Wix Bootstrapper will not update, Error 0x800705b4 - wix

I have a Wix Bootstrapper which installs/updates a number of MSIs. The MSI runs and updates fine, and the Bootstrapper will run fine for an initial install. I attempted to test Updating with the Boostrapper, however, and every time it will not even launch, and spawn a large number of processes and Setup_XXXXXXXXXXXXX_Failed.txt files in the %Temp% folder. each of these failed.txt files contain the following at the end:
[3098:23F8][2014-06-10T11:03:00]e000: Error 0x800705b4: Failed to open parent pipe: \.\pipe\BurnPipe.{087217E1-A4F3-4951-8319-06031945DA08}
[3098:23F8][2014-06-10T11:03:00]e000: Error 0x800705b4: Failed to connect to unelevated process.
[3098:23F8][2014-06-10T11:03:00]e000: Error 0x800705b4: Failed to run per-machine mode
The numbers vary between files but the errors remain the same.
I am running this Bootstrapper Exe with various command line arguments to tell it what MSIs to install and to provide it with Install Location and various arguments for Custom Actions.

This was reported at http://wixtoolset.org/issues/3890/. I just recently fixed it, the next WiX build shouldn't spawn a large number of processes.
However, the underlying problem was that Burn was receiving a command line that CommandLineToArgvW couldn't parse. You need to make sure that all double quotes are properly escaped, and that when using double quotes for spaces that there is an even number of them.

Related

WiX : How to disable creating RestorePoint during installation at least on testing

When I run my WiX MSI installer it takes too long to get executed, when I checked the log, I found that the MSI create a Windows RestorePoint,
Question is : how to disable this, at least on testing environment, because it waste much time when testing.
MSIFASTINSTALL: You can use the MSIFASTINSTALL property. You can set it in the property table or via command line:
msiexec.exe /i MySetup.msi MSIFASTINSTALL=1
Other values you can try are 3 (no restore point and simple costing) and 7 (no restore point, simple costing and fewer progress messages).
See this previous answer as well: How can I speed up MSI package install and uninstall?

A type 2 Custom Action is failing to execute on InstallUISequence while it is executed if put on InstallExecuteSequence

I have a Type 2 Custom Action which is executing an executable file with parameters.
I need to execute this CA before InstallWelcome dialog because it is used to collect some information to pre populate a dialog later.
So I sequenced this CA after CostFinalize action in the InstallUISequence but the installer fails to execute it with an error like below.
If I move the CA in the InstallExecuteSequence sequence it is executed as expected. (As explained in a later comment this is not true, it fails also in this sequence).
Does anyone have any idea what might happened?
Maybe useful information: If same executable is used in a Type 18 Custom Action (the executable is installed with the application's binaries) it is executed without problem.
<CustomAction Id='RunEXE' BinaryKey='EditCfg.exe.CA.ID' ExeCommand='[INSTALLFOLDER][SEPARATOR][CONFIG_FILE_NETWORK_LOCATION][SEPARATOR][USER_NAME][SEPARATOR][PASSWORD][SEPARATOR][WIX_UPGRADE_DETECTED][SEPARATOR][CHECKED_RULE][SEPARATOR][CERTIFICATE_LOCATION]' Execute='immediate' Impersonate='no' Return='check' />
<Binary Id='EditCfg.exe.CA.ID' SourceFile='path_to_the_exe_file'/>
MSI (c) (14:04) [15:18:36:452]: Note: 1: 2228 2: 3: Error 4: SELECT `Message` FROM `Error` WHERE `Error` = 1722
Error 1722. 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. Action RunEXE, location: C:\Users\yyyyy\AppData\Local\Temp\MSIC8A9.tmp, command: param1§param2§param3§§param5§§param7
The 1722 error indicates that the exe returned a non-zero exit code. If this is expected, you can alter the Return attribute to use ignore instead of check. But if it's not expected, you probably need to figure out what that return code indicates, as odds are high that it's some sort of failure.
Here are a couple things that might cause failures:
The exe file may have some dependencies. Putting just the exe in the binary table doesn't carry its dependencies with it, so attempts to load and run the exe may fail, even before it gets to the exe's main code, depending on the kind of dependency.
When executed as a file installed with the product, the file may not exist in the specified location as of the time the custom action executes. During installation, new files do not show up until a deferred/in-script action after InstallFiles (or regular scheduling after InstallExecute); during uninstallation they often disappear by RemoveFiles. Maintenance can be a combination of those. However, a missing exe would likely result in a 1721 error instead of a 1722 error.
Regardless, note that exe custom actions cannot communicate useful data back to the Windows Installer session, so it will be difficult to leverage any data it finds (or creates) in the UI without the help of additional DLL-based actions or system searches. If you also add a DLL-based action, you may find it more friendly to launch the exe from that action (or even fully incorporate what it does into the dll), as you can log better diagnostics than the generic ones you've seen here.

WIX Installer Error: The system cannot open the device or specified file

I have a WIX installer that acts as a content installer for users. It's supposed to install these files in a specific directory. Unfortunately when I run it I get the following error: "The system cannot open the device or specified file." This then gives me error code 2755 after canceling the install (retry does not work).
I've looked through other questions with similar issues, and it does not appear to be an encryption problem on temp, the install folder, or the MSI installer itself - these all appear fine. This also isn't a problem with the C:\Windows\Installer folder being read-only.
I've never had a problem with a WIX installer before. What other things can I try to get this working?
For me the problem solved when the installer run as administrator.
I was seeing all of the following errors when installing my 3.5 GB .msi generated by WiX:
DEBUG: Error 2709: The specified Component name ('cmpF7216C180B7A7119CC61FDB3BD209D5D') not found in Component Table.
DEBUG: Error 2755: Server returned unexpected error 110 attempting to install package D:\...\setup.msi.
The system cannot open the device or specified file
Turning off EmbedCab made them all go away:
<Wix>...
<Product>...
<MediaTemplate EmbedCab="no" />
I unfortunately now have 30 cab files to deal with, but at least the install succeeds.

My compiled *.exe-file can't create files in windows 8.1

I'm using freepascal. So after I run my code compiler creates an exe file that should create few text files. However after it creates an exe file it says "Program c:\fpc\2.6.4\bin\i386-win32\maxmin.exe exited with exitcode = 2". No text files are created. If I later run maxmin.exe manually - it works fine.
UAC - disabled and EnableLUA = 0. But I still pretty sure - it is windows 8.1 rights issue problem.
Some possibilities, in descending order of likeliness:
Note that exitcode 2 usually indicates a file not found error.
Working directory. While manually executing you set the working directory by CDing with the shell, and when indirectly executing the program's assumptions about a working directory are not satisfied.
Sometimes locks linger on Windows for a short while. Usually not noticeable in the manual execution time frames, but when programmatically executing programs in quick succession it might happen.
If you have the feeling that the EXE doesn't run at all, it might be an security software issue. After the binary is generated, the antivirus kicks in and wants to scan, locking the binary for a few seconds.

The mystery of stuck inactive msbuild.exe processes, locked Stylecop.dll, Nuget AccessViolationException and CI builds clashing with each other

Observations:
On our Jenkins build server, we were seeing lots of msbuild.exe processes (~100) hanging around after job completion with around 20mb memory usage and 0% CPU activity.
Builds using different versions of stylecop were intermittently failing:
workspace\packages\StyleCop.MSBuild.4.7.41.0\tools\StyleCop.targets(109,7):
error MSB4131: The "ViolationCount" parameter is not supported by the "StyleCopTask" task.
Verify the parameter exists on the task, and it is a gettable public instance property.
Nuget.exe was intermittently exiting with the following access violation error (0x0000005):
.\workspace\.nuget\nuget install .\workspace\packages.config -o .\workspace\packages"
exited with code -1073741819.
MsBuild was launched in the following way via a Jenkins Matrix job, with 'BuildInParallel' enabled:
`msbuild /t:%Targets% /m
/p:Client=%Client%;LOCAL_BUILD=%LOCAL_BUILD%;BUILD_NUMBER=%BUILD_NUMBER%;
JOB_NAME=%JOB_NAME%;Env=%Env%;Configuration=%Configuration%;Platform=%Platform%;
Clean=%Clean%; %~dp0\_Jenkins\Build.proj`
After a lot of digging around and trying various things to no effect, I eventually ended up creating a new minimal solution which reproduced the issue with very little else going on. The issue turned out to be caused by msbuild's multi-core parallelisation - the 'm' parameter.
The 'm' parameter tells msbuild to spawn "nodes", these will remain alive after the build has ended, and are then re-used by new builds!
The StyleCop 'ViolationCount' error was caused by a given build re-using an old version of the stylecop.dll from another build's workspace, where ViolationCount was not supported. This was odd, because the CI workspace only contained the new version. It seems that once the StyleCop.dll was loaded into a given MsBuild node, it would remain loaded for the next build. I can only assume this is because StyleCop loads some sort of singleton into the nodes processs? This also explains the file-locking between builds.
The nuget access violation crash has now gone (with no other changes), so is evidently related to the above node re-use issue.
As the 'm' parameter defaults to the number of cores - we were seeing 24 msbuild instances created on our build server for a given job.
The following posts were helpful:
msbuild.exe staying open, locking files
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/FasterBuildsWithMSBuildUsingParallelBuildsAndMulticoreCPUs.aspx
http://stylecop.codeplex.com/discussions/394606
https://github.com/Glimpse/Glimpse/issues/115
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/ms164311.aspx
The fix:
Add the line set MSBUILDDISABLENODEREUSE=1 to the batch file which launches msbuild
Launch msbuild with /m:4 /nr:false
The 'nr' paremeter tells msbuild to not use "Node Reuse" - so msbuild instances are closed after the build is completed and no longer clash with each other - resulting in the above errors.
The 'm' parameter is set to 4 to stop too many nodes spawning per-job
I had the same issue. One old reference I found was in csproj files
<PropertyGroup>
<StyleCopMSBuildTargetsFile>..\packages\StyleCop.MSBuild.4.7.48.0\tools\StyleCop.targets</StyleCopMSBuildTargetsFile>
Also, I deleted the entire "Packages" folder that's located in the same folder as sln file after I closed the visual studio. It triggered VS to rebuild the folder and let go of the cache of the old version of stylecop
I've had the same issue for a while, builds were taking over 6 minutes to finish after some digging I found our it's node reuse fault so adding /m:4 /nr:false fixing my issue immediately