Several questions

[wisniak]

Hi Bengalih,

First, I saw the 3 videos, they're very clear and informative. When I read the documentation, I was intimidated, but after carefully watching the 3 videos - I understood it's (almost) a piece of cake.Well done!

I'm using version 7.7.1.

I wanted to try the new Hyperdragon ROM for the Kaiser, and I installed Sashimi, and I used the AUTO option.

First, I copied over all files to be installed to the Device, to the CAB directory, and all the files to be installed to the SD card to the SC subdirectory.
I then exported the registry entried for the Ident and Owner, and placed them in the REG directory.
Then I tried to locate various registry entries that hold the username + serial values for the 50 apps or so that I always load to my PPCs. Some were easy to find (and I verified, using a registry editor, that they indeed contained the appropriate data). But after a while, I decided it'd be best to export whole branches of the registry, eg Software, Apps, etc. I also exported the Windows CE Services reg entry, thinking it'd make synchronization easier (it did not).
Bottom line, the REG import worked technically, but I suspect it was not such a good idea, since I had all sort of issues with the ROM later on (maybe the issues were related to Manila issues, or to the fact that I'm not used to that interface, but I don't think so).

The main issues I think, are as follows:
1. Some of the apps require an SR after installation. Initially, I continued the install process manually, but since I have many apps, it's a bit problematic. But then I re entered Sashimi, and I was asked whether I wanted to continue the prevous installation, or begin a new one. So I tried both options, and my impression is that if I choose to continue the previous one, it begins the previous selection all over again, and does not skip apps already installed. The other thing regarding this issue, is that maybe it'd better to manually install these app after Sashimi does its thing?
2. Since the registry import process is somewhat dangerous, I have to repeat my previous question (placed in another thread), regarding the best way to create an XML file or whatever, that'd contain the app, the required username (if applicable) and the password.
3. There are times where the process hangs (either during automated or tiered install). Now, for example, it happened while installing MemMaid.

All in all, this IS a great app, and once I get the process ironed out, a LOT of grief will be gone from my life, and I'll be much readier to try out new ROMs.

[wisniak]

Hmmm, can't find how to edit posts...

Anyway, I wanted to add that the automated process, as well as the Tiered install, seem to hang on apps that require manual input (besides the install location, which is defined by the placement of the cab on the appropriate directory), eg the user needs to accept terms (google maps, newsbreak, listpro etc).

[edit] just saw that little red button for editing... darn...

[bengalih]

To answer your questions:

Yes, Tiered Auto Install suffers the same problem that UC suffers, which is that they are both based on the built-in (or a modified version of) autorun.exe. As such, they can really only handle CAB files that have near-silent installs, and cannot accept user interaction. Tiered Install was added with the latest version since I wrote another installer that used it and decided to merge it into SASHIMI because some users might like using it. I still would recommend using Auto Install to install bulk cabs and then using manual to install cabs which might other-wise be problematic.

As far as your specific issues with hanging. I just downloaded and installed MemMaid using the AutoMode. While it does pop-up a dialog box after install (much like Google Maps) that does not interfere with the rest of the SASHIMI auto-installation. For instance, I will see a dialog box (like the google maps "accept" box) pop up after SASHIMI finishes installing it. In several seconds however, SASHIMI comes back to the foreground and continues installation (with the google dialog still in the background). If you have many apps that pop-up things like this, you can either click on the "accept" dialogs manually after SASHIMI is run, or simply have SASHIMI reboot your device. The first time you run the application in will usually ask you to accept the agreement.

I did not have any hangs as you mention installing mem-maid.

You may find several CABs out there which do cause issues and, as such, I recommend you do install those manually (either single-CAB in SASHIMI or fully apart). In all my experience I have found maybe one or two CABs that gave SASHIMI problems...if even that. There were many requests to handle automation of clicking on prompts during the Auto phase. To deal with that I added the .AUTO files, which you can read about in the documentation. However to deal with pop-ups of the type google maps and mem-maid give you, you shouldn't need to use .AUTO files...just let SASHIMI keep moving on.

As far as resuming an existing Auto-Install after a reboot, I tested that again and have no issue. What you will see is when it resumes it will list each CAB (reg, xml, etc) file it already installed quickly to the screen. It is almost to quick to read, but what it is saying is CAB NAME....SKIPPED!. The rule of thumb is that if SASHIMI has moved onto the next CAB (reg, xml, etc.) in the list then the previous ones will be marked as installed. So if you interrupt it before it has started installing CAB 6, then it will try to install CAB 5 again. Also, just because a CAB says it wants a SR after isntall, doesn't mean it needs it right away... so just let SASHIMI keep installing everything and then reboot when all done.

Regarding the registry stuff: Yes, what you did exporting entire keys like that isn't a good idea. That is why people don't use Sprite backup or similar programs to restore between different ROMS. You want to make sure you only export/import those keys in the registry that contain the specific information you need.
The best way is as mentioned previously to create one or more .REG files (I recommend .REG over XML as they are somewhat easier to deal with format-wise, plus the information is already natively .REG, so why change it).
You can either create several .REG files (let's say one for all SPB software, one for all games, one for all apps, etc). Or one big one. Put these in your .REG directory to import and register your apps. Likewise, refer to the documentation for .TANDEM REG files, which are placed in the same directory as the .CAB file and import when the .CAB file is installed (one .REG per CAB).
You seem to already have a good grasp on where to find the info in the registry, but see the guides section for my video tutorial on how to detect registry changes for an example I walk through of exactly this type.

I would guess that alot of your problems are either due to:
1) The specific ROM
2) Problems caused by importing extraneous .REG keys
3) Problems caused by other installed apps (rare, but it can happen, especially apps which hook into the screen gui).
4) Impatience as to not letting SASHIMI just do its thing.

I have run hundreds of tests and not had these issues (or at least not once I got it into production), that's not to say that you might not be having issues. What I would like is for you to try and do a clean flash of your ROM and just install a couple of CABS (like MemMaid and Google Maps) so you can see what I am talking about how SASHIMI continues to roll even with those pop-ups. Then, if you continue to have problems I will need information on how to recreate them. I can try them on my ROM first, and if I don't have issues, I can try to flash your ROM and see if the issue is somehow there.

hope this helps!

[wisniak]

Hi Bengalih,

Thank you for your detailed answer.

I've spent the past day tryingto install and use the latest Hyperdragon ROM, which seems VERY nice, but I had various problems with it.
So I switched back to NATF's latest v4 ROMs
I installed the v4 Manila loaded ROM, and carefully tabulated each app I was installing, as follows:

Apps that need (or that I prefer) to install to Device.
1. Some were installed w/o any manual intervention.
2. Some (eg Schaps Advanced Config 3.3, Sakajati's 3G Xperia Hebrew Dialer by JoNNo) required an SR following installation.
3. Some (eg Resco Keyboard Pro v5.11) did require some sort of manual intervention during the installation process.

Apps than can be installed to the SD card:
1. Some were installed w/o any manual intervention.
2. Some (eg Dinarsoft MemMaid 2.3) required an SR following installation.
3. Some (eg SBSH Pocket weather 2.X, Ilium Software ListPro 5 for Pocket PCs, Ilium Software NewsBreak 2 for Pocket PCs) did require some sort of manual intervention during the installation process.

Besides all of these, there were some manual processes I had to do, such as umporting previously saved setups (eg Schaps Advanced Config 3.3, SBSH Pocket Weather).

All in all, it takes a very long time, and I have to figure out a way to automate the process (even 40-50%).

Last, the issue of registering all of these apps. I did not save a pre-install clean image of the registry, so I'll have to manually search the registry and hope for the best.

[bengalih]

In short, to sum up my previous recommendations and based on your last post:

1) Don't worry about Soft Rest after an app. You can install 20 apps that need a SR and only SR after the last one. Even if they pop-up a dialog, just let SASHIMI continue on.

2) When doing a Storage Card install, or any type of install that requires manual intervention, use the .AUTO file (read the documentation for it), on how to set this up.

I will tell you that 80% of the CABS I download and install SASHIMI has 0 problem out of the box installing them in Auto mode. The remaining 20% can be dealt with by using .AUTO files, with maybe 2-5% of those needing some special care.

It is true that it may take 2-3 hours of tinkering to get SASHIMI set up to do everything mostly automated. If you flash once every couple months it might not be worth it. However if you flash often, that 2-3 hours of setup will likely save you 5x that over the course of a couple months.

To be honest, I dont' even try to get SASHIMI 100% fully automated with all my CABs. I usually let it run once through with all my fully auto CABs, and then I run it again against another CAB folder that may require me to push a button here or a button there. However, if you want to spend the extra few minutes to set up an .AUTO file for the problematic CABS, then you should be able to automate 90-95%+ of your installations.

[wisniak]

OK,
Here's the (momentary) bottom line:
1. 19 apps/actions that need to be manually performed (various reasons).
2. 18 apps that installed either to the SD card or to the Device, using Sashimi Auto.
3. 2 datasets that were imported via REG (ident and owner).

I did not try suggestions #1 and #2, since I'm too tired by now... imagine how my eyes must look like .
So I'll try them next time.

At the moment I'm with NATF's AT&T Loaded v4. I simply wasn't able to get used to his v4 Manila version. Ditto for the very popular Hyperdragon III Manila-based ROM. Pretty interface, but crippled, in my opinion. There are simply too many things that I like to do/have, that I wasn't able to do with those Manila ROMs.

[bengalih]

I agree. The Manilla and other cross-builds tend to be too problematic, which is why my BRRs stay with the AT&T and HTC official bases.

If you would care to list the 19 apps/actions that you are doing manually, I would like to see if I have all of the same experiences with those applications. At the least, maybe I can make an .AUTO file for one of them so you can see how to do this.

[wisniak]

Hi Bengalih,

Here are several of those apps:
Dinarsoft MemMaid 2.3
Ilium Software ListPro 5 for Pocket PCs
Ilium Software NewsBreak 2 for Pocket PCs
iPC3.50_WM6_Professional
Google Search CAB
PPCPimBackup
Adobe Flash 3.1


Some of those 19 are things I must do manually following ROM flashing, eg radio flashing, email definition (I know that Sashimi has the option to do this), define my Cell provider settings for MMS and GPRS (using HTC Connection Setup v1.0.cab), etc.

and two additional things, if you don't mind:
1. Do you have an updated version of the Connection Setup? I saw that in the Dragon III ROM there's a 1.5 version?
2. Please see the following post, I have a strange .NET CF problem while installing to my Tilt. Maybe you can help with this as well
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpos ... tcount=758

Thank you and good night (morning).

[bengalih]

Ok... so for MemMaid... I don't know why you have a problem with that. SASHIMI installs that for me 100% automated. Yes, it pops up a help screen after installation, but SASHIMI continutes on without me touching anything.

PPCPIMBackup is just an EXE file, so you can place that in your \Auto\Root\Program Files\PPCPIMBackup directory and it will get copied to that same location on your device. If you want to place a shortcut for it, place the shortcut in \Auto\Root\Windows\Start Menu\Programs to copy it to that location as well. Any other plain old .EXE files you can copy like that. If, instead you would just like PIM backup to run once, you can place it in the .EXE folder, which will execute it. You can use the exeparams.ini file if you need to specify command-line parameters. All that is covered in more detail in the documentation.

I don't know any of the other apps off hand, as I haven't installed them (or at least not recently).

SASHIMI can't do radio flash, but can use Makisu to create a provisioning XML for your wireless and e-mail. HTC connection setup actually just uses XML files as well that you can extract from the ZIP and just pop in your XML folder so you don't actually need to run the whole program.

There is a fairly up-to-date version of conn. setup in my BRR SPF pack for HTC which you can find in the ROM section.

That NetCF error looks like a problem with the ROM. Try to install it right after a clean flash, if you have the same issue then NATF needs to figure out what is going on with that. You can start a new thread here on it if you continue to have issues.

[wisniak]

Hi Bengalih,

It turns out that the NATF ROM does include NETCF 3.5, I verified this following an HR.
I tried to install the NETCF 3.5 again, because I received an error about the NETCF (can't recall the exact wording) when I tried to run the Tiered option.
On the other hand, yesterday I did manage to run the Tiered, but I can't recall how exactly I did this.
So when I received this error, the instinctive thing to do was to install NETCF 3.5, and then I encountered the strange installation errors, AND it turns out is screwed the NETCF installation on my Tilt, since following the errors, the NETCF config utiity could only see version 2.0.
Now that I've done an HR, I do see that NATF included both 2.0 and 3.5.
So back to square one: what could be that error message from the Tiered run?
I'll try to recreate it later, but maybe you could check too.

Thanks again.