds as for our poor Tether users who would need to spend
>another hour or so downloading the files again.
We will continue to monitor the net-dist load and timeout problems, and
make adjustments to its setup if necessary.
Again, if a user tries the install again immediately after it has failed,
and does not throw out the partial install, they will not have to
re-download what has already been successfully installed. (See above.)
>7) The new KClient 1.6.2 is great. What a relief it'll be to have clients
>being able to login and report Kerberos ticket information without needing
>to search for and download KConfig. There's only one further wish I would
>have for this extension -- Please don't have it turn off loading with the
>same key combination as rebuilding the desktop.
We didn't write KClient, so we cannot make this change. KClient was
developed at Cornell.
Try to encourage users to wait to hold down the keys for rebuilding the
desktop until after all the extensions have loaded. Probably KClient isn't
the only one getting turned off! There is no standard for which modifier
key combinations turn off which extensions. (TechTool's an option for
rebuilding the desktop too.)
Hope you find these changes satisfactory,
--Scott McGuire / smcguire@mit.edu
