Adam,

I suspect there is something more going on here.  We have been following
a test deployment process like yours for several years for a suite of
large web applications, and the only time we have file lock issues is if
someone is actively testing (hitting the pages) when the upgrade occurs.


Michael 

-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Burton [mailto:adz...@googlemail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, 22 January 2009 5:53 AM
To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.
Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Prevent reboot.

I don't know about that. I can understand why it gets the locks etc, but
its the releasing that seems to mess up for me, or behave in a manor I
would not except. For example the services I install ... why are files
still locked when the msi stops the service ... the service is the only
thing that will use those file ... I can't see why I should need to stop
the service for the msi before hand. Same with the IIS files, IIS is
stopped, it should release those DLLs that are only accessed by IIS
(they live in the website 'bin' directory, surely once IIS is stopped it
has no use for them and should release them). I have just always assumed
that it is a separate service/process/thread that releases the locks and
its just too slow off the mark for the MSI. If that is the case though
then you'd think there'd be stuff in Windows Installer that would take
that into account so I'd at least only be rebooting every so often
rather than a majority of the time.

Also its not uncommon for me to delete a directory and the directory
wont go away. With some inspection using stuff like process explorer it
appears "System" has a lock on it (presumably for shi**z and giggles),
soon as you kill the handle the directory goes. While the lock idea is
sane, Windows implementation doesn't seem to work for me, therefore in
its current state it's not sane for me :-).

Before anyone thinks I am Windows bashing this is just one of the gripes
I have with Windows, I have plenty of gripes with other OS's too.
Although I have to say on the plus side I am yet to encounter the issue
in Vista, but that being said I don't tend to delete directories often
or install already running services in Vista so maybe I've just not
trodden the path :-).

Regardless I must be doing something else wrong because even if I got
the file's name from the log file I still wouldn't know where to start.
Anything that is supposed to use the files, in the case of IIS, is shut
down and for the services it is shut down by Windows installer which I
would think is smart enough to handle a situation like shutting down the
service correctly so any files locked only by it will be released
sometimes preventing the requirement of a reboot.

On Wednesday 21 January 2009 18:03:05 Rob Mensching wrote:
> MSI verbose log file should point out the file being locked.  Then you

> just need to figure out how to get the thing to be unlocked.  That's 
> how Windows works.  It's perfectly sane, just not always very 
> convenient. <smile/>
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Adam Burton [mailto:adz...@googlemail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 06:00
> To: WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net
> Subject: [WiX-users] Prevent reboot.
> 
> Hi,
> I have created some WiX based installers for some services and a web 
> application I am working on at work. We use the installers as part of 
> our test rigs, so we patch our test changes, build the new version and

> install it. Since this whole process is automated if the MSI 
> determines it needs to reboot, it will.
> 
> Previously when I installed the services it would cause a reboot, I 
> assume due to file locks even though the installer would stop the 
> service. My resolution was to stop the service before performing the 
> upgrade, this seems to have solved that issue, although it seems 
> unnecessary. I am now getting the same problem with the Web 
> Application. It automatically deploys a new test build 2 times during 
> the day, once in early morning before anyone is here and once at 
> lunch. The morning build runs fine (I would guess this is because no 
> ones use the application for hours so IIS has released its file
> locks) but the afternoon builds during lunch forces a reboot most of 
> the time (I would guess because IIS has file locks due to recent 
> activity), which is not only annoying because its rebooting the 
> server, but also the server hosts other software (such as virtual 
> servers) taking that down. I have tried stopping IIS before it begins 
> the install but it still causes a reboot most of the time. Is there a 
> switch that could solve this or some way to make windows locking more
sane or something? I am just stumped.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Adam.
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