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May 07 Understanding the Windows Installer LogsTechnorati Tags: Windows installer,windows installer logging,windows installer errors,policies,registry,debugview When people are beginning to use Windows Installer the first look at the logs is often so daunting they tend to never look at them again. I find that the most common reason people avoid the logs is they don't understand the sequencing. Funnily enough the sequences and the logs tend to correspond with each other (I'm not sure why that is) Anyway if you take Windows Installer and break it down you would know that the Installer basically consists of a service and a database that processes table's then sequences and actions. The installer service records everything that happens in sequential logic. The end result is a transactional record of the actions that are run during the installation. The beauty of this is as its transactional its quite simple to apply the reverse logic to handle the uninstall. Now the trusty old log files record this process in its entirety, basically what I am getting at here is if you take the time to actually read the logs you would also understand the sequencing logic as well because they are one in the same. Alternatively if you work out the sequences you also workout the logs. So first things first with the logs. How do we enable Windows Installer logging ? Before we enable logging there is a number of available logging options which you need to know, there are:
Note: Each letter corresponds to a different setting. Adding a collection of all letters increases logging capabilities. Logging via Registry System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer]
Note: A common acronym of VOICEWARMUP is used as its a word that contains all available settings (prior to V3.0) Debugging via Registry System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer]Value Name: Debug Data Type: REG_DWORD
By enabling the debug key you can monitor the installation using debugview Install script logging System Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\InstallShield\ISWI\3.0\SetupExeLog] Group Policy Logging To enable logging from active directory or GPO you can find the settings here.
Windows Installer 4.0 + So then we got Windows Installer 4.0 from which came two new Windows Installer properties. MSILogging property hosts the same values listed in the above table. MSILogFileLocation property has the path to where the logs should be created. Command Line Logging So last but not least command line logging, probably the one you will most often use. msiexec.exe /i <path to msi> /l*v <path to logfile> msiexec.exe /i <path to msi> /l*vx <path to logfile> (version 3.0 on Windows 2003 + OS's) Reading the logs Ok so now you have the logs how do we interpret the garbage that it generates. Well for those of you who always like to take the easy road. Get your hands on this little utility WILOGUTL.EXE it makes pretty it all a little more legible and takes the guess work out of things. However for all of you hard core propeller heads here's how to really understand the seemingly difficult mess that arrive after setting some of the above options to log. As you are aware the Installer Service on WindowsNT based platforms offers a client and server based process. The first section depicted in the following log excerpt in blue identifies the process is running client or server side. MSI (s) (DC:D8) [22:18:04:544]: MainEngineThread is returning 1603MSI (c) (34:30) [22:18:05:544]: Back from server. Return value: 1603 MSI (S) is server side MSI (C) is client side MSI (N) is a nested action The next items depicted above in the red text is the ProcessID:ThreadID that generated the entry. Only the last 2 (hexadecimal) digits of the process and thread IDs are given. If the process ID was 2DC and thread ID 2D8 the Hex item show in the log would be (DC:D8). The green section following is the date time stamp the action occurred. Product State The ProductState property can be any one of these values
Feature Component State So every feature and component is checked for state prior to it being marked as something that needs to be installed. So selecting different features "usually" changes the feature state and subsequently all the components within that feature (of course there are exceptions to every rule, the condition table and feature / component conditions all have effect here also.). The first item here, show the feature name as Complete and it is currently Absent. So the requested action is to install it Local. So the components follow the same pattern. This one is a little tricky so more detail here
MSI (s) (94:28) [20:46:12:390]: Feature: Complete; Absent: Local; Request: Local; Action: Local Reading Actions and return codes Action start 1:18:02: INSTALL. MSI (c) (A1:6A): UI Sequence table 'InstallUISequence' is present and populated. MSI (c) (A1:6A): Running UISequence MSI (c) (A1:6A): Skipping action: ResumeInstall (condition is false) MSI (c) (A1:6A): Doing action: CheckOSandSPAction Action start 1:18:02: CheckOSandSPAction. MSI (c) (A1:6A): Creating MSIHANDLE (1) of type 790542 for thread 110 Action ended 1:18:02: CheckOSandSPAction. Return value 1. The valid return codes are:
Shell32 API calls Where you see one of these there is a good chance a directory is being resolved for the current target platform. MSI (s) (94:28) [20:46:11:843]: SHELL32::SHGetFolderPath returned: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Templates Old hands tips for log reading 1) Start at the bottom and work up 2) If your install fails with dialogs open. Leave dialogs on screen and goto log whilst error message is still visible 3) Use WiLogUtl.exe 4) Don't forget the newest extended logging options /l*vx (most of you are still using /l*v) 5) Keep the sequences in mind when reading a logfile (strangely enough they coincide nicely) 6) Enable GPO logging or policy registry option if you need to log repairs 7) Now you have this information take a 30 minutes out of your day and read an entire log you'll be surprised what you learn. Now all that being said, I'm not getting a lot of feedback about these blogs so its hard to gauge if anyone is really reading or even interested in this stuff or not. Post some comments if you want more info otherwise I may just find other things to do with my spare time. May 05 Custom XML Dom ClassSo lately a bunch of people are asking a little more about XML and XML DOM. Sometime ago when I was trying to learn how XML dom worked I threw this vbs class together to assist in reading and writing xml via the DOM. For those of you whom are not aware of the dom its the XML Document Object Model. Using the DOM you can traverse xml nodes read and manipulate data. Looking at this entirely from a packaging perspective its a great way to store and read package data into a package. So the attached script emulates the functionality in the NetFX classes, something I was not aware of prior to writing this code. So here is a bunch of vbs function (or methods for the dev's out there). Using these methods you can add / get / set and delete xml data from an XML structure. There is even a simple method to format the white space for readability purposes. There is a bunch of sample code at the top of the script to aid in how this should be used. If anyone is after some more specific requests in how they can pull data from xml drop a few comments and I will endeavour to answer your questions. The code is pretty old but its a great starting point for those of you whom are interested in learning xml. '============================================================================ ' Example 1 Generating a new xml document ' Example 3 Using an actual stylesheet Dim strScriptVersion '========================================================================================================= class XMLDom dim xmlfilename 'stores the xml filename '========================================================================================================= private Sub Class_Initialize private Sub Class_Terminate '========================================================================================================= public Property let FilenameXML(strFilename) public Property let FilenameXSL(strFilename) public Property let Indentspacing(intIndentSpacing) public Property let Whitespace(blnWhiteSpace) public Property get Whitespace() public Property let EmptyAttribute(blnAllowEmpty) '========================================================================================================= public function CreateRootElement(strRootNode) set xmlroot = xmldom.CreateElement(strRootNode) end function sub CreateElement(strElementName) sub CreateElementString(strElementName, strElementValue) sub CreateElementStringNew(strElementName, strElementValue) sub CreateEndElement sub DeleteEndElement Function RemoveElement(strNodename, objNode) Public Function RemoveElements(sXPath, objNode) Public Function GetElements set xmlElements = xmlDom.DocumentElement '========================================================================================================= sub CreateAttribute(strAttrName,strAttrValue) Public Function GetAttribute(strAttrName, objNode) ' as string Function RemoveAttribute(strAttrName, objNode) Public Function HasChildNodes() end function Public Function NodeExists(strNodeName) Public Function GetChildNodes() 'On Error Resume Next Dim arrNodes() End Function Public Function GetNode(sXpath) if not xmlelements then end function Public Function GetNodeValue(objNode, blnCData) ' As String set xmlcurrentnode = xmlElements.selectSingleNode(sXPath) If Not xmlcurrentnode Is Nothing Then Public Function SetNodeValue(strNodevalue, objNode, blnCData) ' As String sub CreateXmlProcess (strProcessInstruction) sub CreateXSlProcess (strProcessInstruction) Public Sub StartInsertAt(objParentNode) function LoadXML(strxml) public function XMLLoader(strXML) Public Function validateXML(strXML) Dim sReturn End Function Public Function transformXML1(strXML,strXSL) Dim xslDoc If xmlDom.parseError.errorCode = 0 Then End Function function TransformXML '========================================================================================================= sub close() |
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