I'd like to change the security attribute of a directory that InstallShield creates under the CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA - can someone please advise on how to do that during the installation process?
It's a script-defined folder.
Thank you.
Under InstallShield 2008 it's
Installation Designer > Components > [somecomponent] > Destination Permissions
Note that the directory properties are attached to the component, while individual File permissions are set under the 'Files' node
This assumes you are letting InstallShield / Windows Installer handle directory creation. If you're creating the directory in a script then things start getting tricky if you need to ensure a clean uninstall.
I think I found the answer for this - on this page: http://www.installsite.org/pages/en/isp_os.htm there's an ntperm.zip archive which contains a script that seems to do what I need.
you can also just easily call Windows commands "CACLS.EXE" or "ICACLS.EXE" -both are easy command line tool, e.g.
icacls file /grant Administrator:(D,WDAC)
- Will grant the user Administrator Delete and Write DAC
permissions to file
I don't know whether a Installshield builtin function exists for that. The simple solution is to create a DLL that does the real work of manipulating the security attributes and call it once the directory is created.
Typically, one might want to change the access so that everyone is able to read/write to the whole directory or file(s) within it.
Related
I made the msi package to allow the user to choose installation directory for the application.
I want the user to only download the application where it doesn't need read write permissions from the user, like %APP_DATA%/Roaming/my_app_example_name.
The reason being that the application has a self update mechanism and updates itself when it detects a new version on the server. The update itself doesn't use an msi launcher, it just downloads the new version of the app from the server using a http request, and replaces the old files.
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For example, in the popular game spiral knights, they implemented this mechanism like this:
Here, you can see that the default installtation directory is the Appdata folder
If i change the installation directory to ProgramFiles, and try to install, I get this error :
It effectively blocks installation to the directory simply because it doesn't have permissions to create a folder from the installer itself, there.
I would like to implement the same mechanism, or something similar, because I think this is a very elegant solution to my problem. So any ideas on how to do this?
(By the way, I'm using jpackage to create the msi launchers)
You can use --win-per-user-install option with jpackage.
On Windows, the default is c:\Program Files\application-name; if the
--win-per-user-install option is used, the default is C:\Users\user-name\AppData\Local\application-name
More details on options at jpackage docs
As pointed out in Writing config file in C:\Program Files (x86)\MyApp\myapp.cfg, vs. Administrator privilege, it is not a good idea to write a config file in C:\Program Files (x86)\MyApp\myapp.cfg.
Instead of this, my software now saves its data in a subdir of %ALLUSERSPROFILE% (ex : C:\ProgramData\MyApp\myapp.cfg on Win7)
[I use myfile = open(filename, 'a') in Python to do this.]
I now encounter an issue about this file :
I installed the software with User A, and ran it, then the file C:\ProgramData\MyApp\myapp.cfg was written.
Then, I changed user to User B, and ran my software again : now an error is displayed : User 2 has no right to write in C:\ProgramData\MyApp\myapp.cfg (Permission denied).
Why? Isn't %ALLUSERSPROFILE% a place that can be written by all users?
How to solve this problem ?
No, C:\ProgramData, aka FOLDERID_ProgramData, has restricted security settings. Standard users can create files there. But these files are, by default, secured so that only the user that created the file can subsequently modify the file.
The recommended solution is for your installer to create a sub directory of C:\ProgramData for your shared storage. And that sub directory must be given a permissive ACL by the installation program. That is what grants the desired access to all standard users.
I do wonder whether you really need shared writeable data. Normally I'd expect to see shared configuration be something that is specified at install time and modified infrequently by administrators. Most configuration data tends to be per user.
I'd like to add onto this as I was having issues writing to C:\ProgramData as well. My issue ended up being that my directory/files within C:\ProgramData were written by an administrator. When my app ran under a normal user it was unable to write there so Windows automatically used C:\Users\fooface\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\ProgramData instead. I found the path it was writing to by using process monitor on my application. After seeing this I deleted the files out of C:\ProgramData and ran my app again and it wrote there as expected.
Hope this helps someone.
I'm deploying a .NET application with VS2010. My application creates .txt file in the logs folder in the same directory with .exe:
app.exe
add.exe.config
logs (folder)
I used setup project to create a MSI installer. When I installed in the client machine C: drive or any drives I have no problem to create the .txt file, but when I installed in C:\Program File\myAppFolder or C:\Program File(x86)\myAppFolder I cannot to create the .txt file.
It is a poor design to write to install location for your application. It is better to write to the ApplicationDataFolder. The ApplicationDataFolder is under the user profile and the application will have access to write there when run as that user. #Ken White provided a very good pointer to an existing StackOverflow answer about this.
If this is a legacy application that must write to that folder, then you'll need to modify the permissions on the log folder such that all users can write to the folder. This is possible to do with the Windows Installer (aka: MSI) but I'm not sure that the Visual Studio setup projects expose it. The WiX toolset definitely supports doing such things.
An old post but I needed to do similar recently so I guess it is still valid! While I don't advocate bad design, in the real world sometimes we have to bend to requirement.
Writing to the application folder is possibly under Win7 and it is possible to set this up via an installer class in an MSI created by VS2010. You just need to give a relevant group (suggest either the "Users" group, or if you want to give more control over who gets what, supply a selection screen) Write-Data access.
Using DirectoryInfo on a path you can then get the security data from GetAccessControl.
When you have your Group known, get the SID for the group and AddAccessRule also supplying the required ControlType value.
Then set the access control on the DirectoryInfo object (SetAccessControl) using the security data object.
You can get the SID from the Groups principal object if you do a search with PrincipalSearcher.
Hope this helps
paul
This generally all depends on:
Whether your app requires to be run as administrator for other reasons and..
Whether your app is provided for limited users.
If the app requires elevation for a bunch of other reasons (and not just updating files in restricted locations) then the normal way is to have an elevation manifest embedded in your app. This isn't a good thing from the security point of view, but if you absolutely need admin privilege then this is the way to do it.
If the only operation requiring elevation is updating/creating data in the Program Files folder then don't put the file there. Every case of this that I've seen has been lazy programming where the code just refers to the file name and consequently it goes in the Program Files folder (more accurately in the same folder that the app runs in). The cure for this is to put the data file in the correct location (such as User's Application Data folder). As Rob Mensching says, you should alter the permissions on the install folder only if this is a legacy app that you cannot change.
I am creating a WIX installer project. During one managed customized action, I need to create a file (other than the deployed files specified in the components of WIX) in the installation folder, which by default is the Program Files folder. I am experiencing the "Access denied" problem in Windows 7. After some searching, I found out that people say it is not advisable to create files into Program Files folder. Instead, try to create files into for example AppData folder. For example, see this link:
C# Access denied to path in a Windows Application
But my question is, the generated file is crucial to our SW, so it must reside in the installation folder. Isn't it the target of SW installation, I mean, to create file in most of the cases Program Files folder? Does it mean the only files should be added into installation folder, during the installation, are the deployed files (basically the targets of XCopy)?
My file can't be made deploy-able in the WIX, i.e, it can't be made ready before the installation. So what's the proper way or best practice to handle such situation: a file must be generated during the installation, into the installation folder. It is not some log file that I can put somewhere else. I tried to create a Permission element in WIX for the INSTALLADIR, although it seems to be against the rule mentioned in the link, but it still failed. Thanks!
UPDATE:
Based one MichaelUrman's commen, some more information. The generated file is needed after the SW is installed and necessary during normal launch of the SW. And I think it needs to be modified during normal use after the installation. And as I mentioned my a comment to #caveman_dick answer, my CA is actually in commit phase, I don't know whether there is any difference between it and normal deferred CA
Set the custom action to Execute="deferred", that will run the command elevated and should give it the required permissions to create the file.
Since you need to update that file from the main application, and I'm assuming your application does not require elevated privileges, you have three options.
The first is the worst: without a manifest, your executable's attempts to write to the Program Files folder will typically result in it being redirected to the Virtual Store (see File Virtualization). It sounds like this isn't happening in your case, so you can't use it.
The second option is to modify the application to store this in an appropriate location such as the ProgramData folder, or Common Documents, or (if appropriate) a per-user location under LocalAppData. This is typically the best approach, but has the highest development costs.
Finally the third option is to create the file and change its permissions (or in some cases to change the permissions on the folder containing the file), allowing limited users to modify this file. See LockPermissions or MsiLockPermissionsEx for the Windows Installer way to approach this. Change the permissions on as few files or folders, as restricted as possible, to keep the system as safe as possible if you go with this option.
I found a thread on the Microsoft Forums where the answer tells how to set directory permissions using the LockPermission table. I tried it, but it doesn't seem to set the inheritance for any of the subdirectories. I need to be able to set the permissions for a particular folder that I create and have those permissions be inherited by all of the files and directories within and beneath it. Is there a way to do this without having to add a line in the LockPermission table for each and every directory (and file) that I want to affect?
For anyone looking to know the joys and pains of using MsiLockPermissionsEx, here is a tutorial, some best practices and a helper script. The helper script extracts SDDL from existing system resources - so you just use Regedit and Windows Explorer to set permissions and the helper script extracts them for you.
The article also discusses the challenge of supporting XP and Windows 7 permissions with a single package.
You can check it out here: http://csi-windows.com/toolkit/csigetsddlfromobject
You can either see if the MsiLockPermissionsEx support in MSI 5 handles this (and is an acceptable dependency for you as currently it's only available on Windows 7), or you can implement custom support. The LockPermissions support available in earlier versions of Windows Installer has the limitation you describe (and others).