installation

What is the best choice for building Windows installers?

I have primarily used Visual Studio 2003, and its tool for building an installer was pretty painful. Files and folders had to be added manually, one by one. I am looking at upgrading to VS 2008, and I'm not sure what its installer is like. Also I'm interested in installers for non-.net applications. Are there good, open source opti...

SQL Server 2005 and 2008 on same developer machine?

Has anyone tried installing SQL Server 2008 Developer on a machine that already has 2005 Developer installed? I am unsure if I should do this, and I need to keep 2005 on this machine for the foreseeable future in order to test our application easily. Since I sometimes need to take backup files of databases and make available for other p...

Piping password to smbpasswd

How can I pipe the new password to smbpasswd so I can automate my installation process. ...

Easy installation method for windows/ Batch Reference needed?

I have a bunch of files that I need to be able to transport and install quickly. My current method for doing so is moving a flash drive with a readme file of where stuff goes whenever I need to move stuff, which is rather inelegant and cumbersome. My idea for a solution would be to write up a quick script to move files around that I cou...

What's the best way to configure my Ruby compilation in Debian?

When compiling from source, I never know which configure flags to use to optimize the compilation for my environment. Assume the following hardware/OS: Single Core, 2 GHz Intel 512MB Ram Debian 4 I usually just go with ./configure --prefix=/usr/local Should I be doing anything else? ...

stopping MSI from launching an EXE in the SYSTEM context

Ok, I've got a problem here with an MSI deployment that I'm working on (using Installshield) we have a program running in the background that needs to run per-user, this needs to start automatically without user intervention. The problem is with GPO/AD deployment the application is started in the SYSTEM context before anyone is logged ...

Register file extensions / mime types in Linux

I'm developing a Linux application that has its own file format. I want my app to open when you double-click on those files. How can I register a file extension and associate it with my application on Linux? I'm looking for a way that that is standard (works with GNOME and KDE based systems) and can be done automatic when my program is ...

Checklist for Database Schema Upgrades

Having to upgrade a database schema makes installing a new release of software a lot trickier. What are the best practices for doing this? I'm looking for a checklist or timeline of action items, such as 8:30 shut down apps 8:45 modify schema 9:15 install new apps 9:30 restart db etc, showing how to minimize risk and downtime. Iss...

Microsoft Office 2007 automated installation - editing the config.xml file

Hi all I'm creating an automated installation of Office 2007. To customise your Office 2007 installation the Office Customization Tool (OCT) does most of the work for you. One the OCT's features is the ability to run additional programs during the Office installation. However it is pretty poor at it. Fortunately by editing the app...

How to best implement software updates on windows?

I want to implement an "automatic update" system for a windows application. Right now I'm semi-manually creating an "appcast" which my program checks, and notifies the user that a new version is available. (I'm using NSIS for my installers). Is there software that I can use that will handle the "automatic" part of the updates, perhap...

.Net 3.5 silent installer?

Is there a redistributable .Net 3.5 installation package that is a silent installer? Or alternatively, is there a switch that can be passed to the main redistributable .Net 3.5 installer to make it silent? ...

Deploy MySQL Server + DB with .Net application.

HI All, We have a .Net 2.0 application which has a MySQL backend. We want to be able to deploy MySQl and the DB when we install the application and im trying to find the best solution. The current setup is to copy the required files to a folder on the local machine and then perform a "NET START" commands to install and start the mysql ...

How do I find if my particular computer is going to have problems when I install linux?

The IT lady just gave me a laptop to keep! I've always wanted to have Linux install to play with so the first thing I did is search stackoverflow for Linux Distro suggestions and found it here. However they also mention that you should search around to see if anyone's had any problems with your drivers and that distro. Now all I k...

Silverlight Install Base - How big is it?

Silverlight v2.0 is getting closer and closer to RTM but I have yet to hear any stats as to how many browsers are running Silverlight. If I ask Adobe (by googling "Flash install base") they're only too happy to tell me that 97.7% of browsers are running Flash player 9 or better. Not that I believe everything I read, but where are these ...

How can I make my VS2008 x86 installer install x64 assemblies on x64?

I'm using the VS2008 installer (plus a custom Orca action) to create an installer for my .NET product. I just recently found out that one of the third-party assemblies I was using is x86-specific (as it includes some native code); thus, x64 customers were getting crashes on startup with errors about the assembly not being appropriate fo...

Installation of demo project - best practices

Using Windows Installer (targeting XP and Vista), is there a best practice for installing demo projects and files with your application? ...

.NET Framework versions

I've had a little search and I was wondering if there is back compatibility for the .NET framework. The real question is, if there's a program that uses .NET Framework 1.1, can I install 3.5 and be done, or do I have to install 1.1 and then if something uses 3.5 I have to install 3.5 as well? ...

Is there a folder in both WinXP and WinVista to which all users have writing permissions?

We have a NET app that gets installed to the Program Files folder. The app itself writes some files and creates some directories to its app folder. But when a normal windows user tries to use our application it crashes because that user does not have permission to write to app folder. Is there any folder in both WinXP and WinVista to wh...

Does the Gentoo install CD contain everything for C++ development?

I'd like to install Gentoo. I need it to develop GUI C++ applications using wxWidgets, so I need: build tools: make, automake, autoconf, etc. C++ compiler (GCC) X Window System for testing (Fluxbox or something minimal would be enough) Now, I have two options: download the small network installer (57MB) do a network install downloa...

Problems with Visual Studio Express installation

I just installed 'Visual C# 2008 Express Edition' and 'Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition' on my Vista machine. Previously I have been running these in Win XP. When launching the software, starting a new project and trying to build it I get warnings like "The referenced component 'System' could not be found."; one row for each nam...