2251658 - Error: 'A fatal error has occurred which has caused the installer to quit' when updating or performing Repair to BI 4.X

SetupEngine / Installer crashes early on (before any user action window is displayed) with the following error:

• Assertion failure
  A fatal error has occurred which has caused the installer to quit. Please gather any %TEMP% and installer logs to present to your support personnel.

On Linux, the following behaviour may be seen:

• INSTALLDIR/setup.engine/setupengine: line 21: 69153 Segmentation fault (core dumped) $SetupEngineBinDir

Installer fails with the following errors:

• Error: Cache: CacheDUs - source directory not found: F:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\InstallData\InstallCache\product.analysis.ao-4.0-de-32\1.4.0.55\
• Error: CacheDUs - failed to cache DUs.
• Error: Failed to update cache for execution. Program will exit.

• Building Product Definition...
• Parsing product seed file: F:\Program Files (x86\SAP BusinessObjects\InstallData\InstallCache\product.businessobjects64-4.0-core-32\14.3.3.4607\product.seed.xml
• Error: Could not open file F:\Program Files (x86\SAP BusinessObjects\InstallData\InstallCache\product.businessobjects64-4.0-core-32\14.3.3.4607\product.seed.xml
• 14:Error: Assert(product) failed in file SetupEngineValidation.cpp line 27
• Message:
• Failed to get valid product model..

Earlier on in the installation, the installer can be found trying to retrieve DUs and create product models but failing to do so, examples of such errors are below:

• Error: The following DUs are marked in the manifest as installed, but not calculated as installed: 
• Error: Missing target DU: product.analysis.ao-4.0-core-32
• Error: Product model could not be created from folder: F:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\InstallData\InstallCache\product.analysis.ao-4.0-core-32\1.4.0.55\
• Error: ProductContext::GetDUsDiskCostByRootDir: fail to retrieve du :  product.analysis.ao-4.0-core-32,1.4.0.55 thus no extra cost is read!
• Error: Could not get product model for du: product.analysis.ao-4.0-core-32,1.4.0.55
• Error: Could not open file F:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\InstallData\InstallCache\ao.integration.precalc-4.0-core-nu\1.4.0.55\product.seed.xml

NOTE: These errors are not limited to the folders seen, these errors are purely examples for the Analysis for Office add-on

Read more...

• SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform 4.x 
• Windows
• Linux / Unix 

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform 4.0 ; SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform 4.1 ; SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform 4.2 ; SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform 4.3

Install Cache, Update , Repair , fatal , BI ,Upgrade , %TEMP% , KBA , BI-BIP-INS , Installation, Updates, Upgrade, Patching , Problem