Mac GOTM Installers

[Sid]

Tried to install the GOTM25 Incremental.pkg again today -- no luck. still getting the 'preflight script not executable or readable' message. My GOTM installation can run the .SAV game for GOTM24.

Don't know what is causing the problem on my 1.25 gig iMac/OS 10.3.2 ... ?

Also, my GOTM Installer keeps giving the message: "Sorry. Cannot find Civlization III version 1.29." It's in the same folder as the app.

 

[AlanH]

@Sid: I'd love to get to the bottom of this problem for Panther users, but I haven't been able to reproduce it here. Please can you open the installer package in the Finder and look at the file permissions for the "Contents/Resources/preflight" script file? Please check that you are the owner for this file, and that you have Read and Write access. If you do not have Read & Write access for some reason then try changing it to be so, and you may have to do this for the "postflight" script file as well. Then try running the installer again.

If you are able to use the Terminal to check the privileges then that would be good too, as you can verify that you have permission to Execute this script. To do this you should proceed as follows:

- Open Terminal - it should be in /Applications/Utilities.
- Type 'ls -l' with no apostrophes, followed by a space
- Drag the Finder's icon for the "Contents/Resources/preflight" file onto the Terminal window, and this should append its full path to the command you have typed.
- Hit Return, and you should see something like:

-rwxrwxrwx 1 <user> <group> 2041 1 Nov 17:12 <file path>

with your own user, group and file path names. The first letters in the response must be "rwx", indicating read, write and execute permissions for the file's owner. If they are not "rwx" please let me know.

Whatever happens, please let me know what you find out?

 

[Sid]

Alan, I have R/W privileges with both pre & post-flight. I can't replicate the Terminal command as you've typed it: is it a '1' or a Upper Case 'I'? when I drag the icon, I get a 'Null command' reponse.

 

[AlanH]

Sorry, I should have suggested that you could copy and paste it from my post into the Terminal window. They are all letters. The command is:

<lower case L><lower case S><space><lower case L><space><file path>

On my system, after dragging the file icon onto the Terminal window the command reads:

ls -l /Users/alan/Downloads/GOTM25\ Incremental.pkg/Contents/Resources/preflight

The backslash is inserted in the package name automatically by the drag operation in order to include the space character. I don't understand why your system doesn't allow you to do this operation. Alternatively, type the complete command as above, but replace "/Users/Alan/Downloads" with the location of the installer package on your system. For example, if the package is on your desktop and you are known to your system as sid the command would be:

ls -l /Users/sid/Desktop/GOTM25\ Incremental.pkg/Contents/Resources/preflight

As a shot in the dark, I have rebuilt the gotm25 installer with the files all set for read/write/execute access for all users, and with admin authorisation required. It's at http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/saves/gotm25_v129_add_on_setup.zip. You may want to try this, although it's a 6.7 MB download and a long shot.

Another possibility is to use my drag and drop installer with Cracker's file set at http://gotm.civfanatics.net/games/saves/gotm25_files_for_mac.zip, but for gotm25 you need to manually copy a number of sound files according to the script file included with the file set. I'll have to try to produce a simple way to do this. The other installer's postflight script would do it for you.

 

[Sid]

Gee Alan, thank you for going to all this trouble. I'll get onto the various actions and let you know how it went. This is what I got:

[Sid-Starrs-Computer:~] sidstarr% ls -l /Users/sidstarr/Desktop/GOTM25\ Incremental.pkg/Contents/Resources/preflight
-rw------- 1 sidstarr staff 2041 1 Nov 17:12 /Users/sidstarr/Desktop/GOTM25 Incremental.pkg/Contents/Resources/preflight
[Sid-Starrs-Computer:~] sidstarr%

And also, the re-built GOTM link doesn't work for me.

 

[AlanH]

Thanks, Sid, very interesting! The "-rw-------" was "-rwxr-xr-x" when I last saw it. The 'x' is critical as it allows you to Execute the script though the Installer.

What version of Stuffit Expander do you have? I've seen some info on the boards that indicates permission problems with some versions, though they seem to talk about .sit files, not .zip. However, I'm wondering if your copy of Stuffit is modifying the permissions when it unstuffs the installer.

If you are prepared to go another mile with me on this, please can you try downloading the Installer from HERE? This is a zipped disk image, uploaded on my ISP home page. When you download and unzip it you should have a disk image file that will mount as a virtual disk, and you can run the installer package from within it or copy the package to your hard drive before running it.

Please let me know if this is any different.

 

[Sid]

I'll go the miles Alan, your own commitment to fixing this is a fine example.

I am using the latest version of Stuffit (required for the latest Neverwinter Nights update).

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by Sid
Also, my GOTM Installer keeps giving the message: "Sorry. Cannot find Civlization III version 1.29." It's in the same folder as the app.

I just saw this comment in your first post. Is this the drag and drop installer? If so, have you tried dragging the CIv3 folder icon onto the window? If the Civ 1.29 folder is a recent copy, or you switch your Mac off at nights then it may not be registered in your "locate" database. The database is updated in the wee small hours of the night once a week. Dragging the folder to the window registers the copy with my application. I chose this approach rather than doing a full scan of every file on your hard drive to find copies of Civ3.

 

[Sid]

1. Alan, I think I've fixed the 'locate' problem by following your instructions.

2. I am d/ling the new package as I write this.

3. One other factor: my GOTM Civ3 installation is on a separate LaCie hard drive. My regular Civ3 installation is on the iMac's internal drive.

Later: installation successful!! -- I'll let you know if I can play the game.

Thanks for taking the time Alan, I hope this let's a few others play the game as well.

 

[AlanH]

1. Cool. I'm trying to adapt the drag and drop installer to execute the sound file copy script.

2. Fingers are crossed. If you have version 8.0.2 of Stuffit then the file permissions were supposed to be fixed. 8.0 seems to have given problems with .sit files, but I haven't been able to get a copy to test for this .zip problem..

3. Multiple hard drives should be no problem. I have three partitions on two physical drives.

 

[Sid]

Sorry about the multiple posts -- I'm trying to keep things chronological here!

Everything now works fine, have played a few turns and like the look of the new resources and those nasties floating around.

Thanks, Alan.

 

[AlanH]

OK! It looks like we have a result here. Good news for the other Panther problem reporters.

Now I need to know a couple of things before I go off half cocked, but if I interpret Sid's comments correctly the problem with the installers under Panther may be due to a permissions problem with Stuffit Expander. If so then you may be able to solve it in the short term by downloading the latest Stuffit Expander from Aladdinsys's site - version 8.0.2 - as that shows none of these problems here.

If Sid confirms that all is well with the new format using a disk image then I'll rebuild all the utilities and installers to use this method of distribution. However, before I do a big rebuild it would be good to resolve a couple of other problems that were raised but have gone quiet since I asked some questions ... Pigumon? Startaff? Also, I'm still hoping that the drag and drop installer has put a small smile on the face of n8mac but no news is probably bad news in this case

 

[Sid]

I confirm that all is OK. Interestingly, I have Stuffit Expander 8.0.2, but had not deleted an earlier version -- that may have been the one that was acting upon the GOTM25 Incremental package.

 

[Dan Hefner]

Preface - I'm a COMPLETE NEWBIE to this site, and I'm NOT a Mac programmer. I'm just a user trying to get the most from my mac.

Recently, I downloaded the following installers:

Civ3_129_b2 Folder
GOTM23 Full.pkg
GOTM24 Incremental+options.pkg
GOTM25 Incremental.pkg

I ave yet to play the game as modified. This post isn't about the modification - it's about the installer.

In installing the 23, 24, and 25 modules, I noticed the same problem others have had with the lack of a preflight script. I read AlanH's post, in which he indicated that the scrips are there in the "resources" foler in the packages. I found them there, but still the installers still didn't work for me.

I got them to work, however, by adding ".txt" to the filename of the scripts (these can be found by selecting the install scrip package, clicking on "show pacakge contents," and navigating to "contents/resources" - the preflight and postflight scripts are thusly named in that directory. Thus, I renamed the files "preflight" and "ppostflight" where they exist in the resources directory as "preflight.txt" and "ppostflight.txt," respectively. This enabled the installers to run without a hitch.

This hint may prove useful to others, and I hope it does.

 

[mickelsp]

Dan, thanks. That idea worked for me; it was entirely too easy.
--
Pascal

 

[AlanH]

@Dan: A *very* warm welcome to CFC and the Mac forum.

That's amazing! Apple have never, in any of their documentation on the Installer, indicated that the script names need the .txt suffix. I am deeply impressed that you even thought of trying it, and even more surprised that it worked

I shall rebuild the installers forthwith to include these changes. Since no one else has come forward with any other issues, I'll do it this weekend.

Thank you for persisting, and for publishing your results.

 

[BuddhaBubba]

alanH ... can you post the links to all the installer again ...

I want to try them again after Mr. Hefner brilliantly solved the Panther incompatibility issue

thanx

 

[AlanH]

They are all in the first post in this thread. Good luck.

 

[mickelsp]

It may not be so much that the script names _must_ have the .txt extension as it is that the OS isn't recognizing the file type. In the Classic Mac OS, there was always meta file information included in every file as the Type and Creator codes. Assuming you assembled the package and text files in OS X, there's no guarantee that the OS attached the Type/Creator code to those text files. Adding '.txt' to them probably caused OS X to "see" the files, thus solving the problem.

Regardless, good work, Dan.

 

[Sid]

Sorry -- my post was superceded.