I have created a custom action:
<CustomAction Id='AddEventLog' BinaryKey='CustomActionEventLog.dll' DllEntry='AddEventLog' Return="check" Execute="immediate"/>
Install sequence
<Custom Action="AddEventLog" Before="InstallFinalize" />
My installer does pop up and say that it needs admin rights to run. Which I grant it.
InstallPrivileges='elevated' InstallScope='perMachine' AdminImage='yes'
However when it runs the custom action it doesn't work because its not running as administrator.
I even tried adding the following to app.manifest on my custom action project dll. It didn't help.
<requestedExecutionLevel level="requireAdministrator" uiAccess="false" />
I have scoured all the tutorials and forum posts I can find on this subject. Noting has worked yet.
If anyone has any better tags for this please feel free to add them I have been struggling with this all day.
Update for clarification:
While my customAction does work with EventLog I am not using http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/UtilExtension Util:EventSource. It is a genral question can you even force a customAction to run as administrator?
To run any custom action with administrator privileges you must run the custom action during the Server portion of the installation. ie: it must be a deferred custom action. Otherwise, I think you get a consent.exe message box asking for administrator privileges.
All msi installs work in two parts, Client and Server portions of the install. The Client portion is where you see the UI and set properties that may determine where things get installed and what gets installed (they must be marked Secure for the Server portion of the install to have access to them). The Server portion is what actually puts the files on your system. This always (??) requires administrator privileges because it can be writing stuff into Program Files and other protected file locations.
These custom actions must be marked "Execute='deferred'" and must also be scheduled between the InstallaInitialize and InstallFinalize.
Also to note, if you want to use values of any properties from your installation within the custom action you need to use a separate custom action which sets a specially named property with a special format. You then get the property values in your custom action querying the CustomActionData of the session object. There are lots of examples out there you can find.
Disclaimer, I've not done this previously, and personally I'd take the other approach of using the wix extensions, but you should be able to give elevated permission to your custom actions by using deferred execution and not impersonating the current user. So in your case, Execute="immediate" is what's standing in your way.
<CustomAction Id="MyCustomAction" BinaryKey="WixCA" DllEntry="CAQuietExec" Execute="deferred" Return="check" Impersonate="no"/>
<!-- -or- -->
<CustomAction Id="MyCustomAction" BinaryKey="WixCA" DllEntry="CAQuietExec" Execute="commit" Return="check" Impersonate="no"/>
Source
Related
I have a WiX project that installs a few Windows Services that are written in .NET 6. They each have an appSettings.json file in their directory in Program Files. During the install UI, I need to ask a question of the user and update the appSettings.json files with the answer to that question. Here's the tricky part:
I need to modify the files in Program Files (which requires elevated privs)
I need to modify them after they are copied but before the services are started
We don't want to require that the install be run as admin
We are open to the notion of locating the appSettings.json files in some other directory that the install will have write permission to, but I don't know where that would be. It shouldn't be user-specific, since these are services that run as System.
I have a CA that tries to modify the files, but it fails because I don't have write permission.
Here's what I've currently got for my CA (a C# DLL):
<CustomAction Id="UpdateConfigJson" Impersonate="yes" BinaryKey="MyCustomAction" DllEntry="UpdateConfigJson" Execute="deferred" Return="check" />
<CustomAction Id="SetCADataProp" Property="UpdateConfigJson" Value="Arg1=[VALUE1];Arg2=[VALUE2]" />
<InstallExecuteSequence>
<Custom Action="SetCADataProp" Before="UpdateConfigJson"/>
<Custom Action="UpdateConfigJson" Before="StartServices" />
</InstallExecuteSequence>
The SetCADataProp CA allows for passing installer properties into my deferred CA.
The whole thing works except that I get the permission failure when trying to write to the files.
This question is more of a conceptual thing: Is there a known procedure for doing this (as this doesn't sound an uncommon need), or is the solution to put the files somewhere else?
Thank you!
If you want to write to an elevated location (like ProgramFilesFolder) then do not have your custom action impersonate the logged-in user, i.e. remove the CustomAction/#Impersonate='yes' attribute.
I have been trying to do something like what is posted here about creating a symbolic link in a WiX installer. It explains how to make a add-on that will make a symbolic link. However that is not what I am looking for. I am trying to use somtething like this snipping
<CustomAction Id="MakeSymbolicLink"
Directory="TARGETDIR"
ExeCommand="cmd /c mklink .\linkToItem.lnk '%CommonProgramFiles(x86)%\Additional Folders\myexecutable.exe'" />
I have tried using cmd.exe instead of cmd for this and have not been successful.
I am then call the custom action like this:
<Custom Action="MakeSymbolicLink" After="InstallFinalize" />
I have tried calling this before InstallFinalize as well and I get the same behavior.
I am aiming to create the symbolic link through this setup.
The other solution I have is being able to create a shortcut however I have not been able to find much on how to do this option for places other than the start menu or the Desktop
When I run the installer after adding these lines it fails to execute them. Without the Symbolic link custom action being called I can get the installer to complete successfully.
End goal is to get a symbolic link from the common files executable to the install location of the application.
Update
I got the Symbolic link to work changed custom action now looks like:
<CustomAction Id="MakeSymbolicLink"
Directory="TARGETDIR"
ExeCommand='cmd /c mklink .\linkToItem.lnk "%CommonProgramFiles(x86)%\Additional Folders\myexecutable.exe"'
Execute="deferred"
Impersonate="no"/>
and the call to the custom action like this:
<Custom Action="MakeSymbolicLink" Before="InstallFinalize" />
But now the when I run uninstall I get the following error message: There is a problem with this windows installer package. a program run as part of the setup did not finish as expected contact your support personnel or package vendor.
If you use something like this as your Custome action:
<CustomAction Id="MakeSymbolicLink"
Directory="TARGETDIR"
ExeCommand='cmd /c mklink .\linkToItem.lnk "%CommonProgramFiles(x86)%\Additional Folders\myexecutable.exe"'
Execute="deferred"
Impersonate="no"/>
in your InstallExecuteSequence there needs to be:
<Custom Action="MakeSymbolicLink" Before="InstallFinalize">NOT Installed</Custom>
This makes sure that this is only executed on install of your application if you want to execute this on reinstall or other options you may need to look into how to do that further
If making sure to leave zero footprint behind after a user uninstalls the application you will need to delete the symbolic link afterwards.
I solved this by doing the following:
First I created another CustomAction
<CustomAction Id="RemoveSymbolicLink"
Directory="TARGETDIR"
ExeCommand='cmd /c DEL .\linkToItem.lnk '
Execute="deferred"
Impersonate="no"/>
Then I needed another InstallExecuteSequence to execute this. However I only needed to run this on uninstall so it needed a different conditional in to do that so this one looked like:
<Custom Action="RemoveSymbolicLink" After="InstallInitialize">Installed AND NOT REINSTALL</Custom>
I'm creating an installer for a program using WiX. The program creates a log file and a .dat file in the program directory during the configuration process (after complete installation). How do I tell WiX to remove these files during the uninstallation process if they are not present during the installation process?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
One way is to define the problem out of existence by installing those files. That is, create and install an empty log file and a dat file—initialized to whatever empty or default is for it.
Another way is to put RemoveFile elements under the Component element that is most closely associated with the use those files (e.g., the program exe).
Are you sure you want writable files in the same directory as the program? Usually, programs are installed so that only administrators can change them. If the program uses data that any user can change to affect all users, the data would be stored under the ALLUSERS profile. And, data that a user can change that affects only that user would be stored under that user's profile.
When data is stored that way, it is a question as to when or even whether such data should be deleted. A user might want that data preserved for the next installation of the program even if the user doesn't know how the data is persisted.
This worked for me - use custom command and delete using "del" or "rmdir"
http://windows-installer-xml-wix-toolset.687559.n2.nabble.com/Forced-remove-of-folder-and-files-within-td698425.html
<Product>
<CustomAction Id="Cleanup_logfile" Directory="INSTALLFOLDER"
ExeCommand="cmd /C "del install.log""
Execute="deferred" Return="ignore" HideTarget="no" Impersonate="no" />
<InstallExecuteSequence>
<Custom Action="Cleanup_logfile" After="RemoveFiles" >
REMOVE="ALL"
</Custom>
</InstallExecuteSequence>
</Product>
I have following CostomAction
<Binary Id='ManualsBat' SourceFile='bin\Debug\test.bat' />
<CustomAction
Id="manuals"
BinaryKey="ManualsBat"
ExeCommand="[SourceDir]Manuals "[Agent]Manuals""
Execute="immediate"
Return="check" />
test.bat contains the following lines :
#echo off
echo Hello this a test batch file
pause
mkdir %2
copy %1 %2
What it is basically intended to do is, when the installer is run, the batch file needs to get executed. The batch file has to create a new directory "[Agent]Manuals" and it has to copy all the files from [SourceDir]Manuals to [Agent]Manuals.
When I builds .wxs it does not give any error bur when I run the .msi then it complains of the following in the log files
Error 1721. There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A program required for this install to complete could not be run. Contact your support personnel or package vendor. Action: manuals, location: C:\Windows\Installer\MSI1F50.tmp, command: C:\dev\CD\Agent\pd\components\link\source\Link\Installer\WiX\WiX\bin\Debug\Manuals "D:\Cam\city\Agent\Manuals
Has anyone had experience with this kind of error. It will be great if someone can help me resolve this.
Most likely your custom action needs Administrator privileges. Try setting Execute attribute to deferred and Impersonate to no. Please note that these options require the action to be scheduled after InstallFinalize standard action.
Maybe problem in quotes. Change in ExeCommand quotes.
Try this:
<Binary Id='ManualsBat' SourceFile='bin\Debug\test.bat' />
<CustomAction
Id="manuals"
BinaryKey="ManualsBat"
ExeCommand='"[SourceDir]Manuals" "[Agent]Manuals"'
Execute="deferred"
Impersonate="no"
Return="check" />
<InstallExecuteSequence>
<Custom Action="manuals" Before="InstallFinalize">Not Installed</Custom>
</InstallExecuteSequence>
You generally need to call cmd /c foo.bat ( or command on Win9x ) to process .bat files.
However, I would never, ever do this in one of my installers. It violates the overall design on Windows Installer. MSI is a transactional, declarative programming language. Injecting out of process procedural code greatly increases the likelyhood of failure ( as you are experiencing ) and worse defeats the transactional benefits of MSI.
For example, if you create a folder and copy a file, that won't get undone during a rollback and it won't get removed during an uninstall. Instead, you should be using the built in Windows Installer features ( CreateFolder and CopyFile elements ) to achieve your goals.
On the occasion that custom actions are truely needed (in your example you are merely reinventing the wheel with an inferior solution) they should be designed using robust languages and maintaining a declarative (data driven) and transactional design while respecting the security model that MSI uses.
Our product was installed via InstallShield Setup over the years. I changed the installation to MSI (WiX) this year. Now the MSI should clean up the directory, which remains the same.
One custom action in the MSI I implemented to start the uninstallation of the old product:
<CustomAction Id="UninstallIS" Property="QtExecCA" Value=""[WindowsFolder]IsUn0407.exe" -f "[ProgramFilesFolder]\company\product\Uninst.isu"" Execute="deferred" />
<CustomAction Id="QtExecCA" BinaryKey="WixCA" DllEntry="CAQuietExec" Execute="deferred" Return="ignore" Impersonate="no" />
After the removal of the old product there are temporary files and some subdirectories that are different from client to client and are unknown to the InstallShield Setup, so I would try to delete them via the MSI.
Keeping the UAC in mind, I think that I can't use command-line commands to do this also the 'Remove File Table' is not useful here (to much unknown files and many directories).
What is a possible way to do this?
Thank You for any help!
You can use a Deferred custom action which has Impersonate flag set to "no". This way it will run under the local system account with full privileges.
The custom action can use custom code (for example an EXE or DLL) or a command line.
Please note that deferred custom actions can be scheduled only after InstallInitialize action in InstallExecuteSequence.
As a side-note, make sure you thoroughly test it. Deleting files from the target machine is very dangerous. You never know what you may end up deleting.