.msi and RIS do not work together as I expect them to

[Björn Helgason]

This product looks great.

I can create .msi files just the way I want them and I have tried several different ways to place my application.

What I have not managed to do is let RIS in AD work on my .msi files.

I can create the .msi as one user and use the .msi on another computer as another user or admin and everything works great either in basic mode or not but when I put the .msi file into AD group policy and RIS
the popup on the other computer it is supposed to go to displayes that it is being installed but nothing seems to have happened.

I am fairly new to AD and RIS and I do not know how to debug or look for clues what goes wrong.

Do you have any hint what I should look for?

I am using AD on win2003 and the computers I use to create and install .msi are all XP pro

[Cata]

Sorry, we haven't had the opportunity to test the created MSIs with AD and RIS. Can you please give us tell us more about the context you are trying to use the MSIs in and what you are trying to accomplish?
Cata

[Guest]

I had not shared the folder where the .msi file was so when the installer was trying to do the automatic install it could not find the file.

So it works quite well now.

However.... new problem

I had to reinstall the advancedinstaller on my computer.
Boy was that hard.
I had to delete it from the registry all over the place because the temporary internetfile it was installed from was long gone and I could not do a proper uninstall

Now when I try to do a build it complains it could not copy the template file.

Maybe I missed something from the registry or something else?

[Guest]

I seem to answering my own problems

Anyway the advancedinstaller seems to have problems with network drives so I had to place the .aip file on the C: drive

I have been trying to put .pdf files along with my product but the installer would not have it.

I then tried to put the .doc file there instead and it seems to work sometimes and sometimes not.

hmmmm....

Is it supposed to work?

Any restriction on the size of a .pdf or .doc making it fail?

Any suggestion how I can include them with the rest of the package?

[Cata]

First, the uninstall problem. Did you try going to Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs and unsintalling AdvInst from there? I belive the WinInst system is making a local copy of the msi file so missing the temporary internet file should not be a problem. Also we are not installing any registry entries.

Second, I did a quick test and it does seem that AdvInst has problems with shared network drives. I filed a bug on it. As a workaround please work with local files for now.

.doc and .pdf files should not create any issue. How do they fail, what doesn't work? How big are they? Do they work if they are smaller?

Cata

[Guest]

0) I did try to do uninstall through control panel
turned out that I would not have needed to do the uninstall because
the problem was related to this network business.

1) Exception - Failure opening file to be stored in cabinet [grunnur.pdf]

The pdf is 373 KB
The doc is 562 KB
You can get the file from here
http://linux.is/forritun/data/J/grunnur.pdf

The other file(s) that will not work are a bit bigger

2) I have one more problem with this app.

I place the files in the application folder by choosing add folder and choose the folder where the app is
- it works fine
Goes to c:\program files\jsoftware\j as it should - no problems

I place a shortcut to this app in the application folder by choosing add file and when it installs it appears in start/all programs/j and points to j.exe
but when I try to run it then it complains like it tries to start in
c:\documents and settings\all users\start menu\programs\j and of course fails

So I wonder how I can create a meaningful shortcut to the app which
starts in c:\program files\jsoftware\j as it should

Actually I would like to be able to create several shortcuts pointing to different apps in the same folder

Preferably each of the apps having their own .msi

[Cata]

I was able to create a .msi package for the .pdf file you published without any problem. From the message you are getting I belive the file is either on a network drive or moved from its original location.

For creating shortcuts you should use the New Shortcut button from the Files & Folders toolbar. Unfortunatelly though, setting the shortcut working dirrectory is not yet possible. It will be implemented in a future version.

Cata

[Guest]

I solved the shortcut problem by supplying it in a separate file so that does not matter.

I have yet to test with the grunnur.pdf on its own.

0) I have a new issue.
If a file contains icelandic characters in its name like "ö" or "á" (there are numerous others
"áéðíóúýþæöÁÉÐÍÓÝÞÆÖ" that are potential problems for you.) then it gets a problem and I have to change the "ö" to "o" and "á" to "a"
No big deal really
It is common enough that the icelandic chars are involved in computer issues.

1) Here is another mistery.

I have created severl .msi files to distribute programs to the kids - at the school for teaching purposes - and I always did new and started afresh to build a new .msi.

Then I decided I was typing the same info time and again so I started using save as and just changed the product name and contents.

Doing the install manually from the result .msi seems fine.
However using AD and RIS/WIS it does not work

I tried several files and it just did not distribute.
I then tried to create new and do exactly the same thing with the same name on the .msi same info in all fields and same contents and everything works fine

I tried this several times with different files and different contents.
Very strange!?!

[Cata]

0) Yup, only ASCII chars are currently supported in file names.

1) It may be a bug: the product code is not changed when doing a Save As. I will investigate.

[Guest]

The "problem" with the .pdf and .doc or whatever is solved
I was trying to use the files from a directory that contained and icelandic character so no matter what I had put in there it would fail.

the installer now happily puts the pdfs, docs, htmls etc all in there.

This product is really great and has helped me a lot

bh at barnaskolinn dot is <no spam address>

[ZippyV]

...
I belive the WinInst system is making a local copy of the msi file so missing the temporary internet file should not be a problem. Also we are not installing any registry entries.
...

Some time ago, I've read on the windows installer newsgroups that the system caches the .msi file but without the binaries.