4 replies to this topic

[AceMcCloud]

I have a setup let's a user choose options from custom dialogs and then the appropriate files are installed. At first I tried a method of conditionally installing features that did not work, so instead put conditions on the features themselves and on the components under each feature. It turns out though that each feature (I have 4 of them) gets installed no matter what... the files under the components under the features selectively/conditionally get installed correctly though, so not a problem, so far.

The problem is I cannot apply the same conditions to merge modules. And since I can't get features themselves to install conditionally, ALL ther merge modules install no matter what. I saw exclusions for merge modules, but they don't seem to be the same as conditions. Any ideas or suggestion on how to get the proper merge modules installing?

Thank you.

       Steve

[hambone]

i am unsure whether this will help or not, but starting with version 2.0 of the msi engine there is an option to create 'customizable merge modules'...

would this capability assist ?

[AceMcCloud]

It probably would, the only problem would be having to maintain a whole set of customized MM's, and then when they are officially upgraded (like from MSDE SP3 to SP4), I'd have a whole slow of custom work to do again. It probably would work though. I managed to get it working by splitting up my dialogs and running CostFinalize somewhere in the middle. It seems to have worked nicely. Thanks for your idea.

[AceMcCloud]

Actually my previous sol'n was only half working. The files in the mm's were installing conditionally, but the custom actions were still triggering. So I had to add conditions to every custom action in all 25 MSDE mm's, then I had to resequence the ca's to be after my condition properties are set. Now I'm getting a strange error in the InstallFinalize section:

MSI (s) (A4:2C): Executing op: ActionStart(Name=StopServices,Description=Stopping services,Template=Service: )
Action 230:31: StopServices. Stopping services
MSI (s) (A4:2C): Executing op: ProgressTotal(Total=2,Type=1,ByteEquivalent=1300000)
MSI (s) (A4:2C): Executing op: ServiceControl(,,Action=2,Wait=-2147483648,)
StopServices: Service:

I noticed there is not Name= parameter in the ServiceControl(). Is this the problem? Also it looks like it's trying to do a stop... When I check out the generated .msi I can see there are two entries in ServiceControl and ServiceInstall tables: SqlAgent.C4D32C83_C28D_4329_A829_31C4C6034F59
and MSSQLServer.CC1A8C58_27D1_4D38_BF1B_C0A5CBB90616.
But at the point where the error occurs, there are no files yet installed and no services installed/registered.

Has anyone seen anything like this before? Does anyone have any advice or ideas? If I had the time to do the setup again I'd probably do it differently, but time is a fickle thing...  

[AceMcCloud]

Upon further investigation, my log file has all
components that should be installed set to Installed:
Absent;   Request: Local;   Action: Local.  However there
are no File: entries in the log file. Something is out of
order. Nothing has changed file-wise, and all the files
are there in the File table. How would I go about
solving/debugging this problem?

Thanks, Steve