/ Forums / Advansys Formativ / Formativ Runtime / V2.0.1 Install for All Users
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January 4, 2006 at 9:06 am #3748
Hi
We are trying to distribute the Runtime for version 2.0.1 but it appears to be ignoring the ‘all users’ setting in the config file. Is this process the same as for version 2.0.0?
What we were doing before was …
The formativruntime.exe is being run with the following parameters :-
/s /i-runtime_config.cfg /r-<our registration code goes here>
The config file is in the same folder as the EXE and all users have Read/FileScan access to both the EXE and the CFG
The config file contents are :-
[Configuration]
Portal Folder Enabled=0
Quick Config=0
Help Center=0
Create Settings for All Users=1
Display No Solutions Warning=0The installation appears to be ignoring the “Create Settings for All Users=1” setting although I think the others are working, for example if I start Groupwise having removed all applets from the “All Users” profile then I don’t get the No Solutions warning.
The installation automatically removed the previous version of Runtime before it installed.
Any suggestions, our users PC hop quite a lot and its very important that Formativ runs for everybody
Thanks
Simon
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January 10, 2006 at 2:55 pm #5972
The process should not have changed for 2.0.1. We’ll investigate this today and get back to you ASAP.
Advansys Support
February 13, 2006 at 8:41 am #5981Hi
I would still like an answer on this. I have delayed releasing 2.1 because of it and that may well be causing some other issues I am seeing (I have just posted under the ‘Creating Solutions’ forum with an issue relating to an Access Violation).
One thing I have discovered with our version 2.0 installation is that some users are not getting a certain key under the Groupwise client. This seems to prevent Formativ from ‘seeing’ Groupwise events.
Re-installing Formativ fixes the problem for that user but not all (even though we have set the flag as described above).
The key I am now adding to a user’s registry is …
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareNOVELLGroupwiseClientThird Party
The value called “DLL1” is set to “C:PROGRA~1AdvansysFormativTokenBlocker.dll”
This causes the applets to be able to interact with Groupwise for that user as far as I can tell.
Since the key is in the CURRENT_USER hive it has to be done at start-up as respond to who logs in. I’d prefer to not have to do this if I can.
I also need to know that this approach is an OK thing to do at all
Can you explain how the “All Users” part of the installation is meant to work. As far as I know there is no “All Users” part of the Registry and you can’t access each user’s CURRENT_USER hive whilst they are not logged in?
There is a “Default user” which I assume is used to build any new user profiles but I need the installation of 2.1 (or 2.0) to work for any existing profiles.
I am now wondering if 2.0 did the ‘All users’ installation properly. It got tested but possibly it didn’t do any existing profiles and we just happened to use ‘fresh’ logins with our test?
Thanks
Simon
February 14, 2006 at 12:49 am #5984Hi Simon,
Sorry, we didn’t get the time today to provide a full answer on this post and will do so tomorrow.
The Advansys Formativ 2.0.1 installer has not changed the process for handling the ‘All User’ installation and our in-house double-check indicates it is working as designed.
The Token Blocker DLL does add low-level functionality to Formativ.
Tomorrow we will provide more information on the mechanics of the ‘All User’ and Token Blocker operation.
Regards,
Advansys Support
February 14, 2006 at 6:09 pm #5980Simon,
You are right that the Registry key mentioned in your post is required for each user. To make this available to all users, add the key value to the hive HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE rather than HKEY_CURRENT_USER. This will be possible if the GroupWise client is version 6.5 SP1 or later.
We will shortly be releasing a minor update to the Formativ installer, to write the key value to the appropriate Registry hive automatically.
I hope this helps.
Regards,
Advansys SupportFebruary 15, 2006 at 8:29 am #5974Thanks for the reply.
It would certainly be easier to have a Local_Machine setting but I didn’t know if Groupwise would bother to read it if I tried that! Or worse it would have negative repercussions.
If I correctly understand your reply, I should be adding the following …
Key:=Third Party
Value:=DLL1=”C:PROGRA~1AdvansysFormativTokenBlocker.dll”to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareNOVELLGroupwiseClient
Having looked at that area of the Registry I don’t see many other keys at the Client level. It goes “Client” then there is only “5.0” under it. Within “5.0” there are various Token related keys, e.g. AddToFolderListToken, AttachToken, etc.
I was expecting it to look something like the Current_User hive to be honest. Bit worried about getting this right now.
If you could just confirm the exact key and value settings, perhaps by posting the content of the relevant Registry export for a correctly configured machine, then I’ll duplicate it here and let you know how it goes.
Obviously a new version of the install will be useful but I have to do various tests before I can let 2.1 out anyhow so for now I’d like to focus on getting 2.0 to be independent of the user.
Thanks
Simon
February 15, 2006 at 10:01 pm #5976That’s correct. Novell changed the way the registry entries worked in 6.5 SP1 so that TPH’s could be registered under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Here’s the contents of a .reg file from my machine:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARENovellGroupWiseClientThird Party] "DLL1"="C:\PROGRA~1\Advansys\Formativ\TokenBlocker.dll"
Here’s a link to Novell’s documentation where they discuss the required registry entries, along with the change they made for SP1. Scroll down to the ‘ TPH Interface Requirements’:
http://developer.novell.com/ndk/doc/gwtoken/gwtokens/data/a6eyuta.html
I hope this helps.
Advansys Support
February 16, 2006 at 10:05 am #5978Thanks for confirming the details.
A preliminary test shows that this works so we will experiment a bit further and then if all is OK make the change to all the PCs
Thanks
Simon
February 16, 2006 at 1:37 pm #5979Great. Let us know how you progress.
Regards,
Advansys Support
June 6, 2006 at 10:38 am #5983Hi
I have been testing this further and have now released 2.0.1 to all our users. I intend to use the new API feature as a test for Formativ being present and the applets being there.
Having messed around with various machines and logins I have discovered the following …
Running the install with all_users does seem to work for any user that had already previously logged into a PC and therefore had a Windows profile.
Any fresh users to a machine do not get Formativ and the installation has to be re-run.
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Adding the key to the Local_Machine hive doesn’t seem to do anything. The export of my test machine’s key is below …
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARENovellGroupWiseClientThird Party]
“DLL1″=”C:\Program Files\Advansys\Formativ\TokenBlocker.dll”I did discover the key had ‘odd’ permissions when it first went in (created by a VB app) but having corrected the permissions to Read/Full control for everybody (on the Third Party key) and rebooted, it still ignores my case-study user.
The only thing that distinguishes this user from any other on the PC is that his profile was created after the Formativ installation was done.
I am sure that if I run the installation again he will suddenly have Formativ attached to his Groupwise, however I am running out of practise logins so I would rather keep him broken and find a better way to fix him than a re-install.
All users are local admins on our PCs.
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This problem is becoming a serious pain because as new people join, or as old PCs are “handed down” when new ones arrive, we are getting profiles that don’t acknowledge Formativ.
The user may not even realise this at first because the system concerned needs Formativ running in order to interact with the user.
Thanks
Simon
June 7, 2006 at 4:43 pm #5975Sorry to hear about the problem. Most of our engineers are attending GWAVACon seminar (June 8th – June 10th). We will try our best to look into this issue and get back to you soon.
Regards,
Advansys SupportJune 12, 2006 at 7:53 pm #5977We have done some test and unable to reproduce the behaviour you described above. Please see the steps below:
- Windows XP
- Install Formativ Runtime 2.0.1
- Create a new user with Administrator rights.
- Switch user
- Start GroupWise (Formativ is running)
Note: If the user rights modified from limited to administrator then start the Formativ Control Panel applet (Control Panel – Advansys Formativ), un-check and check “Formativ Runtime” option to write the registry entries.
Please let us know if we missed any steps. Which version of GroupWise client is running?
Regards,
Advansys SupportJune 13, 2006 at 8:00 am #5982Hi
I have run your test (as best I can) and it does work that way.
However, that is not how we create new users. We have (unsurprisingly as we are using Groupwise) Netware servers and users connect via a Netware Login.
If I login as a Netware user that is not already a Windows user on the box then, once Windows has settled down, I start Groupwise and Formativ is not present
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The Netware tool we are using to create users is called Dynamic Local User Policy
After successful Netware login this creates a Windows user account with Administrator rights using the Netware credentials
Our servers are Novell Netware 6.0 or 6.5 (we have 3 and a user can connect to any of them, they don’#t get to choose)
Thanks
Simon
June 14, 2006 at 12:11 am #5973Simon,
Unfortunately we have no experience with the tool Dynamic Local User Policy.
quote:
After successful Netware login [Dynamic Local User Policy] creates a Windows user account with Administrator rights using the Netware credentials
What do you mean by “using the Netware credentials”?
It appears that this problem has to do with the rights assigned to the new user. The fact that Formativ does not appear in GroupWise suggests that the new Windows user account is limited in some way (ie. not a power user/Administrator).
The following information about the GroupWise C3PO architecture may help. Formativ is a custom third-party object (C3PO), ie. add-on for GroupWise.
The GroupWise C3PO architecture uses the Windows registry hive HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE to store user specific C3PO settings.
The only practical problem is likely to be if your users do not have the appropriate rights to write to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. This could be overcome by providing those rights to every user, or by installing a master GroupWise/Formativ configuration, including applets, for a special user who does have the appropriate registry rights. Alternatively, it could also be possible to extend the registry by manually creating the required entries under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Upon startup, Formativ tests read/write access to the following registry key area:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARENovellGroupWise5.0C3PODataTypes
Read/write access to this area is required for registering GroupWise events and other client integrations which may be used by Formativ and Formativ applets. This is a standard GroupWise third party integration requirement. Read/write access is usually required beyond initial administrator installation because applets dynamically register for the events at the time of their first execution.
A GroupWise integration registry entry looks like:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARENovellGroupWise5.0C3PODataTypesGW.MESSAGE.MAILAdvansys.formativEventsGW#C#REPLY
and in this case, it indicates that an applet or C3PO has registered to be notified when a Mail message REPLY event is activated (ie. a user replies to a Mail message).
If Formativ cannot write to this area, applets cannot register for events or other client integrations (toolbars, menus).
Possible Solutions
OPTION (1) Modify ‘limited user’ profile security to allow additional registry access.
- allow read/write access to ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARE’ hive; or
- allow read/write access to ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARENovellGroupWise5.0C3PODataTypes’ hive.
OPTION (2) Create HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARE entries during main Administrator installation.
The admin install should create automatically:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREAdvansys Corporationformativ1.0The admin install should create automatically some settings in:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARENovellGroupWise5.0C3PODataTypesFor applet solutions, when in Administrator mode, you would need to install EVERY applet which the limited user will need to run. This will ensure all the appropriate entries are written to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARENovellGroupWise5.0C3PODataTypes
You can then choose to replicate this registry key hive to other machines which need to run the same applets.
You will need to repeat OPTION (2) each time you add an applet which uses a GroupWise client event that is not already registered.
I hope this helps.
Regards,
Advansys Support -
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