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Install issues with MSI on relative path


Guest Peter L.
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Guest Peter L.

Hi,

I'm new to Ketarin and currently try to get going with a portable setup.

My file structure is like
Drive:\install\Ketarin\
Drive:\install\InstallDir1\
Drive:\install\InstallDir2\

I've configured Setup files to be downloaded to "..\InstallDir1\" and "..\InstallDir2\", which works correctly.

When running the installers, the {file} variable is "drive:\ketarin\..\InstallDir1\Installer1.exe" and "drive:\ketarin..\InstallDir2\Installer2.msi".
For EXE installers this does not seem to be an issue, for MSIEXEC it is.
Msiexec.exe reports file not found errors.

Is there a way to work around this? E.g. get the relative path expanded to the absolute path before feeding to msiexec?


Regards

Peter

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Welcome, Peter!

There is some great documentation for Ketarin on the Wiki

What you're looking for is either {root} or {startuppath}, depending on how you want to write your scripts. The final strings would be something like "{root}\ketarin\..\InstallDir1\Installer1.exe" and "{startuppath}\..\InstallDir2\Installer2.msi", or, for msiexec:

msiexec /q /nr "{startuppath}\..\InstallDir2\Installer2.msi"

HOWEVER, you may find that a better solution (especially if you're creating a portable drive) is to remap it to the drive letter it's expecting. Pick a high drive letter and you can prep the drive with powershell using something like this:

Get-Partition -DriveLetter ($pwd.path.substring(0,1)) | Set-Partition -NewDriveLetter K

Run this (elevated) as part of your initial startup routine and you can be a lot more lenient with the drive letters using K: as the Ketarin drive. Of course, don't run this from a script on C:. :)

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Hi Shawn,

I've already read through the wiki, thanks for the hint.

The problem is that

msiexec /q /nr "{startuppath}\..\InstallDir2\Installer2.msi"

does not fly, at least not on the Windows 10 Pro (1909) computer I was testing on.

"..\" does not get interpreted as "one directory above the current one" but leads to a "file not found" error with msiexec.

In the end it doesn't matter if I use the {startuppath} or the {file} variable as the final string still contains '..\'

 

Batch scripting this would need some jumping through hoops and Powershell is not the tool of my choice (I'm not reluctant to learning, it's just too Microsoftish in many ways ...).

I did some testing with custom install scripts but stopped when "%~dp0" did not expand to the current path in my batch script (I know that envvar %CD% would do the same in this case).

Maybe I'll be doing some more testing and report back with what I've found out.

 

Regards

Peter

---

Edit 1

I've checked if I could work around the issue with a custom setup batch script.

The problem with that is, that depending on how the Ketarin executable is started the path changes (e.g via Script from the parent directory or manually from the Ketarin subdirectory).

Depending on the point of view, the problem is either Windows Installer not supporting relative paths (I've found a post where someone from MS confirms this  https://www.pcreview.co.uk/threads/problem-with-msiexec-and-relative-path.1544499/) or Ketarin not expanding the path when building the variables.

I guess the {file} variable gets concatenated from {startuppath} and the path configured for the download location in a string operation.

I've tried modifying the {file} variable with "regexreplace" which does not seem to work in the "Start process" context of setup instructions (me being stupid might also be the reason for this).

 

---

Edit 2

"Me being stupid" seems to be the issue ...

I've worked around the issue with the following solution:

-

In the Setup section I've set the action to "Start process ..." with following paramters.

Program to start: msiexec.exe

Arguments: /i {file:replace:\Ketarin\..\:} /qn /norestart

-

This does exactly what the relative path should be doing, it removes the Ketarin program directory and also the "..\" makro from the string.

 

 

 

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