I'm attempting to remote install AppFabric 1.1 on a Windows Server 2012 R2 machine for enabling WCF auto-start features. My approach is to copy the self-extraction package (WindowsServerAppFabricSetup_x64.exe) to the target machine and subsequently fire off setup.exe /i as stated in the AppFabric automated installation guide to install all features.
The issue is that the self-extraction step is not enabling me to specify an output path (& WindowsServerAppFabricSetup_x64.exe /extract:"c:\temp" doesn't work), so it just quits after copying all the extracted files to a GUID folder on the disk containing the most free space. The temp folder is then removed after it is extracted.
Do I have to copy the extracted files/folders myself (shown below) and then run setup.exe? Ideally I could just keep the self-extraction package (32MB EXE) intact and deploy it as a single step. It's looking as though the self-extraction that I downloaded is not meant as a re-distribution means - only as web delivery of the installer. I must have to copy the raw 90MB extracted installer files around.
Self-Extraction Package Contents (WindowsServerAppFabricSetup_x64.exe)
Does anyone have any suggestions - or improvement ideas?
Status Update
I ended up just copying the raw files (90MB) over and running setup.exe /i /gac via powershell to install all the AppFabric features. I'm just struggling with the proper re-distribution mechanism for Microsoft self-extracting packages.
Related
How to set the service version as the installer version, using wix?
How to set it by the installer's coding, NOT by GUI.
For example : running service creates a .exe file in the bin folder.
Versioning your application files should happen before building your installer. WiX just copies files to the destination and doesn't modify them in anyway. (That would break code signing if it did.)
Inside our .NET Framework 4.6.2 solution; we have a WiX project responsible for generating the .msi installer package for our WPF application.
The generated .msi installs fine on my machine, but not on colleague's computer.
After investigating for a couple of hours, we concluded that it was because of the nature of the D:\ drive on my colleague's computer.
The .msi was being run from an alias hard drive. He created the alias by following instructions here. So an alias drive is just a regular folder on C:\ but you turn that into an alias hard drive.
When the .msi is run from outside the aliased drive, the program installs without any problems, otherwise he gets these errors:
Clicking Retry doesn't do anything, but clicking cancel gives the following:
On my machine, I don't have any alias hard drives set up, and things just work, in other words, the program installs without any issues.
How do we get the installer to work with alias drives too?
This isn't supported by Windows Installer. The alias created by Subst only exists in the user profile that created it. MSI runs as SYSTEM and can't see it.
Subst Considered Harmlessly Useless: Yes, as Chris states we have both seen this before. MSI is an old girl, and newer Windows features or old ones that are weird cause such problems.
Workaround: In the realm of workarounds, maybe check features and / or transforms:
Optional Features: what is this D:\ drive? Is it his personal data storage? Are you installing files into "My Documents" or something like that? It you make a separate feature for the components going into the D:\ drive and then unselect that feature from installation, does it then install? (albeit with a few missing files). Screen shot of feature selection.
Transforms: There are also other ways to achieve the suppression of features and files from installing. You can use transforms - little database fragments - to apply runtime changes to a running MSI installer. More on transforms here. Shorter version here. And just one more.
Administrative Installation: You can (also) get hold of the missing files from another computer, or maybe by running an administrative installation of the MSI: What is the purpose of administrative installation initiated using msiexec /a? (glorified file extraction).
I have a custom wix burn installer that I have made and it works well except for I can't figure out how to do one thing: save the wix burn installer exe to a location after the installation is done.
Here is my scenario:
My software can be distributed across multiple servers, but one server is the "core" server.
I plan to update the core server and then have the core server push software updates to the other server.
To have the core server distribute the update, it has to keep a copy of the Wix Burn Installer EXE somewhere for distribution. This is what I can't figure out.
Using the built in variable WixBundleOriginalSource, I can find the original installer exe. However, when I try to copy it during ApplyComplete (I don't want to save it unless it successfully installed), I get an access denied trying to copy the file (which makes sense since the burn installer is not running as an admin).
How can I accomplish this - copy the original wix burn installer exe after the installation is complete without permission issues? I get that 99.99% of the time, all file operations should happen inside an MSI, but I can't have an MSI deploy the original Wix Burn Installer, so I am stumped.
Ideas?
Thanks.
OK - here is how I worked around it. I passed the WixBundleOriginalSource to one of the MSIs and then added a CopyFile element to do the copy in the MSI...
Copy file from setup location to another location in wix on install
Background
I have an MVC3 project to which I added the Twitter.Bootstrap.Less Nuget package.
To my knowledge, all this did was copy the appropriate JavaScript / LESS files into their appropriate directories.
However, when I now run this through my build/deploy process onto my dev server, MSBuild doesn't copy the /Content/less folder to my production server as part of deployment package.
My build server doesn't have an internet connection, so unfortunately using NuGet without committing packages to source control isn't an option.
Question
How do I get MSBuild to deploy these files? Or do I need to copy the files, uninstall the nuget package, and manually copy them back in?
You could setup your own internal NuGet package source. That would be internal to your network and mean the build server could pickup the NuGet packages without an internet connection.
E.g. On the server, copy the packages you need to a folder and setup a package feed to that folder for the build server to use.
See:
http://docs.nuget.org/docs/creating-packages/hosting-your-own-nuget-feeds
Windows Installer technology supports administrative installation. The command line for initiating administrative installation is: 'msiexec /a setup.msi'. I want to understand the purpose of this type of installation and in what scenarios are they helpful?
Administrative Installation: Adding some practical examples.
1) Silent running extraction (no GUI):
msiexec.exe /A MySetup.msi TARGETDIR=D:\Extract\ /QN /L*V D:\Extract.log
2) Interactive extraction (setup GUI for extract):
msiexec.exe /A MySetup.msi
Quick parameter explanation:
- /A - run administrative installation sequence.
- /QN - run completely silently (alternatively: /QB! for semi-silent).
- /L*V "Extract.log" - create verbose log file.
- TARGETDIR - destination path for file extraction (top level folder).
3) Some setup.exe files can run administrative installation via
setup.exe /a
Setup.exe Command Line Samples: Extract MSI from EXE
Setup.exe and Update.exe Command-Line Parameters
Setup file extraction, alternative
msiexec.exe command line:
Msiexec (command-line options) - MSDN overview.
Here is the Technet version.
Purpose of Administrative Installs
Administrative installs are generally most useful in large scale deployment scenarios where software is installed on many computers at once, for example in a large bank with thousands of workstations. In fact it is quite critical for such deployment scenarios. As an application packager the first thing you tend to do is to do an admin install to inspect the MSI file content and structure.
Operations in an Administrative Install
The admin install itself simply extracts the files from internal cab files and adjusts the media layout of the MSI file to use the extracted files for installation instead of the internal cab files. The end result is a neat folder hierarchy showing where files will go on the target system, and a smaller MSI file than the original now stripped of internal cab files. The operation makes no changes to the target system apart from this extraction unless the MSI is custom-designed to do so which is a serious design error in almost all cases. Exceptions, off the top of my head, may include setting up licensing files, or post processing files for deployment in some fashion. I have never seen such constructs in real life, but it is possible to add custom actions to admin installs.
Use of Administrative Installs
After the admin install the extracted files can be put on a network share accessible from thousands of workstations and it can be installed from there. Typically this is done via specialized deployment software such as SCCM (previously Microsoft SMS) or similar. However the install can also be triggered manually by the user on a workstation in some cases. The critical benefit of this network share install is that self-repair operations and subsequent patch and upgrade installs to the workstations have access to the original source files so the installs complete successfully. You may have experienced that Microsoft Office would suddenly ask you to insert the installation CDs in order to reinstall a few files. This would happen to workstations too unless the sources were available online. This source requirement may change in the future as Microsoft caches more and more installer content on each local machine (Windows 7 onwards, UPDATE Jan 2018: See this answer for more details on this caching: Why does MSI require the original .msi file to proceed with an uninstall?). I should add that you can also put the unextracted MSI file in such a location without extracting it via an admin image, but using admin install allows any file to be downloaded separately (no huge cab download). For huge MSI files this is important, and I prefer admin images as installation source to make patching more reliable - this is a subjective preference, but it is due to real-life experience.
Administrative Installs & Patching
Finally the creation of MSI patches typically requires an admin install to be run for the original setup and also for the new setup. The Windows Installer patch file is then created based on the differences between the new and old installer folders. As such admin installs are critical for the subsequent creation of patch files. This is the case for Wise for Windows Installer - the only product I have found to create really reliable patches in real life experience (this product is now off market, some details here: What installation product to use? InstallShield, WiX, Wise, Advanced Installer, etc). Again a subjective observation based on extensive real-world testing.
It is also possible to patch an admin install if you get an MSI and an MSP (path file) from a vendor. You extract the MSI and patch the admin image with the MSP. The target folder will then contain a newer MSI and any new files (provided the admin patch works, which it generally doesn't in my experience).
"Run From Source"
Chris mentions "Run From Source", and this is indeed a rather useless and obsolete concept where some files in the install can be left on the network share and accessed straight from there. I honestly haven't tried this feature in years.
This feature is seldom used, but I guess it could be beneficial in scenarios where a common set of resource files should be accessed by all workstations and you want to avoid mass-duplication. Fixes to the resource files could then be deployed by an "admin install patch" as described above without reinstalling anything onto the workstations (how well it works is unclear - the lack of use of this feature may be a clue).
A large software suite with many and dissimilar modules where only a few are used by different people could speed up installation and usage significantly by only installing a few of the required features and leave the rest to run from source or install on first use. It would speed up installation and subsequent patch installations and could leave potentially unsafe and unnecessary binaries off the system. This last point can be important in locked-down environments. However, in real-life I have seen patches change advertised features to be locally installed after patching which is very strange and undesired behavior, but very common to experience. In practice I find "run from source" or advertised features of very limited use. It is generally better to split a setup into two with one for client and one for server installation.
UPDATE:
Here is a new summary of the same issue: admin install and its uses (file extraction and beyond). Please also read the comment below on the "changed caching behavior of MSI in Windows 7 onwards".
In the real world, it doesn't have all that much value at all. MSI was designed back in a day when a computer typically had a 2-20gb hard drive. They came up with all these "run from source" advertisement scenarios which seemed really cool back then but never really caught on in the real world.
Today, what /a does for me, a setup developer, is give me an easy way to "extract" an MSI and verify its contents. That's about it.
Say that you need to install product X on some number of machines, and that you will need to apply some patches for X as well. Rather than applying a series of patches on each machine, you can do this:
Create an administrative image for X
Apply the patches to the administrative image
Install X on each machine using the patched image
It can save some time and effort, and you'll know that all your machines are certain to be at the same patch level.
If you have a per-user setup and a system that disallows user installations through e.g. group policy then the user will be able to install from the msi created in the target folder by the administrative install.
Its a way of authorising software to be installed.