AW: Windows installation requires admin rights

Hi,

i guess the VC++ runtime will not work as default user without admin rights.

My 2 cents for machine vs user based installation:

But If you make available a version for users w/o admin rights please make sure to also keep the version with admin rights.
I deploy software in our enterprise and user based installation is a pain in the a.., machine based installation is only way to go.
even more if you are using applocker to restrict software use.

What you can do, installer could check if admin rights are given then it will do a machine based installation, if not do the user based.
Google chrome and Firefox are using this way to install on windows but this may need some logic in the installer, idk if inno is providing it.

Regards,

Sascha

Von: Fahar Abbas <fahar(dot)abbas(at)enterprisedb(dot)com>
Gesendet: Dienstag, 25. Mai 2021 10:33
An: Dave Page <dpage(at)pgadmin(dot)org>
Cc: Antoine Aumjaud <antoine_dev(at)aumjaud(dot)fr>; pgAdmin Support <pgadmin-support(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Betreff: Re: Windows installation requires admin rights

Sure, I will update you soon.

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 1:29 PM Dave Page <dpage(at)pgadmin(dot)org<mailto:dpage(at)pgadmin(dot)org>> wrote:
Hi

On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 9:25 PM Antoine Aumjaud <antoine_dev(at)aumjaud(dot)fr<mailto:antoine_dev(at)aumjaud(dot)fr>> wrote:

Hi,

The actual configuration of Inno Setup for the installation of pgAdmin4 requires admin privileges on the computer :

https://github.com/postgres/pgadmin4/blob/master/pkg/win32/installer.iss.in#L31

PrivilegesRequired=admin

I have read the whole configuration, and I think that this constrain could be remove if HKCU (HKEY_CURENT_USER of Windows registry) is used instead of HKLM (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE).

The pgAdmin package provided by entreprisedb can be installed without admin rights, but it is an old version of pgAdmin.

Do you think that this modification is possible?
I think it's a little more complex than that, but here's a patch that I think does everything required. The only part I'm not sure about is the VC++ runtime installation, and ensuring that will work for non-admins. Fahar; can you test that on a *completely* clean installation of Windows please? You must run the "install only for me" option before anything else (don't even install VMware tools).

There's a test build at https://developer.pgadmin.org/~dpage/non-admin-install/pgadmin4-5.3-x64.exe. Note that it is not signed, so you will get a warning, but that can be ignored for the purposes of this test.

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Dave Page
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Fahar Abbas
EnterpriseDB Corporation
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