Subject:   -29- Why do 'inst' and 'showprods' say that a subsystem is an
                "Unknown product entry"?
Date: 28 Jul 1995 00:00:01 EST

  Paul "Mr. inst" Jackson of SGI <pj@sgi.com> explains:
  Unless it's the "orphan" subsystem, which is special and nothing to
  worry about, the product spec file in /var/inst which describes that
  subsystem is damaged, due either to the usual sort of file-damaging
  problems or to a bug in IRIX 5.3's 'inst'. This also makes 'inst'
  think that that product is version 0, and thus incompatible with every
  other subsystem. There is no patch for the bug. The workaround is to
  reinstall the affected subsystems with all files restricted, so that
  no files are actually installed but the product spec file is updated,
  like so:
  
  inst -f whatever -X/
  Inst> set exclusions		# Should be set to "Value /"
  Inst> keep *
  Inst> install upgrade
  Inst> list i			# Should see the unknown entries
  Inst> go
  Inst> quit