[tex-live] Is the TeX Live 2018 installer (for Windows) considerably slower than previous years

[Philip Taylor (RH-UoL)]

Norbert Preining wrote:
> Hi Phil,
>
> you are soo late to install 2018, I am surprised! But maybe that was the
> period of peace we had ;-)

I like things to become stable before I risk upgrading :-)  (but they 
are not — see below) :-(

>
>> On an Intel I7 machine with 16Gb RAM, the 2018 Tex Live installer, installing from a local Rsynch'ed repository, is less than 1/3 of the way through ("Installing elvish") after an hour and a quarter (1H15); this seems very much slower than I have experienced in the past with earlier TeX Live installers.  Is this to be expected, and if so, what is the cause please ?
> Not to expected, and nothing I have seen or has been reported till now.
> Maybe your disk is full?

Well, 3.27Tb free space isn't massive by today's standards, but it 
should suffice, and the scratch drive that the installer used has 268Gb 
free ...

> That was a decision taken by Siep in accordance with UI studies she
> took. I cannot comment on that.

OK, perhaps if Siep is reading this thread she will be willing to 
comment.  Now, the bad news :  the installation failed —

> Installing [2718/3646, time/total: 03:09:32/04:01:41]: psu-thesis [248k]
> TLUtils::check_file: removing 
> C:\Users\SYSTEM~1\AppData\Local\Temp\PNVHdyE2RS\o6YejNaWel/psu-thesis.doc.tar.xz, 
> checksums differ:
> TLUtils::check_file: 
> TL=614ac6b980e3b384d56398034c0d942cfd9b96d738ab7af3f67a824c33cd87a4e35ef722889b45959739aaef0892d982e5f5cbcd8d0bf023db310b6b52ec15f1, 
> arg=978ac91d16b044442d1b3a099abf0f0616503a0bd24a85fc2437b4baca479a6c3b87250b884fed9150ad1be59163b9648492fae7adaaf1ec2165a85fdbfff23b
> TLPDB::_install_package: downloading did not succeed
> Installation failed.
> Rerunning the installer will try to restart the installation.
> Or you can restart by running the installer with:
>   install-tl-windows.bat --profile installation.profile [EXTRA-ARGS]
> or
>   install-tl-advanced.bat --profile installation.profile [EXTRA-ARGS]
> C:\Users\SYSTEM~1\AppData\Local\Temp\nsk334.tmp\install-tl-20180827\install-tl: 
> Writing log in current directory: 
> C:/Users/SYSTEM~1/AppData/Local/Temp/nsk334.tmp/install-tl.log
> Completed

The cited log file does not exist, and an attempt to follow the 
instruction " install-tl-advanced.bat --profile installation.profile" 
results in :

> D:\>cd tex\live\repository
>
> D:\TeX\Live\Repository>install-tl-advanced.bat --profile 
> installation.profile
> PATH=D:\TeX\Live\Repository\tlpkg\tlperl\bin;C:\Program Files 
> (x86)\NVIDIA 
> Corporation\PhysX\Common;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program 
> Files (x86)\Common Files\Acronis\SnapAPI\
> "D:\TeX\Live\Repository\install-tl" -gui perltk --profile 
> installation.profile
> Profile  not readable, continuing in interactive mode.
     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Loading D:/TeX/Live/Repository/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb
> Installing TeX Live 2018 from: D:/TeX/Live/Repository (not verified)
> Platform: win32 => 'Windows'
> Distribution: inst (compressed)
> Directory for temporary files: 
> C:\Users\SYSTEM~1\AppData\Local\Temp\zTEWGutdHn
> D:\TeX\Live\Repository\install-tl: Writing log in current directory: 
> D:/TeX/Live
> /Repository/install-tl.log
> D:\TeX\Live\Repository>

At which point I see that it has lost all my (directory) customisation.
** Phil.