I'm currently trying to design an install package for a web based application. It requires a custom instance of sql server that needs to be user defined. I currently have an .ini file that's used while executing an sql installation.
I have copied the sql installation folder to the DISK1 section of the support files of the Installshield IDE and can't seem to access any files within that folder in order to dynamically modify the .ini to trigger a custom sql installation.
How do I correctly reference a subdirectory of the DISK1 support files? Following some research on this I have tried numerous variations such as LaunchAppAndWait(SRCDIR ^ "\sqlserver\install.bat", "", WAIT) yet have not had any luck.
For anyone that is interested the solution to my question after some trial and error was (LaunchAppAndWait(PACKAGE_LOCATION ^ "sqlserver/install.bat", "", WAIT) < 0)
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For a project I am currently working on, I need to create a setup application for an existing desktop application. The setup application will be downloaded from a website, and will download required files to the correct locations. When the application is started, it will look for newer versions of these files, download them if any exist, then start the application.
I am using Visual Studio Online with TFVC, linked to Azure. I have a test application set up so that when I trigger a build, Release Management finds the build directory, and moves the files to Azure Blob Storage, but prepends a GUID to the file names being transferred. So what I have in my storage container is:
{Some GUID}/2390/Test.exe
{Some GUID}/2389/Test.exe
{Some GUID}/2387/Test.exe
...
What I want in my container is the latest version of Test.exe, so I can connect to the container, and determine whether I want to download or not.
I have put together a NullSoft installer that checks a website, and downloads files. I have also written a NullSoft "launcher" that will compare local file versions with versions on the website (using a version xml file on the website), and download if newer, then launch the application. What I need to figure out is how to get the newer files to the website after a build, with automation being one of the goals.
I am an intern, and new to deployment in general, and I don't even know if I'm going about this the right way.
Questions:
Does what I am doing make sense for what I am trying to accomplish?
We are trying to emulate ClickOnce functionality, but can't use ClickOnce due to the fact that the application dynamically loads a number of DLLs. Is there a way to configure ClickOnce to include non-referenced DLLs?
Is there a best practice for doing what I'm describing?
I appreciate any advice, links to references, or real-world examples.
You are mentioning ClickOnce, which you investigated but can't use. Have you already tried an alternative: Squirrel? With Squirrel you can specify which files should be part of the installation, allowing you to explicitly specify which files to include even if you load them dynamically.
Link: https://github.com/Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows
Squirrel is a full framework for creating an auto-update application and can work with Azure Blob Storage hosting (and also CDN if you need to scale up)
I am trying to install a package (oForms) with a new Orchard 1.8 installation, but receiving the following error:
"Package installation failed: There was an error installing the requested package. This can happen if the server does not have write access to the '~/Modules' or '~/Themes' folder of the web site. If the site is running in shared hosted environement, adding write access to these folders sometimes needs to be done manually through the Hoster control panel. Once Themes and Modules have been installed, it is recommended to remove write access to these folders."
This seemed rather straightforward, however my host has confirmed permissions are fine (and even added Everyone/Full Control to the folder), so I'm lost and appears to be happening with all modules from the Gallery, not just oForms. I changed the Config/log4net.config file to log everything, and I don't see anything specific in there except where it logs the same message above. Nothing outside of that stands out at all.
Is there a way to see why this is failing? Or, if not, is there a way to get the module and install it manually? I tried to download from the gallery, but it's just a NuGet package so I'm not sure how to take that and grab the raw module files.
You can use a program like 7zip to unzip the nuget package, then copy in the module manually yourself.
As for the permissions, when adding a new permission to the folder use:
IIS AppPool\name of your application pool
I also had this exact error message when installing modules from the gallery, and it took me a while to figure out what was happening. I made new installations, copying over files one-by-one, and eventually found the culprit. For my case anyways...
For me, it was all due to a bad formatting in my custom Theme. Specifically the Theme.txt file. The line where is says Version:, I had it formatted without any "."
Good:
Version: 1.0
BAD:
Version: 1
Yes, doing this simple mistake prevented me from installing Modules.
I want to verify if certain exe files already exist in a merge module .ism (binary format). Is there a method of doing this without using InstallShield?
An *.ism file is really an MSI file with a changed extension. MSI files in turn are SQL databases stored as COM-structured storage files - a file system inside a single file with file streams for various content. This is the same format used in Office documents.
You can view MSI files with Orca from the Windows SDK: http://www.hass.de/content/how-install-microsoft-orca
Windows Installer XML (WiX) Deployment Tools Foundation (DTF) has an InstallPackage class available that exposes a FindFiles() method. This should be really easy to query the EXE. Just realize that being a merge module you won't know the full installation path as that's decided by the MSI generally.
Both of Chris's suggestions should work fine, as would using Orca. But it got me thinking there might be an even easier way using a tool called Merge Module Finder. It all depends on what you really want to do? Find files already in merge modules? Investigate what merge modules are in an Installshield file? It is not quite clear exactly what you want to do.
Though a bit clunky at times (I think the author hasn't updated it for the latest versions of Windows) it will help you look for a file in a bunch of merge modules interactively. You can also search for a registry value. Here is a screenshot:
I finally managed to get my application updating through installshield LE, without the user having to uninstall manually first, what I am now wondering is:
Can I get the installer to use the application settings from the previous install, so the users saved settings don't change, causing the user to enter their settings every time there is an update. But at the same time, add any new settings to the config file.
Is there anyway to get the installer to not update certain files, for example, the database file is held in a folder called 'db' inside the program files directory, I obviously don't want the users database getting overwritten with a blank one.
Thank you.
Im not sure what programming language you are writing in, but I had this concern with a C# application I wrote. I see 2 easy ways of doing it:
1) With C# you can setup application setting variables that get written to an XML file in the users Application Data (on WinXP) directory. The nice thing about this is that writing to and reading from the settings file is really easy through the API:
To save and store a variable:
Properties.Settings.Default.UserName = UserName_txtbox.Text; // save contents of UserName_txtbox to UserName setting variable
Properties.Settings.Default.Save(); // write variable to file
To restore a variable:
UserName_txtbox.Text = Properties.Settings.Default.UserName; //load contents of UserName variable to UserName_txtbox
Because the file that contains these are not included in the installation directory of the application, they are preserved.
If you are using a different programming language, you can try to implement the same concept.
Create a settings file that your program updates externally from the install location. (Perhaps it can be in the install location. Im not sure how your installer "updates". Does it replace files or uninstall the old version and install the new version automatically? Play this this to find out...)
Your settings file can be a simple txt file, a bin file, an XML file, etc. Anything that you can read and parse easily. Then you can load settings from the file when the program loads and save settings to the file when the program exits.
I installed Joomla on a website on Windows Azure. After trying to update the Joomla version or uploading a new template I get the following error
JFolder::create: Could not create directory
Warning: Failed to move file!
For me it's clear that the problem is regarding permissions, so the question is, how can it be solved?
Since the Azure architecture (basically the replication) makes you difficult to just change the permissions of the folders, and it is not possible to modify the folder permissions on a Windows server using FTP, I feel like I'm on a dead end.
It should definitely be possible. When installing a component JFolder::create is called several times.
I think that you are passing a wrong path or something to the actual call. Have you tried a simple test using the native mkdir()?