I've created a windows service application and I'm working on the installer for this service application at the moment, as there's lots of user options that need defining.
Previously when I needed to create a service I've just created a .bat file containing a relevant SC Create command in temp and executed it to add my service, however I wondered if there's a way to add the service directly rather than creating and executing a bat file.
You don't need the temporary .bat file. You can run any command through Process.Start without a temporary file.
Maybe you should think about your installer technology though. A VB.NET executable means people will have to run an installer for that first, then start it to have an installer for the service. I would be slightly amused by having to install the installer.
Wix for example can build installer packages that install a service. Other alternatives are out there too (but this one is free).
Related
In the past I've build my setups using InstallAnywhere. I've now switched to InnoSetup as my new setup provider.
I need to remove the whole old installation before installing the new one. Innosetup recognises the old setup and executes the "old" uninstaller first, but the old setup doesn't recognise Innosetup's uninstaller. As the old setups are already out there, I can't change the configuration of these.
How to make InstallAnywhere recognise the Innosetup uninstaller, without being able to change the InstallAnywhere configuration?
Is there some kind of "standard way" that windows uses to check if the same application is already installed?
I've already tried to create the InstallAnywhere registry keys within Innosetup to "simulate" a previous InstallAnywhere uninstaller - without success.
I've found the location where InstallAnywhere stores its own custom "registry". Seems like all Flexera products use this mechanism.
There is an XML File C:\Program Files (x86)\Zero G Registry\.com.zerog.registry.xml that contains information about all installed components. Unfortunately the file format is not documented, nor it contains any reference to a schema Definition.
I basically ended up with a workaround: I am creating a "dummy" InstallAnywhere setup, that gets silently installed during the InnoSetup installation. It is used to do only a single thing: Beeing detected by an IA setup, and call the InnoSetup uninstaller during uninstallation.
I need to periodically distribute an updated set of files (DLL, javascript) as a patch release to multiple windows PCs of various versions (vista/XP/7 etc.). Currently I have a link on my website for each user to download the setup.exe file and manually install the patch (replaces the existing DLLs). In order to eliminate the manual process, I'm researching how to run a program automatically on windows (I assume that means a service) which will check my server periodically for an update, download it and automatically trigger the setup.exe (or some similar process to get the patch files replaced).
I'm not a windows developer per se, but have downloaded and tried to check various options (in order to not reinvent the wheel) such as Sparkle, DDay, CSAutoUpdater, Npackd and just started looking into Google Omaha - but most assume that check happens when the windows application is started using their libraries/components. I need to run an autoupdater independently of the app I'm trying to update - so I need to first get all users to run a setup.exe which should install and start my windows service so that it can run with windows daily to run a program to check, download and install the update.
I found some sample code for writing windows service on stackoverflow, codeproject also, but couldn't find how to autoinstall it (ideally with no UAC hassles for newer windows versions). All required using instalutil or some other manual process to install and start the service.
Any guidance on this would be great! Thanks - and apologies to the long winded question. Will update with additional results as I try out other products.
As you mentioned Npackd I would like to describe how this can be done using it.
I agree with selbie that the simplest solution would be to just create a task with Windows scheduler.
For Npackd you would need your own repository - an XML file accessible via HTTP, for example as http://www.yourserver.com/rep.xml . Here is a simple example for a repository: https://gist.github.com/raw/4132983/dabecde48c796d4fdfa2f645bb744ac58640572c/TestRepository.xml . A user would download Npackd (http://code.google.com/p/windows-package-manager/downloads/list) and add the URL to the list of repositories.
I would define 2 packages: one for the program itself and one for the auto-updater. This way if somebody wants to update the program manually, he can do this too.
You could create or delete a Windows task using the command line tool schtasks.exe available on every Windows system.
The update command itself would be also very simple:
npackdcl update --package=<package>
In order to eliminate the manual process, I'm researching how to run a program automatically on windows (I assume that means a service) which will check my server periodically for an update, download it and automatically trigger the setup.exe (or some similar process to get the patch files replaced).
You likely want the Windows Task Scheduler service for the "periodic" part of your statement. You use that to launch whatever code you would need to actually do the "check for update", download, copy, etc... I don't think you need a Windows Service.
You can likely script a Task Scheduler event. Or do it more programmatically with the API.
You can do as follow:
Maintain the version of the of the dll,exe etc in DB.
Check the version of the Installed version with the version in DB, before the application start up.
If the versions are diff, ask the user to update to the latest version from server.
If he clicks on YES. Update the files from server.
Prasad.
It seems that the stock bootstrapping process is a bit lacking on Windows.
Linux has cloud-init which will install packages, store files, and run a bash script from user data.
Windows has ec2config but there is currently no support to run a cmd or powershell script when the system is "ready"--meaning that all the initial reboots are completed.
There seem to be third party options. For example RightScale has the RightLink agent which performs this function.
Are there open source options available?
Are there any plans to add this feature to Ec2Config?
Do I have to build this my self?
Am I missing something?
It appears that EC2Config on the Amazon-provided AMIs now supports "User Data Scripts" as of the 11-April-2012 updates.
The documentation has not yet been updated, so it's hard to tell if it supports PowerShell or just cmd.exe scripts. I've posted a question on the AWS forums to try and get some more detail, and will update here when I learn more.
UPDATE: It looks like cmd.exe batch syntax is supported, which can in turn invoke PowerShell. There's a new version of the EC2Config documentation included on the AMI. Quoting from it:
[EC2Config] will read in the user data specified for the instance and then check if it contain the tags <script> and </script>. If it finds both then it will take the information between those two tags and save it to a batch file located in the Settings folder of this application. It will then execute the batch file during the start of an instance.
The batch file will only be created and executed on the first launch of an instance after a sysprep. If you want to have the batch file created and executed again set the Ec2HandleUserdata plugin state to Enabled.
UPDATE 2: My interpretation is confirmed by Shon from the AWS Team
UPDATE 3: And as of the May-2012 AMIs, PowerShell is supported using the <powershell/> tag.
Cloudbase.it have opensourced a python windows service they call cloudbase-init which follows the configdrive and HTTP datasources.
http://www.cloudbase.it/cloud-init-for-windows-instances/
github here
https://github.com/stackforge/cloudbase-init/
I had to build one myself however it was very easy. Just made a service that reads the user-data when starts up and executes the file as a powershell script.
To get around the issue of not knowing when to start the service I just made the service start type as "delayed-auto" and that seemed to fix the problem. Depending on what you need to do to the system that may or may not work for you however in my case that was all I had to do.
I added a new codeplex project that already has this tool built for windows. Looking forward to some feedback.
http://cloudinitnet.codeplex.com/
We had to build it ourselves; we did it with a custom service and built our own AMIs. There's no provision currently within EC2Config to do it.
Even better, there is no easy way to determine when the instance is "ready". We had to do it by tailing the logfile of EC2Config.
I've recently found nssm (at nssm.cc) which easily wraps a simple batch file (or pretty much anything else) as a service. You can then us sc config servic1 depend= service0 to force the batch file to be run at a particular point in the service initialization sequence. I am using it in between ex2config and sql express to create a folder on d, for instance. You'll have to use the services tool to make it run as network services and change the AppExit property to Ignore using regedit, but it works once you get it all in place.
I have asked this exact question on the Flexara forum, but got no response up to today, so I want to ask it here.
We currently have a InstallScript project which runs fine. The resulting setup can be made unattended/silent fine.
In this setup we have some features and invoke a number of third-party installations (that are a prerequisite for running our software).
However, we have customers that want an MSI file and therefore we resorted to the Basic MSI project type.
The setup is made without too much hassle (I'm fairly new to InstallShield) and I can generate a .exe and .msi from this project.
However the only issue I have left is invoking one of the third-party installers.
That third-party installer (made with NSIS) on its turn invokes another installer which is MSI based.
This results in having error 1500 - the fact that you cannot run a msi type installation while another is running.
I've tried scheduling the CA (that are used to invoke the third-party installers) as the first action and as last, but no success.
Before resorting on the more unorthodox scenarios (like creating a task on Windows Task manager that runs after our installer finishes, or at the next reboot and forcing a reboot - which our customers don't like) or a scenario that we don't bundle the 'faulting' installer (we really like to be able to hand over a single intaller and not multiple), I'd thought I ask your input.
I've tried searching for solutions everywhere on the internet, but either I'm failing due to wrong keywords or I just didn't stumble on the right post yet.
Are there any options left for us to create a single MSI installer that is able to invoke this third-party installer (which invokes a msi installer on its turn)?
Since an EXE bootstrapper is not acceptable, there is only one solution:
store the prerequisite installers in Binary table of your MSI
create some custom actions which extract them from this table and launch them
schedule them in InstallUISequence, for example right before Progress dialog
use searches to detect if the prerequisites are installed or not
condition your custom actions with the search results
Basically, you need to launch them during the installation UI. It won't work if you launch them during InstallExecuteSequence.
I don't think the basic MSI project supports this, but it may be supported by more advanced project types. Other setup authoring tools offer direct support for this.
You can try InstallShield's "Chained .msi Package" feature.
Much searching has lead me to find several descriptions of how to create a bootstrapping msi, but these solutions all assume the msi is local or a standard Windows component. Is there a way to make an msi that downloads an installer (which is also an msi) with normal MSI or Wix code rather than by having the bootstrapper execute some non-native program to do so?
My experience with msi's has been it's not possible to run 2 at the same time. (could be wrong though)
What I ended up doing was to instead make an installer exe using Inno Setup (http://www.jrsoftware.org) and ISTool (http://www.istool.org) which downloads and installs the various msi's. With ISTool it's very easy to do.
I know it's not as chic or sexy as Wix, but it worked for me very well.
I would create a custom action that runs in the InstallUISequence. This would download the MSI if necessary (to the source folder), and then try to launch it as a nested installation.
Windows prevents two installs from being in the InstallExecuteSequence at the same time, so if you're looking for a silent install solution with a bootstrapper, you're SOL.
However you can start another install from the UI sequence, which is probably an OK solution as long as you advise your customers that certain other dependencies must be installed first if they're going to deploy via group policy or some other 'silent' method.
If it helps, I'm pretty sure you can also call MSIEXEC with a URL, eg. msiexec.exe /i http://some.domain/blah.msi /passive
I would suggest that you write a native app and have it run the first msi and then run the seccons msi. I wrote a blog on how to do this. Here is a link (http://blog.foldertrack.com/?p=45)