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‎Mar 03, 2009
12:07 PM
Feature prerequisite download progress and cancel
We upgraded to IS2009 for the feature prerequisites. So far, we have only used them with the prereq extracted from the setup.exe. Which worked well. We now have the need to have large, uncommonly used components downloaded based on feature selection. While this does work, there are a couple problems we are running into that is making it impractical if not impossible to use in a commercial installation.
The first is that there is not download progress. We changed the status message of the ISInstallPrerequisites CA to indicate the prerequisites are being downloaded, but it isn't enough. The installation appears to be hung since there is no sign of download progress. This probably isn't a problem for small prereqs, but when downloading SQL Server 2005, it is.
The second issue is when pressing the cancel button during the download, the user is prompted to confirm the cancel, but the installation is not canceled until much later. The download continues and the prereq installation is started and completed before the actual installation is ended. This leaves the prereq installed even though the user canceled it during the download process. Not to mention the long time waiting for the download to complete while the installation looks hung.
So my questions are:
1) What does the installation need to show the feature prerequisite download progress?
2) What is the best way to cancel the feature prerequisite download and installation?
I appreciate any ideas anyone may have.
Thanks, Mark
The first is that there is not download progress. We changed the status message of the ISInstallPrerequisites CA to indicate the prerequisites are being downloaded, but it isn't enough. The installation appears to be hung since there is no sign of download progress. This probably isn't a problem for small prereqs, but when downloading SQL Server 2005, it is.
The second issue is when pressing the cancel button during the download, the user is prompted to confirm the cancel, but the installation is not canceled until much later. The download continues and the prereq installation is started and completed before the actual installation is ended. This leaves the prereq installed even though the user canceled it during the download process. Not to mention the long time waiting for the download to complete while the installation looks hung.
So my questions are:
1) What does the installation need to show the feature prerequisite download progress?
2) What is the best way to cancel the feature prerequisite download and installation?
I appreciate any ideas anyone may have.
Thanks, Mark
(2) Replies
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‎Mar 03, 2009
03:58 PM
We have similar situation. In particular, the installation of SQL Server is only needed if a particular feature is selected. I ended up including the SQL Server install file in our installer as opposed to downloading at run-time. Of course, that has the downfall of making our installer file 50 MB bigger which in scenarios where the feature is not selected it ended up adding waste to the download of our install itself. And then to solve the non-functional progress bar I pass /qb flag to the SQL Server install so it shows a user-interface while still preventing the user from doing anything but clicking cancel in the SQL Server install's user-interface.
The cancel button in main installer not working for a while probably has to do with the fact that once the extrernal process has started it waits until finish before processing the cancel request. With the /qb flag the user can cancel the actual SQL Server install which in turn returns failure to the main install. To some degree, I agree with how the cancel button behaves since it could do more harm to terminate an external process without full knowledge of it.
Here is a related forum postings with some additional information.
http://community.installshield.com/showthread.php?t=183097
http://community.installshield.com/showthread.php?t=186222
The cancel button in main installer not working for a while probably has to do with the fact that once the extrernal process has started it waits until finish before processing the cancel request. With the /qb flag the user can cancel the actual SQL Server install which in turn returns failure to the main install. To some degree, I agree with how the cancel button behaves since it could do more harm to terminate an external process without full knowledge of it.
Here is a related forum postings with some additional information.
http://community.installshield.com/showthread.php?t=183097
http://community.installshield.com/showthread.php?t=186222
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‎Mar 03, 2009
04:34 PM
Yes, I agree the installer should not cancel the actual SQL Server installation. It is the download where I think things could be improved with better cancel handling. I can cancel the main installation as soon as the download starts and watch the network traffic to see it finishes the download and then starts the installation. Unfortunately, I believe this all happens in the ISInstallPrerequisites CA which leaves few options.
At this point we are doing something similar as you. But, we are building two releases from the same installation. In one, the SQL Server will be a feature prereq that downloads, in the other it will be a feature prereq included in the installation. We plan to offer both downloads to our customers and hope we give them enough information to select the correct one most of the time. If they don't, they will still have the same installation choices, but the SQL Server download will not be the best experience. Hopefully, it won't cause too many support issues.
At this point we are doing something similar as you. But, we are building two releases from the same installation. In one, the SQL Server will be a feature prereq that downloads, in the other it will be a feature prereq included in the installation. We plan to offer both downloads to our customers and hope we give them enough information to select the correct one most of the time. If they don't, they will still have the same installation choices, but the SQL Server download will not be the best experience. Hopefully, it won't cause too many support issues.
