Installer Progress Report

Wow. About 6 hours ago I thought I was ready to release. Then everything fell apart on me. By everything, I mean one single line in a 12 line BATCH script. Since that time I've been debugging myself to death over this thing, and it's been rough for a few reasons...

• Vmware is sluggish as hell
• 5 minute build times
• 3 minute copy times to put the installer in the Vmware image
• 5 minute install times
• Different results when BitRock runs the post-install script than when you run it manually
• Timing issues with commands, and how Bitrock handles that (all black box...)
• When I address the timing issues using /w and/or /b, Bitrock will sit forever waiting for an application to exit that is in the background somewhere

I've got the situation narrowed down, and I know exactly what line is "failing". Bitrock is passing in a mis-quoted variable that points to a path. When I try to reset the root password in the script, it fails because of that mis-quoted variable. Thus, none of the SQL scripts get executed because of bad credentials. I spent hours debugging the BATCH script and running it manually, and I got the system running each and every time. So, believe me, the installer works on a bare system, all of my code is absolutely correct. I had issues with Bitrock's variable passing (how they handle spaces as opposed to how BATCH handles them) before, but this time the normal fix isn't cutting it. Combine that with the fact that half of the time I never see the post-install script result, I never see what command it's trying to execute. I have fixed that now, but it's 5:30am and I absolutely have to go to sleep. Once I get the variable into shape, everything will work just as flawlessly as it does when I run the script manually with data that I've fed it. IT WORKS! I PROMISE! You'll soon see it for yourself!

Yep, I've lost my mind. Goodni..morning.