11 Oct
2010
11 Oct
'10
6:44 p.m.
MSI works well enought with older versions of Windows Installer. It can for
example handle WinDbg msi packacge correctly. It has some problems with
install packages of the newer version. Since those require installing and
running a service, it could be difficult to have them running on ros, but
not impossible.
As for video driver installation, it is quite specific. If dedicated
installer doesnt work, you can only change the video driver by having the
proper files in specific locations at startup of 2nd stage of ROS install.
Anything later is just too late.
By specific, i mean all exe and dll in ReactOS\System32, all sys files
in ReactOS\System32\Drivers and inf file in ReactOS\Inf. You can easily
decipher the proper file list from the inf file. As for inf, you dont need
to hack them, they are being processed quite well by ROS, usually. Having
the driver package separated as i describe above, will not only allow you to
install video driver on 2nd stage, but also to install driver for any device
at a later stages, simply by picking "Automatic" option from New device
wizard.
Please mind that video driver loading is not working properly atm, see:
http://www.reactos.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=2286 (to mention, this is
one of my first bugs and longest one still open).
2010/10/11 Bernd Blaauw <bblaauw(a)home.nl>
The MSI installer has never been working anyway due to ReactOS's
development state, thus the vmwinst.exe program developed by a coder in the
ReactOS project. I'd have to study its sourcecode to get to know which
layout it actually expects of a CD/ISOfile (and since using Windows 7 and
VMware 7, I've got no clue anymore how older guest installation tool ISO
files are looking internally)
I'd favor quite much if your vmwinst.exe program
also allowed to point to a
directory where you have the extracted (VMware SVGA) driver files. After all
that's easy enough using 7ZIP to extract files from the MSI (which results
in .cab files as well), then extract the cab files to gain the actual driver
files (which require renaming).
The difficult part is actually getting the extracted + renamed files into
the virtual machine (since floppy is broken in ReactOS since 0.2.5 or so,
USB in development, FileZilla doesn't startup for FTP purposes, I was unable
to browse network shares using the explorer shell, etc), and on top of that
finding the correct location to copy all the files
(C:\REACTOS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS ?), edit an .inf file to get it working in
ReactOS, and finding correct/documented registry settings for registering
the driver to ReactOS.
As for bugs, every single one should be reported in bugzilla, but you
surely can ask questions and consult bugs on
IRC.
OK, hopefully some wishfull stuff regarding the download tool will count as
bug as well (FireFox 4 beta , Chrome, FileZilla).
with best regards,
Bernd Blaauw
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