Hi,

For some reason known only to the non-sentient microcode of my hAP-ac2, every package has been duplicated and I can't upgrade or downgrade or do anything to do with the packages... I've read that a netinstall will almost certainly fix the problem, but it would appear that the netinstall utility is for Windows, and I am using a Mac with no access to a Windows machine.

How do I perform a Netinstall?

Thanks,
Liam

I presume you've already tried Winbox4Mac first just in case it's some issue with WebFig? Winbox4Mac download: http://joshaven.com/resources/tools/ if not. But yeah seems like your router might have been infected with something - at least when I haven't been able to upgrade that was the cause for me – and netinstall fixed it up.

If I recall...you can use install full copy of Wine (via downloading "Wine Stable" from the wine site or using brew to install), then install netinstall, and if you disable all other interfaces on the Mac (and likely don't use High Sierra or newer) other than one connected to the problem MT router, it MIGHT work. Now if you've never used netinstall before, it's tricky to align everything even if you do have Windows....

A couple years back, I bought a cheap (and slow) windows tablet/convertable when I run these "windows tools", that made a lot of the down-and-dirty stuff easier for stuff with Window's management tools - like upgrading firmware of LTE modems which doesn't not work under Mac/Wine no matter what I did. You can also just dual boot Windows via Boot Camp, but a 2nd laptop made all this much easier when "window only" software comes up. Since Winbox4Mac has always worked (other then once in a while losing keyboard input, which restarting Winbox4Mac fixed), I rarely need Windows.

I'm on Catalina... Winbox4mac just doesn't open.

I think it'll have to be Bootcamp... which is a bit of a pain. Oh well.

Just to close this off, I installed Windows 10 using Bootcamp and ran a Netinstall (with some difficulty... that button is hard to keep pressed for 15 seconds, and I had to close and re-open the client... and then I had to manually power cycle the router a couple of times), and the packages are back to normal.

Intel MacBook Pro
macOS 12.3.1
brew install wine-stable

This configuration is able to successfully load and execute netinstall.exe v6.49.5 (using wine64).

However, when I attempt to run netinstall.exe v7.2 wine gives me the following messages:

Application could not be started, or no application associated with the specified file.
ShellExecuteEx failed: Internal error.

Does anyone know of a fix or work-around for this problem?

Thanks,
Eriks

However, when I attempt to run netinstall.exe v7.2 wine gives me the following messages:

That's a PE32 executable, so it won't run with wine64.

Since the 32-bit version of Wine on current macOS doesn't like it, either, the solution is to download the 64-bit version of netinstall, up in the X86 section of the Downloads page.

(To MikroTik support, if you're reading this: why aren't those two lines on the table next to each other?)

Since the 32-bit version of Wine on current macOS doesn't like it, either, the solution is to download the 64-bit version of netinstall, up in the X86 section of the Downloads page.

(To MikroTik support, if you're reading this: why aren't those two lines on the table next to each other?)

Just looked. Boy if you didn't know, https://mikrotik.com/download is for sure confusing for netinstall. Yeah "GENERAL" is apparently for 32-bit X86 (since Dude client is also 32-bit) – but "X86" generally means 64-bit.

However, when I attempt to run netinstall.exe v7.2 wine gives me the following messages:

That's a PE32 executable, so it won't run with wine64.

Since the 32-bit version of Wine on current macOS doesn't like it, either, the solution is to download the 64-bit version of netinstall, up in the X86 section of the Downloads page.

(To MikroTik support, if you're reading this: why aren't those two lines on the table next to each other?)

Thank you @tangent for the helpful words!! Netinstall64 launches very nicely with wine64.

I’m a long-time network guy who is not well educated when it comes to binary formats for Windows .EXE files. I am trying to migrate my entire working environment away from MS-Windows to MacOS. Thanks to you, netinstall is no-longer a blocker for my migration.

This wouldn't work on the new Mac CPU architecture, but curious if you tried the Linux CLI NetInstall application instead of using wine.

This wouldn't work on the new Mac CPU architecture, but curious if you tried the Linux CLI NetInstall application instead of using wine.

I'm curious as well ... linux netinstall is a x86 executable and it would be interesting to see a) if iOS contains full support for linux ABI and b) if iOS on non x86 architecture includes emulator for x86 instruction set ... and c) if both work well enough to support as fragile process as netinstall is to work nicely.

a) if iOS contains full support for linux ABI

By "new Mac CPU architecture" I'm sure they meant Apple Silicon, currently meaning the ARM-based M1. Although there are now M1-based iPads, I'm sure they meant macOS, not iOS.

Regardless, neither macOS nor iOS has Linux kABI emulation, either on Intel or Apple Silicon. You have to use a VM of some type to run Linux binaries on a Mac.

b) if iOS on non x86 architecture includes emulator for x86 instruction set

iOS doesn't, but macOS does. It's called Rosetta II, and it's what allows old Intel Mac binaries to run on it.

c) if both work well enough to support as fragile process as netinstall is to work nicely.

I did once try to get the Windows Netinstall binary to run in a Parallels VM bridged to the network, but couldn't get it to work.

(This was back in the 7.1 beta series when it kept roaching my CRS328. Fortunately, rolling back without netinstall worked.

I don't recall if I tried netinstall64.exe under wine64 at the time, and I currently have no compelling reason to reset one of my devices just to try it out.

I did once try to get the Windows Netinstall binary to run in a Parallels VM bridged to the network, but couldn't get it to work.

I had three to NetInstall today and I couldn't get it to work in normal Win10.. Booted into Linux and it worked first try using the Linux NetInstall command..

The Windows version seems very hit-and-miss at the best of times..

Otherwise, yes, I was referring to the M1 CPUs, brain-fart at the time trying to remember the name of it.