forums.xandros.com

[Brian Wallen]

I have yet to get XN to successfully complete an install. Some early failures were ignorance on my part. Other failures--for example getting XN loaded from the desktop seem to be problems that may relate to Mozilla settings or caching. Even when connected successfully to XN, going through the steps results in a status message that says that XN is about to download and install Ok for the different parameters it lists. Davepet has seen this message, but reported that the downloads/installs worked anyway. I wasn't so lucky. While I get a message that the installation has completed, I don't find the installed packages.

A recent experience with Win4Lin installation may give some clue to an additional problem. Win4Lin installation tries to connect to the Netraverse server for registration and possibly to pull down some code. When I tried this it hung. Netraverse tech support provided the following:
Do you have any sort of firewalling between your system and the internet at large, or do you use a proxy server?
If you use either of these, then that could be the problem - these can stop the traffic via our online installer even though you can access our site via your browser. What you can do is install Win4Lin manually instead. Information on how to do this can be found in the following

I wonder if the kind of problems I was seeing with the Win4Lin install could be happening with XN?

Getting technical information from ISPs is often dicey. Some ISP staff don't know or provide overly general or erroneous information. ISPs may even have legitimate reasons for not publicly sharing information about their security arrangements. These kinds of issues are likely to be exaccerbated by tighter network security in the future.

To an early criticsm of XN, one of the Xandros staff explained that they were impressed with the slickness of this product, but at least hinted that there were some problems. It does look like an attractive concept and if it works smoothly may result in more reliable installations and fewer tech support problem for both the user and the provider. When automation fails,it is important to have a fallback FTP site where users could download packages and install them with Xandros Update.

[solanjie]

Maybe I'm not reading your post correctly (haven't had my coffee yet), but you should be able to install anything with Xandros Update (or Synaptic).

As for your problem with Xandros Networks and Win4Lin... I have seen it before. The first night I installed Xandros, I did something to hose it... do not remember what I did. I was lazy and reinstalled Xandros instead of trying to figure out how to fix it. I have never seen this problem since.

[Davepet]

Brian, so how *do* you connect to the internet? Both your local connection (ie direct modem, local network/router, etc) & you actual ISP connection (dsl, cable, local ISP, etc.)

There *might* be a clue there, but unless your connection is quite unusual, I doubt it.

While I find XN a pita to use (mostly slowness) it does get the job done. I assume you've double checked obvious stuff like your package source setting (I have gotten some strange results when shifting between XOS CD & the online XN, but usually because I forgot to update sources)

Dave
_________________

Friends don't let friends use windows
GLPW
Registered Linux User #301200

[Brian Wallen]

First, a mea culpa. Somehow in reading the User Guide and the assorted posts about XN, I failed to understand that Xandros Update could actually pull packages down from the Xandros distribution site. I had gotten it into my mind that the difference between Xandros Networks and Xandros Update was that XU worked locally and XN worked over the Internet. After I discovered my error, I tried XU and it worked fine. So apart from not understanding why we would need XN if we have XU, I've got this problem solved.

Dave, in trying to leave some useful tracks about the XN problem, I have access to two different dial connections. The one at my university uses a 'fully closed' type connection to incoming traffic. From their site:

5.Are the modems protected by the campus firewall?
Yes, the modems are in the "Fully Closed" category.

In simple terms, this means that while you are using a modem to dial into the network, any request your computer makes to receive information outside the firewall will be permitted to leave. However, if a machine outside the firewall wants to initiate a connection that will go into your computer, it will be denied. For example, you can connect to any other web server from a modem, but you won't be able to run a web server over a modem, because connection requests originating from off-campus will be denied. For more information, see: http://www.cites.uiuc.edu/firewall/plandetails.html#fullyclosed


I couldn't get reliable information of this sort for the other ISP.

Yes, I had changed the XN sources to include the Xandros distribution site, and I was connecting to the site, seeing available packages that I did not have installed, selecting a package, and requesting an install. That was the point that I got the status popup with the various transaction parameters all of which were zeros--the condition you said you had seen. Even after going ahead with the download, I got a transaction complete msg, but nothing had been installed. Going through the same general process with XU during the same dialup session was successful, and several packages that I had tried to download with XN and failed, all installed with XU.