install per-machine and Privileged and AdminUser properties

[Viviana Vc]

Hi all,

My package has to install the product per-machine (not per-user). So I
have to set into the package the ALLUSERS property on 1.

Q1: In this conditions does make any sense to check at Launch conditions
for the Privileged property or makes more sense to right away check for
AdminUser? In other words: if the current user is a restrictive user
that has elevated privileges, meaning Privileged property is set, can he
install a package that has to be installed per-machine?

Q2: If the answer is "no, it doesn't make sense. better check directly
for AdminUser", means that my application is nodeployable to
non-Administrator users, which is ok, but then is there a way in huge
companies for a system administrator to really make an automatic
mass-deploy for all the machines in the company?

Thank you,
Viv

 

[Phil Wilson]

If Privileged is set, the install can proceed as if the user were an
AdminUser, so it makes sense to check Privileged, so the answer to 1 is yes.

 

[Viviana Vc]

Thank you Phil. I wasn't sure because:

a) on
http://support.installshield.com/kb/view.asp?pcode=ALL&articleid=Q105063
is written:
"ALLUSERS=1: This installs the package for all the users on the machine
provided the user has administrative privileges. If the current user
running the setup on Windows NT or 2000 does not have administrative
privileges, then the setup errors out and aborts."
It's talking only about "administrative privileges" not "administrative
privileges and users with elevated privileges".

b) on
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/msi/setup/allusers.asp
in the table instead of "Administrator access privileges." should be
"Administrator access privileges and user with elevated privileges"

Thank you,
Viv

 

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[Darwin Sanoy]

Viviana,

It seems between your many posts it is your desired to get to restrict your
installation to a per-machine install, no matter what.

You should realized that Group Policy is capable of deploying Per-User
Managed packages which means it would be a per-user and Privileged would be
set to 1. This happens if software is either Published or Assigned to a
user.

Orca.msi has ALLUSERS=1 and I don't think it breaks any MSI rules. If you
set ALLUSERS=1. The Advertise sequence is run when an administrator
configures a package to be run via group policy - so I imagine there are
tricks to determine if that is being done per-user and generate an error
message saying the package does not support per-user installs.

D.
___________________________
Darwin J Sanoy
Principal Consultant and Trainer
DesktopEngineer.com
DesktopEngineerTraining.com

 

[Viviana Vc]

Hi Darwin,

Thx for your answer. My answers are inline ...

It seems between your many posts it is your desired to get to restrict your
installation to a per-machine install, no matter what.

This is correct. My application is like a firewall application that just
can't be installed on a per-user basis. It's designed to be per-machine.

You should realized that Group Policy is capable of deploying Per-User
Managed packages which means it would be a per-user and Privileged would be
set to 1. This happens if software is either Published or Assigned to a
user.

Unfortunately I'm not familiar with the ways the system administrators
are deploying packages on all machines from a big company this is why
I'm not so sure if I don't get into troubles with some issues.

Orca.msi has ALLUSERS=1 and I don't think it breaks any MSI rules. If you
set ALLUSERS=1.

Yes, I just checked and indeed it's having it set to 1.

The Advertise sequence is run when an administrator
configures a package to be run via group policy - so I imagine there are
tricks to determine if that is being done per-user and generate an error
message saying the package does not support per-user installs.

This is something I don't understand. If I set ALLUSERS=1 shouldn't be
the windows installer smart enough to warn or not work if somebody tries
to install the package per-user?
What happens if I set the ALLUSERS on 1 and the admin tries a per-user
deployment?

Thanks,
Viv