slawomir.zurek
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Mar 03, 2014 9:50 am

Updater service on terminal server

Wed Nov 29, 2017 1:54 pm

Hello,
I started to use updater support service future to install updates without rights elevation. Updater is execute manually when our application (standard winforms app) starts. I notice huge problem on terminal server - many logged users causes many updaters to start, which ends with:
- many updater instances started with parameter "/runservice"
- many instances of setup.exe was running
as man can suspect - all hangs forever (i had to kill processes manually).

What Can I do in such a situation ? Can I configure updater service to run single instane of setup and block following executions ?
My installation type is "Per machine only (fails if user is not administrator)".
I'm using AI 10.8

Greetings
Slawek

slawomir.zurek
Posts: 12
Joined: Mon Mar 03, 2014 9:50 am

Re: Updater service on terminal server

Wed Nov 29, 2017 4:28 pm

I analyzed installer log and noticed, that setup hangs (one of the latest log entries) with information, that some files is locked by running application. This is true, beacause on our terminal server there was another user working with our application. But the problem is that updater/setup hangs instead of informing user that there is problem with setup.
Updater located in system tray is still informing: "installing..."
In that situation i rather want to see information, that setup need server restart
Slawek

Daniel
Posts: 8237
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2012 1:11 pm
Contact:  Website

Re: Updater service on terminal server

Wed Dec 06, 2017 3:16 pm

Hello Slawek,

We do not have support to prevent multiple users running the Updater tool simultaneously. Maybe we could consider such an improvement in the future, but for now the only workaround to avoid this scenario will be that you try to handle this from your own application code.

In what regards the installation errors triggered by your updates package during updates installation without elevation, I'm afraid this is not possible. This is because the updates without elevation process is ran under System account and this account cannot spawn any UI. However, in this case the updates installation should not hang. The only case when the silent updates installation could hang is when the updates setup package spawn UI during a silent installation. Since the System account cannot display any UI the process will hang waiting for user input.

So, as a test case you can try to silently launch your updates setup package (using the same command line as the one the Updater uses) and make sure during such a silent installation (when files are kept in use) no UI error message is displayed.

All the best,
Daniel
Daniel Radu - Advanced Installer Team
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