[lmi] Strange LMI installation failure under Windows 7 SP1: /cache_for_lmi/downloads not found

[Vadim Zeitlin]

 Hello,

 I've set up a fresh virtual machine with Windows 7 SP1 for LMI testing.
Following the usual instructions, I've installed Cygwin without problems
and launched install_msw.sh. After just a few minutes, the script
terminated with "Finished building lmi." message but I quickly realized
that actually LMI wasn't built and was nowhere to be found under /opt/lmi.

 Examining the log file revealed surprising error messages: after setting
up the mount points there is this:

        find /cache_for_lmi/downloads -type f | xargs md5sum
        find: ‘/cache_for_lmi/downloads’: No such file or directory
        d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e *-

This error happened in spite of successful execution of

        mkdir --parents /cache_for_lmi/downloads

at the very beginning of the script and in spite of the fact that the
directory did exist after install_msw.sh termination. Also, further down in
the log there is

        cd /cache_for_lmi/downloads && echo "6bba3bd1bf510d152a42d0beeeefa14d 
*binutils-2.19.1-mingw32-bin.tar.gz" | md5sum --check
        /bin/sh: line 0: cd: /cache_for_lmi/downloads: No such file or directory
        install_mingw.make:251: recipe for target 
'binutils-2.19.1-mingw32-bin.tar.gz' failed
        make: *** [binutils-2.19.1-mingw32-bin.tar.gz] Error 1

However the next command does find the directory successfully:

        cd /cache_for_lmi/downloads && echo "ada423c49bc5bfa7c3e7a80a711c2a1a 
*mpatrol_1.4.8.tar.gz" | md5sum --check
        mpatrol_1.4.8.tar.gz: OK

 Unfortunately by then it's too late as binutils installation failed and
the compiler was not installed and so building everything fails.


 I don't understand at all what's going on here. My hypothesis is that
mounting C:/cache_for_lmi on /cache_for_lmi has somehow temporarily
confused Cygwin but this seems pretty unconvincing even to me. After
restarting the script the problem doesn't appear any more and I'm not sure
if it's worth trying resetting the virtual machine and repeating everything
from scratch if there is such a simple workaround. However I wanted to post
it here just so that this remains in the archives and could be found if
anybody else has this problem in the future.


 There is also clearly a problem with detecting the script success. IMO it
shouldn't continue running if any of the steps failed, i.e. I'd just add
"set -e" to the top of it. But if this is too extreme, it should at least
exit with a clear error message if installing the compiler fails,
continuing in this case just doesn't make any sense.

 Regards,
VZ