Hi: I posted yesterday about the problem that LyX will not start on Windows 7 systems. I got no responses, but I've kept at it and I think I have a suggestion about the LyX installer. I don't know why these things go wrong the way they do, but I've replicated this problem/solution on 7 different Win 7 workstations during the afternoon, and I'm pretty sure I'm right.
The LyX windows installer SHOULD set the MikTex package install "on the fly" option to NO, or else LyX will not start because the package configurator hangs. LyX hangs trying to do the configuration for users that have not run LyX before. If users have run LyX before, LyX will not try to run the configurator, so LyX will start. However, if the user tries to run "reconfigure", that hangs half of the way through. In my case, it hangs checking for "dvilualatex". To avoid the problem, the admin user can run the MikTex Config settings program and set the packages option to NO. On a couple of systems, LyX would run after that. But on a couple of them, it appeared to me it was necessary to fully uninstall LyX and re-install to force a full reconfiguration. Maybe deleting the failed lyx configuration for the user would have sufficed. LyX fails to start for users if the MikTeX configuration has "install packages" set to YES or ASK. That config option MUST be NO, or else LyX can't get started for any user who has not run LyX before, or any user for whom LyX tries to reconfigure gets stuck. There are some warnings about it. On the MikTeX "known issues" page. http://miktex.org/2.9/issues but they are not exactly on point. MikTeX can't spawn a GUI panel that is needed for the user to respond. That page says YES or NO should be an acceptable setting. However, it looks to me like NO is the only dependable setting. On the LyX wiki, at the very bottom of http://wiki.lyx.org/Windows/LyXWinTips, there's a comment about the on the fly package installer, but it is nowhere near as clear as it should be. I think. If MikTex, either 2.8 or 2.9 anything except NO, then Lyx instances can't start. Here's how I know where the problem is. Set the MikTeX package installer option to YES, then monitor the startup of LyX the Windows taskmanager There are tabs (columns) for "applications" and "processes". A LyX window does not appear on the screen, and Lyx does not appear as an application. However, in the second tab, one can see processes for LyxLauncher.exe and lyx.exe, and also processes for latex and mf-config appear and disappear. LyX does not start, the processes stay "stuck", but if you manually kill the latex.exe process, then the Lyx window does appear, but none of its menus work and LyX is not responding. If the MikTeX package option is NO, then LyX can start. As I said, I've tested this on 7 different workstations today. For a non-administrator user, none worked with MikTeX ASK or YES. Here are the problems I don't understand. I don't see these same problems on all "clean" Win 7 systems where I install LyX. Last week, I saw two brand new laptops that seem to work fine. The Lyx install can complete, but it does take about 10 minutes to get past the configure step. But on most of the systems, there is the problem that none of the users can actually run LyX. That's weird. Oh, could the problem be users who are "limited" powers can't run LyX, but ones who log in as administrators can use LyX? That's a possibility. Here's the other problem. How do you administer a multi-user workstation to allow users access to whatever packages they want? MikTeX "on the fly" is, in principle, what I want. If LyX asks for something, I want it installed automatically. The LyX installer claims it is installing packages, but could that list of packages be expanded substantially so that LyX installs every package that might be called on by any of the document types that LyX tries to support? I'm not a Windows user, I'm only interested in trying to help Windows users. If you want any dignostic information on these systems, post instructions and I'll gather any data you need. I have noticed the TaskManger will let me create a "memdump" file for the stalled processes. But I don't know if those are useful. I've also run LyXLauncher.exe -dbg any in a terminal, but the output just stops and waits while LyX seems to not start (processes are stuck). pj -- Paul E. Johnson Professor, Political Science 1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504 University of Kansas
