Question

I’m attempting to build Firefox on my Windows Vista Ultimate machine. I keep getting the following error:

nsinstall: Bad file number

I’ve read that this error is caused because of UAC in Vista. Here are the two articles that lead me to this conclusion. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope_Developer_Page#Windows_Vista and http://www.kevinbrosnan.net/mozilla-build-error-nsinstall-bad-file-number

Using the standard “Run as Administrator”, I’ve attempted to redo my build but I get the exact same error. I also started a normal command prompt as admin and then went to the batch file in mozilla-build (start-msvc8.bat) and ran it. Still, same error at the same point.

Any other insights on how I might either get around this error or perhaps something else is causing the error?

Note: I also posted something here in the hopes to get topic-specific help but I’ve not heard a peep… After I posted that I found the info on nsinstall. Anyway, I prefer SO so I thought I’d try here…

Update: I’ve attempted to completly disable UAC to correct the problem as is suggested by cnemelkasr. I’ve received the exact same error. This new knowledge is making me think that a file or folder is missing… Does anyone who has experience with NSInstall know what the given error — Bad file number — might mean? I figure it might be referring to a file handle…

Answer 1

I found the answer to my question. I’m posting the answer here to share the answer with others and to close this question.

After disabling the UAC, it was suggested that the directory depth was interfering with NSInstall. I moved the folder from c:/Users/Frank/Documents/hg-repos/firefox-src-hgRepo/mozilla-fv-expirement/ to C:/mozilla-fv-expirement/. Cleaned all previous build attempts and finally redid my build (with UAC off) and I received a working debug binary.

The suggestion was posted at: mozilla.dev.builds