a bit scared of boingbags 3 & 4

[honx]

do i really need them? if yes, is there a safe way for installing them?

i wanted to give a try to the unofficial boingbags 3 & 4 today morning.
fortunately i made a backup of the affected hardfile before the process.
because i ran into several issues after patching, in other words havoc:
no ram disk present, the good old start page of aweb is gone,
diverse other errors appear on aweb, prefs were messed up,
visualprefs completely messed up, no audio (something with ahi i guess), etc.

so, if i have to: how can i safely apply these two additional boingbags?
is a clean install without messing up my system and preferences possible?

[SnkBitten]

The best way to install BoingBags3&4 is on a clean system that you just built and haven[t tweaked with additional patches or "enhancements". Install OS 3.9, BB 1 and 2 and then the new combined BB 3&4.

Once your system is running with that you can start the tweaks and patches you normally do, though a few may already be included in BB 3&4.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by honx

do i really need them?

Clearly no. They are full of unofficial and problematic patches. And they are not true boing bags anyway, you need to do a lot of manual work to fully install them.

[honx]

Originally Posted by SnkBitten

The best way to install BoingBags3&4 is on a clean system that you just built and haven[t tweaked with additional patches or "enhancements". Install OS 3.9, BB 1 and 2 and then the new combined BB 3&4.

Once your system is running with that you can start the tweaks and patches you normally do, though a few may already be included in BB 3&4.

well, i'm afraid, that's a little bit too late for a hardfile which is already 2 years in use.
i don't think i have time or motivation doing a complete new install and all the work again.
there must be another not too time consuming way of upgrading...

Originally Posted by thomas

Clearly no. They are full of unofficial and problematic patches. And they are not true boing bags anyway, you need to do a lot of manual work to fully install them.

so, i assume, it's better to let it be.

[Minuous]

What version did you install, probably 1.0g?

You should install V1.23 from http://amigan.1emu.net/releases/#others

Gulliver, I ask once again, PLEASE remove 1.0g from your site, it has known bugs which have all since been fixed. Over the past few months I have had about a dozen bug reports, and every one has been from someone who got 1.0g from your site, thinking it was the current version.

[idrougge]

Anyone can make a "Boingbag". Calling them "Boingbag" and using the same versioning as the official source is downright deceptive.

[honx]

Originally Posted by Minuous

What version did you install, probably 1.0g?

You should install V1.23 from http://amigan.1emu.net/releases/#others

Gulliver, I ask once again, PLEASE remove 1.0g from your site, it has known bugs which have all since been fixed. Over the past few months I have had about a dozen bug reports, and every one has been from someone who got 1.0g from your site, thinking it was the current version.

to be honest, i don't exactly know, which version i downloaded.
i got it from here: http://lilliput.amiga-projects.net/bbag4.htm
tomorrow i'll try the one you suggested.

[Retrofan]

Originally Posted by honx

to be honest, i don't exactly know, which version i downloaded.
i got it from here: http://lilliput.amiga-projects.net/bbag4.htm
tomorrow i'll try the one you suggested.

What Amiga have you got? And what accelerator?

[Minuous]

@honx: Yes, I'm afraid that is V1.0g, which is nearly two years out of date.

@idrougge: I'm not sure what you are accusing me of here, but it would appear to be one or both of the following:
* that BB3&4 is claiming to be an official update from H&P. I have never claimed this, it is clearly unofficial. (Although, in some cases, the coders are the same.)
* that Gulliver is the "official source" for BB3&4 and that I have forked the package. That is likewise incorrect, even the readme for V1.0g at his site gives myself (James Jacobs) as primary author and my site ( http://amigan.1emu.net/releases/ ) as the URL. Have a read of the BB3&4-related threads on EAB for confirmation of this. It is purely a matter of him not updating his site for nearly two years. I have always uploaded it first to my site. Formerly then he would mirror it at his site, however as noted this hasn't happened for nearly two years. End result: many wasted hours of users' time as they install a very obsolete version and then find that it has bugs.

[honx]

i want to edit Startup-sequence and user-startup by myself, manually.
because the installer makes a complete new one which is missing everything i altered.
do you know what i have to edit into these two files matching the new boing bags?
and why is this update wiping my palette settings? magicwb colors are gone and ugly.
so i'll have to configure them in fullpalette again. and netprinter in prefs causes guru.

[Minuous]

When it asks if you want startup-sequence updated automatically, answer No and it will tell you the changes you need to make.

The installer doesn't make any changes to palette.prefs. As a test, I just customized the colours and then reinstalled BB3&4, the colours remain unaffected by the reinstallation. If MagicWB and/or FullPalette were in your old startup-sequence and you selected to overwrite it, as seems to be the case, then they would not be running, and thus whatever hacks they do to the palette would not occur.

I'll remove NetPrinter from the next version.

[idrougge]

Minuous, I'm accusing whomever made Boingbags 3 and 4 to be misleading by using the same name as the official Boingbags and continuing their numeration where H&P left off. Which makes people think that installing them is a good idea when they have been causing trouble many times.

[Minuous]

The readme clearly specifies who is the creator of the overall package and of each component thereof, as well as noting in the first sentence that it is a community effort. It has never claimed any kind of official status.

And installing it certainly is a good idea. Especially if the contributions are skipped, the package mostly consists of bug fixes to BB2 components: a BB4 system is considerably more stable than a BB2 one, as it fixes dozens of known bugs in BB2.

[idrougge]

If you didn't want to pretend any official status, you should have named your packages "SomethingelseBag 1" and not "Boingbag 3". It implies official status.

[honx]

is it possible to install the components of the two boingbags manually, one by one, gradually?
patching still does bad things, even a winuae crash with lockup, so i had to kill winuae process.
so i would have to work through patching in stages. hopefully i'll find what's causing this that way.
btw. install asks if you want to install contributions? where can i get these contributions manually?
btw., winuae made a dump file while it crashed. i attached it. perhaps it's useful somehow.

[Minuous]

>is it possible to install the components of the two boingbags manually, one by one, gradually?

Well, most of the components are available on Aminet, you could download and install each one separately if you wanted, and end up with something quite similar. Core components that are always installed are in Files1/, core components that are sometimes installed depending on options chosen during installation are in Files3, contributions that are always installed (assuming you chose to install the contributions) are in Files3/, and contributions that are sometimes installed depending on options chosen during installation are in Files4/ .

>patching still does bad things, even a winuae crash with lockup, so i had to kill winuae process.

It doesn't patch anything, except as regards the SetPatch command. I use nothing but WinUAE, it doesn't crash for me or for anyone else AFAIK. I'll have a look at your logfile, but need more information, eg. what options are you choosing, and at what point does it crash?

[honx]

it crashed after installation of boingbags 3&4, after i rebooted (after manually editing Startup-sequence and user-startup).
i wanted to start workbench prefs when this crash occured. in addition to it, workbench prefs wasn't german anymore after bb34.
and post-bb34, birdie (adds patterns to titlebars) wasn't working at all, nevermind when in Startup-sequence it was started.
i noticed that as late as yesterday, after giving a second try to boingbags 3&4 v1.23, can't say if it was so after my first try.
and since intallation of boingbags 3&4 i had some errors on bootup of amigaos regarding workbench screenmode reset i guess.
i haven't looked any further into it, i just wanted to delete the broken hdf and restore the previously made backup of it.

[Minuous]

The first instructional window for the editing of the startup-sequence will open behind the EditPad window, and completely obscured by it, and thus if you just close the EditPad window without moving it to see what is behind it then you will miss the most important step in the startup-sequence modification.

Please send me your startup-sequence and user-startup, your issues are probably caused by what I noted in the previous paragraph. Otherwise it is perhaps caused by running things in the incorrect order. An Installer logfile and/or SnoopDOS log would also be helpful in diagnosing the cause of the issue.

None of the preferences settings are altered by BB3&4.

[honx]

this time i installed it with applying automatic updating of Startup-sequence and user-startup made by the installer.
i also made told the installer to make a logfile. snoopdos didn't make any log. it said, there should be a logfile in ram:.
but there was no logfile. don't know how i tell snoopdos make a log-file. today is the first time i ever touched snoopdos.
in this post i include the Startup-sequence made by the installer which is missing everything i had altered (birdie, etc.).
i also include Startup-sequnece.old, which was mine before installation of boingbags 3&4. there you find all mine edits.
last but not least of cause i include also user-startup and the install-log made by the installer.

this time i did everything suggested, so Startup-sequence and user-startup should contain everything made by installer.
so nothing i could have done wrong and still: on boot i get display initialization/reset error. i tried nothing else this time.
after reboot and encountering this display reset error again, i simpy quit the emulation and started typing this post here...
this time i didn't delete the kaput hardfile yet, kept it for now. so if i should try anything if working or not, still could do it.
i compressed the log files into a zip file, because this forum doesn't accept the log files themselves as attachment...

[Minuous]

>automatic updating of Startup-sequence and user-startup made by the installer.

Only startup-sequence is affected by this setting. The action regarding user-startup is always to just add/update assigns for AWeb and icon.library.

>don't know how i tell snoopdos make a log-file.

It is the "Open Log..." button to begin logging, and then "Close Log..." when finished.

>Startup-sequence made by the installer which is missing everyghing i had altered (birdie, etc.).

Those patches are better to be in user-startup rather than startup-sequence.

Please can you describe the exact error, by "display initialization/reset error" do you mean the one saying roughly "Workbench is resetting the screen, close all windows"? After this is the system running perfectly or is it hanging/guruing? Does the problem occur before or after the Workbench appears? Do you use an emulator or a real Amiga, if so which one?

Thanks for answering all these questions, I need to gather a lot of information because I can't reproduce your bug yet here.