9iFS R2 on Windows 2000 repeated install failure - help !!

Question

Hi All,
here is a desperate plea for help with 9iFS R2 on Windows 2000, service pack 2, the story so far ....
1) clean install of windows 2000 with service pack 2, network configured and working.
2) install Oracle 9i R2 database and configure tnsnames.ora and sqlnet.ora as per the oracle by example documents for R2
3) reboot machine and all service come up fine
4) install Oracle 9i R2 Application Service with option A to just install web server and cache stuff. This is installed in its own oracle home, all seems fine, reboot the machine.
5) all the services come up fine ( so far so good eh !! )
6) follow the pre-installation for 9iFS R2 ( as per the solaris install notes as i can't find any windows specific ones ). This includes the creation of a tnsnames.ora file in 9iashome\9ifs\network\admin, checking of the configuration required for 9iFS, all seems fine. Reboot the machine and all services come up fine.
7) start the 9iFS install, this is installed into the 9ias home as per the instruction. Install proceeds, enter config information, various connection tests are performed ok, and then we get to the 'configuring oracle 9iFS' screen which has a whole load of tasks which the installer then works its way through. When it gets to the 'executing setup scripts' option ( second from bottom ) it immediately throws a java exception, about 'file access denied', 'unable to create ifs directory' with no error code or anything else. The configuration screen then exits, and says installation complete successfully ! As you can imagine it hasnt, and nothing is configured. I have repeated this 4 full times now, reading the oracle install docs very carefully. Same thing every time. However, and this is the strange part. If at that point, I uninsall 9iFS using the oracle installer, and then try and reinstall 9iFS again, when it gets to the section of where to create the schema, and i tell it the same IFSSYS as the one created previously, it will then warn me its going to delete it and create a new one with the same name. I select 'yes' create it again and this time the install completes with no errors ! Hurray you think, ahhhh BUT....
8) reboot the machine, start up the browser to point at the local machine port 1810, and log in successfully. Then select the node on port 15x41 ( sorry cant quite remember port number ) as per the post installation docs, and told to 'launch it'. This i do, providing the administration account user name and password which has been used to install everything so far. Explorer sits for about 60 seconds then returns to the screen with the portal node still down. I have tried starting the node and domain to no avail, both fail to start with no reason for the failure and nothing in the 9iFS\logs to explain whats failing - sigh.
OK the questions
1) why do i initially get this file access denied problem so failing the install - is this a known windows problem ?
2) When i do get the install to complete by reinstall 9iFS and rebuilding the schema can I not then start the node or domain ?
In effect I am installing all these on a single machine with 1 Gig of memory for evaluation and prototyping as a possible Document Management System which we can build custom solutions upon. With being unable to install it at all we are at a total loss. Can some one save my sanity and remaining hair and offer some help/suggestions as to why this is not working ?
best regards
Tom

Answer 1

Thomas,
thanks for your hints, it helped me quite well getting iFS installed on my machine! But when I try to start iFS from the administration GUI I do have excactly the same problem like you:
start up the browser to point at the local machine port 1810,
and log in successfully. Then select the node on port 15x41
as per the post installation docs, and told to 'launch it'.
This i do, providing the administration account user name and
password which has been used to install everything so far.
Explorer sits for about 60 seconds then returns to the screen
with the portal node still down. I have tried starting the
node and domain to no avail, both fail to start with no reason
for the failure and nothing in the 9iFS\logs to explain whats
failing - sigh.At first my thought was iAS might have problems with special characters in the admin's name or password (due to security guidelines we had to change the admin's name). But also with alphanumeric name and password it doesn't work.
Furthermore, also starting iFS using the BATch files doesn't work always. The services seem to start up correctly, but I'm not able to connect via share, FTP, HTTP or anything.
It got worse when I accidently called "ifsundeployear.bat": after that I no longer was able to redeploy the iFS's EAR, I only get error messages complaining inconsistency between local config files and the repository. Logfiles didn't help at all. So at the moment I'm reinstalling everything once more, sigh.
Did ANYONE get iFS started the way it's supposed to be under Windows 2000?
+Lutz