Hello

I asked this question about for years ago but gave up as things were clearly
designed not to work the way I'd expect.  I've come back now for another go and
I nothing seems to have improved.

I've downloaded  povwin-3.7-agpl3-setup.exe and looked as directed at
'non-standard installations'   It says I can use /INSTALL or /QINSTALL.  These
make not a blind bit of difference you still get led through the prompts for
directories. and so on as if the didn't exists.  /S though undocumented will get
you a silent install.

However I've tried to install it I get the same old, same old, dialogues as ever
when I log in as another user - POVRAY did not find the expected registry
entries....and a telling off for allegedly not using /INSTALL when I did, then
'cannot find colours.inc'

Oh and not that I'm the slightest bit surprised, no shortcuts in the all users
start menu.

After four years I'd really expected someone to have made a competent job of
this. A proper installer should default to installing for all users without any
further action, a miracle thousands of software vendors perform on a daily
basis.  I fail to understand why POVRAY can't achieve this.


 We will continue to have to explain to our students that these errors are not
of our making and are a poor advertisment for your product.

Post a reply to this message

On 19/08/2014 21:32, Nick wrote:
> 'non-standard installations'   It says I can use /INSTALL or /QINSTALL.  These
> make not a blind bit of difference you still get led through the prompts for
> directories. and so on as if the didn't exists.  /S though undocumented will get
> you a silent install.
> 
> However I've tried to install it I get the same old, same old, dialogues as ever
> when I log in as another user - POVRAY did not find the expected registry
> entries....and a telling off for allegedly not using /INSTALL when I did, then
> 'cannot find colours.inc'
> 
> Oh and not that I'm the slightest bit surprised, no shortcuts in the all users
> start menu.
> 
> After four years I'd really expected someone to have made a competent job of
> this. A proper installer should default to installing for all users without any
> further action, a miracle thousands of software vendors perform on a daily
> basis.  I fail to understand why POVRAY can't achieve this.
> 
> 
>  We will continue to have to explain to our students that these errors are not
> of our making and are a poor advertisment for your product.

Hi,

Perhaps you could volunteer to spend the time to correct the issue to
your liking and contribute the changes for the benefit of others. But
I guess that's too much work for you.

Given you are in an academic environment, it may be useful for you to
follow the suggestions documented in
http://wiki.povray.org/content/Documentation:Windows_Section_3#Non-Standard_Installations
such as publishing the required registry entries via group policy, or
alternately you may wish to automate the installation via some other
method. Either way, the required registry entries are clearly documented.

Finally if none of that suffices and you don't like the way the
installer works you are free to return the software for a full refund.

-- Chris

Post a reply to this message

> Hello
>
> I asked this question about for years ago but gave up as things were clearly
> designed not to work the way I'd expect.  I've come back now for another go and
> I nothing seems to have improved.
>
> I've downloaded  povwin-3.7-agpl3-setup.exe and looked as directed at
> 'non-standard installations'   It says I can use /INSTALL or /QINSTALL.  These
> make not a blind bit of difference you still get led through the prompts for
> directories. and so on as if the didn't exists.  /S though undocumented will get
> you a silent install.
>
> However I've tried to install it I get the same old, same old, dialogues as ever
> when I log in as another user - POVRAY did not find the expected registry
> entries....and a telling off for allegedly not using /INSTALL when I did, then
> 'cannot find colours.inc'
>
> Oh and not that I'm the slightest bit surprised, no shortcuts in the all users
> start menu.
>
> After four years I'd really expected someone to have made a competent job of
> this. A proper installer should default to installing for all users without any
> further action, a miracle thousands of software vendors perform on a daily
> basis.  I fail to understand why POVRAY can't achieve this.
>
>
>   We will continue to have to explain to our students that these errors are not
> of our making and are a poor advertisment for your product.
>
>

Did you ever try to install from an administrative account? It's the 
ONLY way to install ANYTHING for all users. The "thousands of software 
vendors" that you mention can not preform that "miracle" if the install 
is not done with administrator credentials.

For the file colours.inc, it's a particular case. You need to make sure 
that all users have a pov-ray folder in their profiles that have an 
includes folder that will contain that file.
Also, have a scenes folder in each profiles. This is to ensure that one 
user won't accidently modify the scenes from someone else.

Normaly, POV-Ray should build the needed registry entries from it's 
current folder and the profile in use if those don't already exist.




Alain

Post a reply to this message

On 20/08/2014 07:14, Alain wrote:
> Did you ever try to install from an administrative account? It's the 
> ONLY way to install ANYTHING for all users. The "thousands of software 
> vendors" that you mention can not preform that "miracle" if the install 
> is not done with administrator credentials.
> 
> For the file colours.inc, it's a particular case. You need to make sure 
> that all users have a pov-ray folder in their profiles that have an 
> includes folder that will contain that file.
> Also, have a scenes folder in each profiles. This is to ensure that one 
> user won't accidently modify the scenes from someone else.
> 
> Normaly, POV-Ray should build the needed registry entries from it's 
> current folder and the profile in use if those don't already exist.

This is a good summary. The main issue is that for a pre-install to
work we need to advertise a 'deferred install', which requires MSI
support. A deferred install will automatically install the
user-specific files in the users account the first time they run POVWIN.

Since we can't do that, in a lab environment it's up to the
administrator to ensure that when the student wants to run the app,
the appropriate support files get installed. This is why we clearly
document the required settings.

Generally speaking letting them all share a single set of files isn't
suitable, as then they can all edit them. A proper setup requires that
each student has their own set of editable files in their own account.
The binaries/help file etc can be shared.

-- Chris

Post a reply to this message

> On 20/08/2014 07:14, Alain wrote:
>> Did you ever try to install from an administrative account? It's the
>> ONLY way to install ANYTHING for all users. The "thousands of software
>> vendors" that you mention can not preform that "miracle" if the install
>> is not done with administrator credentials.
>>
>> For the file colours.inc, it's a particular case. You need to make sure
>> that all users have a pov-ray folder in their profiles that have an
>> includes folder that will contain that file.
>> Also, have a scenes folder in each profiles. This is to ensure that one
>> user won't accidently modify the scenes from someone else.
>>
>> Normaly, POV-Ray should build the needed registry entries from it's
>> current folder and the profile in use if those don't already exist.
>
> This is a good summary. The main issue is that for a pre-install to
> work we need to advertise a 'deferred install', which requires MSI
> support. A deferred install will automatically install the
> user-specific files in the users account the first time they run POVWIN.
>
> Since we can't do that, in a lab environment it's up to the
> administrator to ensure that when the student wants to run the app,
> the appropriate support files get installed. This is why we clearly
> document the required settings.
>
> Generally speaking letting them all share a single set of files isn't
> suitable, as then they can all edit them. A proper setup requires that
> each student has their own set of editable files in their own account.
> The binaries/help file etc can be shared.
>
> -- Chris
>

The default include files can reside in a single include folder where 
everyone have read access, but only the administrator have write access.
The same can be done for the sample scene files.

Post a reply to this message

On 20/08/2014 09:11, Alain wrote:
> The default include files can reside in a single include folder where 
> everyone have read access, but only the administrator have write access.
> The same can be done for the sample scene files.

Yes, this is in fact the easiest solution. I suggested separate copies
of the files because in general it is assumed that users have write
access to these files (and are even encouraged to edit them where it
suits).

Of course institutions can have different policies, but then it's up
to them to instruct their users accordingly.

I spent some time making the new version network-friendly, but as you
can see from the tone of Nick's post, that's apparently not enough for
him. The simple fact is I can't satisfy everyone, especially those who
want things handed to them on a platter.

As I cannot predict everyone's setup exactly so made it possible to
install via group policy, but of course that's too much work for some
folk ;-)

-- Chris

Post a reply to this message

Am 19.08.2014 23:37, schrieb Chris Cason:
> On 20/08/2014 07:14, Alain wrote:
>> Did you ever try to install from an administrative account? It's the
>> ONLY way to install ANYTHING for all users. The "thousands of software
>> vendors" that you mention can not preform that "miracle" if the install
>> is not done with administrator credentials.
>>
>> For the file colours.inc, it's a particular case. You need to make sure
>> that all users have a pov-ray folder in their profiles that have an
>> includes folder that will contain that file.
>> Also, have a scenes folder in each profiles. This is to ensure that one
>> user won't accidently modify the scenes from someone else.
>>
>> Normaly, POV-Ray should build the needed registry entries from it's
>> current folder and the profile in use if those don't already exist.
>
> This is a good summary. The main issue is that for a pre-install to
> work we need to advertise a 'deferred install', which requires MSI
> support. A deferred install will automatically install the
> user-specific files in the users account the first time they run POVWIN.

... or we might implement the deferred install thing as part of 
POV-Ray's startup, like this:

(1) To install for all users, actually have the installer perform an 
install for the default user (HKEY_USERS/.DEFAULT).

(2) On first time startup for a particular user, copy both registry keys 
and user files from the default user's account (modifying the DocPath 
registry entry of course).

Or am I missing something fundamental there?

Post a reply to this message

On 20/08/2014 20:25, clipka wrote:
> (2) On first time startup for a particular user, copy both registry keys 
> and user files from the default user's account (modifying the DocPath 
> registry entry of course).
> 
> Or am I missing something fundamental there?

Nope, that's one approach I considered. I decided not to because then
I need to add UI support for failure, retry, and whatever, and that's
something best done by the OS (which has code for handling exactly
this) rather than merging it into the base POV-Ray code (or adding a
separate utility), where it would (in 99.9% of cases) never be used.

Put another way, in terms of time involved, it's probably easier to
get the OS to do it, but that hasn't happened yet, and there's a
pretty straightforward fully-documented workaround for network admins.

-- Chris

Post a reply to this message

Am 21.08.2014 04:32, schrieb Chris Cason:
> On 20/08/2014 20:25, clipka wrote:
>> (2) On first time startup for a particular user, copy both registry keys
>> and user files from the default user's account (modifying the DocPath
>> registry entry of course).
>>
>> Or am I missing something fundamental there?
>
> Nope, that's one approach I considered. I decided not to because then
> I need to add UI support for failure, retry, and whatever, and that's
> something best done by the OS (which has code for handling exactly
> this) rather than merging it into the base POV-Ray code (or adding a
> separate utility), where it would (in 99.9% of cases) never be used.

If it's such a rare use case, then why can't we just go with 
minimalistic error handling: If it doesn't work, just output an error 
message.


> Put another way, in terms of time involved, it's probably easier to
> get the OS to do it, but that hasn't happened yet,

I guess you're referring to deferred (or "advertised") installation 
here; I'm only starting to dive into this matter now, but Wikipedia has 
this to say about it:

"The user must have administrator privileges to complete the advertised 
installation; in most workplaces, end users are not administrators and 
this method of distribution will fail. Microsoft created a workaround 
via Group Policies to "Elevate user privileges" during MSI 
installations. This is often seen by system administrators as 
compromising security since any MSI would automatically gain 
administrator privileges."

That sounds pretty discouraging.

> and there's a
> pretty straightforward fully-documented workaround for network admins.

What that documentation currently fails to mention is that the user 
directory needs to be populated manually (or via a script of course), as 
the /INSTALL and /QINSTALL options will only take care of the registry 
entries.

Post a reply to this message

On 21/08/2014 21:18, clipka wrote:
> What that documentation currently fails to mention is that the user 
> directory needs to be populated manually (or via a script of course), as 
> the /INSTALL and /QINSTALL options will only take care of the registry 
> entries.

The fully documented workaround I mention is NOT the command-line
switches but the group policy alternative. I specify the registry
entries and that, along with providing the files in the right places,
is what an admin can use rather than running the program elevated on
each workstation.

Put another way, rather than going through the hassle of organizing an
elevated run of POVWIN on each workstation, they can set files up on
the network (including the end-user files wherever they want), push
the registry entries via group policy, and POVWIN will just work
without *ever* needing to have been run on the workstation in question
at any time previous, with or without elevation.

This is the cleanest way of doing it in a large environment where the
administrator is competent and willing to read documentation.

For smaller installs yes I could add some code to POVWIN.

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