The last entry in my blog, which I didn't know then. Just a week later, the google will force me to vote with my feet, second time (last year it was Panoramio).
2+6=0
Installing SQL 2012 on a new W2012 server somewhere, running the usual stuff.
Actually, the guys have already installed the server the standard way, which means the server is missing. The database engine is now not the mandatory part of the setup, it's an option. First and foremost option, called "data services", and the only clue that this isn't just a bundle for the three subcomponents is that if you check it, they don't automatically get checked (as was the habit in all M$'s installers for the last 20 years). To an inexperienced user, this looks like an option. My experience cost me about three hours to figure this out. And don't tell me to read the documentation, because it's not.
Except that it gets stuck on "Enabling netfx35". Twice, without any error. Looked at the logs, it's getting into a loop, looking for a provider of something that it can't find. OK, let's Gugao the thing.
First hit, I find this (http://garvis.ca/2013/01/04/installing-netfx3-on-windows-server-2012). Exactly the kind of problem I'm encountering. And it says
Simply installing the Application Server Role and choosing to include .NET 3.5 will resolve this issue as well.
Wow, yeah, they send you to enable NetFx35 and you end up not finding it at all, or you end up turning your box into application server. Nice. And you don't find that in the article, because the author also couldn't find Netfx35 among server roles (I couldn't find Hamlet, either). He says to do manually what you can't find in the GUI, which is always the better way - when it works. However, when I run
dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:netfx3 /all /source:d:\sources\sxs
I keep getting a "You cannot service a running 64-bit operating system with a 32-bit version of DISM. Please use the version of DISM that corresponds to your computer's architecture." - well, well, why is it finding 32-bit version first on a 64-bit machine? Could the setup(s) be that stupid? No update available yet? Tsk, tsk... OK, so let's find the 64-bit version. Unfortunately, that may be on the W2012 disk which is now absent (as I told the guys to insert SQL2012, and they will be absent until Monday - and who likes to wait?)... so, scour the C: drive for dism.exe. And I found six versions, four of which looked sufficiently different, and I tried each. And kept getting the same error, about the bitness of the version.
I'm finally getting to the point when I can use the word "exasperated", which I don't really understand - unless it's, as my latin suggests, "dethorned". No other versions available, no tricks left to try (except further googling, which would probably dethorn me further)... and, wait wait, what's this? "Installed successfully". I got the word with three double consonants and it's not a Mississippi! No kidding, it does work!
So, twice stuck without a message, four times "this won't work, you got the wrong version" and all of a sudden it just works? OK, guys, you win this time. I wasted just two hours, and in the end it works and I don't know why. A big tad better than "doesn't and don't know why".
This was the umpteenth time I wasted a bunch of hours on m$'s jumbling of pieces. Only in the last years I finally developed a habit of maliciously logging what I went through, because when I bear a grudge, I usually forget the details, and then have nothing to prove my point. Now the evidence mounts.
28-XI-2021 - 30-VI-2024