[wpkg-users] Installer for windows 64 bits

[Rainer Meier]

Hi Tomasz,

Tomasz Chmielewski wrote:
> Hi Rainer,
> 
> Did you have time to check if 64 bit version of WPKG Client works on 64 
> bit Windows systems?

Oh yes. I tested "WPKG Client 1.3.5_64.msi" on Vista Business x64. It 
works as expected. Now I do not need to run "wrapper.js" any more.


Moreover it speeds up execution of WPKG as clients do not have to fetch 
wrapper.js and especially 64-bit\cmd.exe from the server. And even 
better wraper.js does not have to loop in order to fetch STDOUT/STDERR 
from wpkg.js.

Great job.


There are some comments I would like to add here in order not to forget 
about them (minor things):

After installation I had two entries called "WPKG" within my Control 
Panel => Software list. So WPKG client 1.3 is not removing/overwriting 
the entry of WPKG Client 1.2 (which I had installed before).

WPKG client 1.3.5 installs to "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\wpkg" which is the 
location for 32-bit software. The installer seems to be 32-bit which is 
a bit strange to me as an MSI package is not a binary. Instead it is 
installed by msiexec. So somehow it is using 32-bit version of msiexec 
(?). Probably there is a flag within the package to specify that the 
software included is 64-bit.
I did not check but probably only WPKGSrv.exe is 64-bit and wpkginst.exe 
and WPKGMessage.exe is still 32-bit. So these binaries are correctly 
located within "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\wpkg".

When I click the Save button within wpkginst.exe it exits. On Vista with 
UAC enabled it might be helpful if it just saves the settings but does 
not exit. Why? Because I need to run wpkginst.exe with admin rights 
(right click, run as administrator, then type user and password). If I 
just change some settings, save it and then re-run the service this 
means that each time I have to re-open wpkginst.exe which is quite 
uncomfortable with UAC enabled. I know it's not really your issue but 
could be easily fixed:
- Save just turns gray when clicked
- Add an exit button (or let users click the close button on top right)

The message boxes within "Logon settings" configuration are correctly 
grayed out. A message about the inability to use logon delay on Vista is 
displayed. However I am still able to set a logon delay in minutes. I 
think it should be grayed out as well.

wpkginst.exe needs to be manually run as administrator. Since it can 
only be run with administrator privileges it should trigger UAC 
automatically. As far as I know this requires attaching a manifest to 
the binary. Don't ask me how to do it since I never did it myself yet.


All in all just minor things. It works perfectly for me. I am already 
using it on my 64-bit vista machines.


br,
Rainer