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Please allow installation of DevPod Windows UI without requiring local admin privileges

Open kdandersen opened this issue 2 years ago • 10 comments

Please allow DevPod to be installed in users App\Local or similar location, not requiring local admin privileges or elevation on Windows.

kdandersen avatar Jun 19 '23 05:06 kdandersen

Hi @kdandersen, thank you for opening the issue. We looked into the topic a while ago but tbh it's not very high up on the priority list. You can try to work around it using msiexec, see our slack channel for more information on that

pascalbreuninger avatar Jun 20 '23 11:06 pascalbreuninger

Hmm,

Gave it a try with command:

msiexec /i "DevPod_windows_x64_en-US.msi" ALLUSERS="" INSTALLDIR=%LOCALAPPDATA%/Programs/DevPod

But still required elevation.

Anyhow, thanks for suggesting.

Rgds

kdandersen avatar Jun 21 '23 14:06 kdandersen

@pascalbreuninger same problem, many companies impose restrictions on their PC and disable local admin privileges or elevation on Windows for security reasons.
It's my case, and I can't test devpod :(

philippe-granet avatar Jul 18 '23 18:07 philippe-granet

I found a work around.
Extract the msi: msiexec /a DevPod_windows_x64_en-US.msi /qb TARGETDIR=c:\devpod
Then you find DevPod.exe in C:\devpod\PFiles\DevPod and can launch it without local admin privileges or elevation

philippe-granet avatar Jul 18 '23 18:07 philippe-granet

Hi @philippe-granet

You workaround works! 👍

Thanks for sharing

kdandersen avatar Jul 21 '23 05:07 kdandersen

If so, what about releasing the .exe alone, near to the .msi? I'm not so sure where the .exe is before releasing it. https://github.com/loft-sh/devpod/blob/8417972dcdb78e8c0145e587ee36de34636d6046/.github/workflows/release.yaml#L307

gbonnefille avatar Nov 16 '23 07:11 gbonnefille

Please, note that Rancher Desktop has an installer proposing a User install. But I fear it is a completely different packager.

gbonnefille avatar Nov 16 '23 07:11 gbonnefille

@gbonnefille I fear if we just release the .exe file it will be more confusing to figure out which file to download and I'm not sure if the signing will still work without the msi. Long-term we should adjust the installer to allow for user installs

pascalbreuninger avatar Nov 20 '23 06:11 pascalbreuninger

I certainly misunderstood something, but the .exe I found in the Releases is the cli only.

In order to have a GUI running, I had to disassemble the .msi and run the Path executable.

gbonnefille avatar Nov 20 '23 07:11 gbonnefille

Yes you got that right, I thought you want to release the GUI .exe alongside the .msi

pascalbreuninger avatar Nov 20 '23 09:11 pascalbreuninger