I am using WIX Installer in which i have a custom action as below.
<CustomAction Id="ConfigureBiodentifyServer" FileKey="Biodentify.InstallUtil.exe" Execute="deferred" ExeCommand="/configurebiodentify /metadata="DefaultSetup.xml" /iskiosk="false"/databaseType="SQLServer" /sqlserver="[$(var.SqlServerName)]" /sqluser="" /sqlpw="" /domainName="[$(var.ComputerDomain)]" /domainPk="[$(var.DomainPk)]" " Impersonate="yes" Return="check" />
<InstallExecuteSequence><Custom Action="ConfigureBiodentifyServer" After="StartServices">NOT Installed And $(var.InstallType) = "SERVER" </Custom> </InstallExecuteSequence>
But the ExeCommand is giving error when i installed my Installer?
There are several levels of refactoring you should be considering. First, you are calling InstallUtil which means you are calling an Installer class custom action. This custom action should be refactored to WiX Deployment Tools Foundation (DTF) to take advantage of a better hosting pattern ( for example you can Get/Set Windows Installer properties instead of passing command line arguments ).
Also WiX has SQL extensions to handle SQL Scripts so you might be reinventing the wheel here.
Related
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 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
I am replacing an old installer with a new one using Wix 3.8.
The old installer inserts a line in the file %SYS32%\Drivers\Etc\Services and that seems simple. However I have not found any easy way to add new information to a text file using WiX. So I am thinking that maybe there is some other way to do this - i.e. not to use the services file, but to register the port using some other setting in Windows, for example to Write to the Registry which is simple with WiX.
Anyone know how to do this?
Otherwise, any tip on any Custom "FileWriter" for Wix? The only one I have found can only write using a template file and that is not what I want. I could of course write my own, but this feels like reinventing the wheel...
Thanks!
/Tomas
For writing to a file, you can create a dynamic-link library that includes the method which will do the things you want to be done (editing files...etc.). And then you can create a Type 1 custom action which calls a method from a dll file. Technically, a Type 1 action means authoring an unmanaged C/C++ dll (Windows Installer does not natively support .NET actions), but you can use C# Custom Action project (that comes with WiX extension) which creates a C/C++ dll from managed C# code.
aCustomAction.cs
using System;
using Microsoft.Deployment.WindowsInstaller;
namespace someLibrary
{
public class CustomActions
{
[CustomAction]
public static ActionResult MyFunction(Session session)
{
// do something
return ActionResult.Success;
}
}
}
ActionResult return type notifies the installer whether the action succeeded or failed. Please note that you can use 128 custom actions per CustomAction project (16 before Wix 3.6).
When the project is compiled, you will have a .dll and a .CA.dll file. You should reference the second one (which includes unmanaged code) in your wix project by adding the following lines to Product.wxs:
<Binary Id="aCustomActionDLL" SourceFile=".\aCustomAction.CA.dll" />
or you can directly reference from the project using $var.
Finally, you can use CustomAction element's BinaryKey and DllEntry attributes to specify method to call:
<CustomAction Id="CA_aCustomAction"
BinaryKey="aCustomActionDLL"
DllEntry="MyFunction"
Execute="deferred"
Return="Check" />
Then you schedule it to run:
<InstallUISequence>
<Custom Action="CA_aCustomAction" After="CostFinalize" />
</InstallUISequence>
The dll files will not be installed to user's computer; they perform their duty yet they stay inside the MSI package.
As an alternative you can create a full executable, then run it as a custom action (Type 2, Type 18 or Type 34). I recommend type 2 since it embeds the exe file into MSI:
<Binary Id="yourProgramEXE" SourceFile="source.exe" />
<CustomAction Id=""CA_ProgramExe"
BinaryKey= "yourProgramEXE"
Impersonate="yes"
Execute="deferred"
ExeCommand=""
Return=""check />
Impersonate tells the installer whether to impersonate the user who launched the installer or not. If it is no, you action will run as LocalUser. Immediate actions do not need impersonation and you will get an ICE68 warning if you set it to no in an immediate action. However, I strongly suggest to set them deferred so that if the installation fails. they can be rolled back.
Another alternative for very simple actions is a little embedded vbscript. Just the "CustomAction" and "InstallSequence" nodes needed, with the CustomAction looking like this:
<CustomAction Id="RestoreBackupDbFile" Script="vbscript" >
<![CDATA[
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
path = fso.BuildPath(Session.Property("DATAFOLDER"), "Default")
if fso.FolderExists(path) then
dbp = fso.BuildPath(path, "TEST.db.bak")
if fso.FileExists(dbp) then
fso.CopyFile dbp, fso.BuildPath(path, "TEST.db"), true
fso.DeleteFile dbp
end if
end if
]]>
</CustomAction>
Note the use of Session.Property to get values from the executing MSI.
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.