Adobe AIR NativeProcess - UAC problems when trying to run update installers - apache-flex

I'm trying to use Adobe AIR 2's NativeProcess API to emulate the ApplicationUpdater but I'm encountering problems when I try to run the downloaded AppUpdater.exe file on computers with UAC (User Account Control) enabled.
When run without UAC enabled, the AppUpdater opens as usual and displays the standard Adobe replace dialog box. With UAC enabled, nothing happens at all.
Having run a few traces, it seems the problem arises when I call NativeProcess.start() - the code seems to stop running at this point, and does not run the following lines which exit the application in preparation for the AppUpdater to run.
I have added listeners for all of the possible events and error events that can be thrown, and added logging in each of them, but none of these are producing any output.
This issue only seems to affect installation executables (ones which windows warns will change settings on your computer). Calling java.exe -jar .... on the same computers in the same application works correctly.
I'm at a loss, so any help would be amazing!

After speaking to Adobe directly, I discovered that NativeProcess uses a windows API which is unable to elevate privileges which is why the installers wouldn't work. The workaround was to use File.openWithDefaultApplication which uses a different API that can elevate privileges, but this only works in a native-packaged AIR app (which was just fine for our app since it was already packaged in a native installer :))

adobe answer was http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404888.html
but for real steps you should determine the application user privileges and determine UAC enabled, if yes - then warn end-user about it.
I'm expecting that you could do nothing with windows-thing from Adobe Air.

Related

MRTK: How to fix SpectatorView from Android-device not pairing with HoloLens? (QR-code)

Problem summary
I'm attempting to establish a connection between HoloLens and an Android device, which worked sporadically in the beta-version of the MRTK.
However since moving to the MRTK RC1 (Also Refresh), I've encountered issues regarding the QR-scanning. When pressing connect, the two devices seemingly finds eachother, however when the wearer of the HoloLens1 looks directly into the QR-code, nothing happens. (the white dot and "Locating marker..." text is showing)
Background summary
1. The Setup:
Implemented working MRTK RC1 Refresh
Cloned Feature-SpectatorView separately, copying only the "MixedRealityToolkit.Extensions" folder to the MRTK project.
"Spectator View - HoloLens" prefab added to scene.
First pressing "HoloLens" in the PlatformSwitcher, building for HoloLens1, then switching to "Android" and exporting the project to Android Studio.
Building the .apk from Android Studio
(opencv binaries are downloaded and implemented since beta version, I haven't since changed them from when they worked the last time.)
2. The Proces:
On the HoloLens, I press the "Connect" button in which a white text appears saying "Locating Marker..."
The Android phone presses connect and it goes to "Waiting for User" then as soon as a HoloLens is connected, it switches immediately to a QR code that should be readible from said HoloLens.
Looking directly at the QR-code and nothing new happens, connection does not establish further.
I checked if something was not ticked in Player Settings/Capabilities, but I can't seem to find what the culprit would be. Did I forget something in this proces?
There are a few things that could be causing this issue.
If the Android device is showing a marker, this means the two devices have established a network connection and are communicating with one another. Typically, when I run spectator view I enable the following capabilities: "Internet (Client & Server), Internet (Client), Microphone, Pictures Library, Private Networks (Client & Server), Spatial Perception, Videos Library, Webcam" in the Package.appxmanifest in visual studio. Pressing "HoloLens" on spectator view's unity platform switcher should typically achieve enabling these capabilities, but sometimes the package.appxmanifest doesn't get updated correctly in the visual studio project with subsequent builds in Unity. You can fix this by deleting your visual studio directory and rebuilding the visual studio project in unity.
If these capabilities are checked in the package.appxmanifest, it may be that you rejected a capability request when first running the application. If you open Settings -> Privacy -> Camera on the HoloLens, you can check whether your deployed spectator view application has camera access granted. You should be able to enable the camera functionality here if it is disabled.
There have been changes to both MixedRealityToolkit and MixedRealityToolkit-Unity spectator view logic, so cloning these items at different points in time may cause functions to no longer resolve (We're hoping to consolidate this code into the same repo/commit history in the future to prevent this from continuing to happen). Typically, in the Unity logs there will be errors stating that a function was not found for SpectatorViewPlugin.dll if the dll functionality is not resolving correctly. It sounds like this is not the issue you are hitting if things worked previously. But if it does turn out the case, it may be that you need to rebuild the SpectatorViewPlugin.dll to match the feature/spectatorView code you are using.
If you recently copied the SpectatorViewPlugin.dll and its dependencies to a new unity project, it may be that they aren't getting registered as usable by the windows uwp unity player. Make sure these binaries are in a Plugins\WSA\x86 folder within your assets folder. Also check the *.dll.meta definitions in the unity inspector to ensure the dll's are declared as usable for the unity wsa player/x86 builds.

Qt application running with `-platform offscreen` argument cannot establish websocket connection

I have a GUI application which contains a websocket server QWebSocketServer. I also have a python script which sends messages and the application processes them. Everything works well. During testing I wanted to run the application in headless mode using -platform offscreen command line argument added to the app executable name (I changed nothing else). But the problem is that when the application runs off-screen, the client script cannot establish connection with the web socket server. I tested this on localhost only. I do not understand how this two things, visibility of GUI and websockets, can interfere. Any ideas what could go wrong?
Note: I am using Qt 5.11.1 64-bit with VS 2017 on Windows 10 Pro.
A platform plugin is a bit more than merely "GUI". The -platform option selects a family of platform-specific plugins. Perhaps some plugins that make networking work are absent on that platform spec. That's very likely, since the offscreen platform is only a proof-of-concept: it's to show how you'd write a platform plugin. It's example code, and it does the bare minimum needed. It's nothing that you should be using for production without fully understanding what's there and how it works - it wasn't not meant for it, at least not the last time I looked at it. It shouldn't be hard to make it work, but you'd need to clone the source and start hacking on it.

chromium profile directory is already/used by another BrowserContext instance or process

I used an evaluated jxbrowser, which version is 6.14, I write an demo to use it. but i have a problem with it.
Use the demo app to start an application, which can show web UI, keep this applciation with opened, but then I start demo app again, system will throw below exception:
chromium profile directory is already/used by another BrowserContext instance or process
jxbrwowser cannot start two clients in one PC? if can, how to resolve it?
We strongly recommend that you don't use several BrowserContext instances with the same profile directory. Chromium engine wasn't designed for such usage and doesn't support it. Even if you don't see any issues right now, the issues will appear later in end user environments. For example, in macOS environment you will get the Chromium's error message dialog every time when you run your application instance developed in such way.
Since it's a critical requirement in the Chromium engine, I don't think we will make it configurable in next versions. This is how Chromium engine works. These is a recommendation we have to follow when working with the Chromium engine.

Why don't QLocalSocket/Server connections work when one process was invoked by an NSIS installer?

I have an NSIS installer that installs my Qt application. At the end of the install process, the installer gives the user the option to launch the application immediately.
My application uses QLocalSocket/QLocalServer to talk to other local instances of the application. (They talk to each other basically just to ensure that there's only one instance of the app running at a time.) However, on Vista, if one of the instances was started up by the installer, then other instances cannot talk to that instance unless they were also started by the installer (or uninstaller, interestingly).
The NSIS installer launches the app with the Exec command. The client tries to connect to the server through QLocalSocket::connectToServer, which fails with the error "QLocalSocket::connectToServer: Unknown error 5".
Can anyone explain this? What's the best way to work around it?
If 5 is a windows error code, it would mean access denied. Is there a way for you to change the security on this server (You would need to access the native pipe handle)?
The finish page run option has more issues than just this, the new process gets the wrong HKCU and user profile etc.
I would recommend just disabling the run checkbox on the finish page. (This issue goes all the way back to win2000 when RunAs was added)
If you really really want this run checkbox, you can use the UAC plugin, it will allow you to start a child process as the "correct" user.
Finally figured this out. The installer was running as admin (the install script said "RequestExecutionLevel admin"), and apparently it launched my app with those elevated permissions, which meant that other instances of my app running with user-level permissions couldn't connect to it. QLocalSocket/Server uses named pipes on windows, so I figure this is a windows security feature. I'm planning to work around this by using the UAC NSIS plugin, which I believe lets you run a process with user-level permissions.

How does Adobe CONNECTNOW load and run acaddin?

I am looking for options to download, Install and run a custom plugin/add-on(an exe or an installer) from my Flash Movie similar to how the connectnow does that?
When we initiate the screen sharing for the first time, connectnow prompts us for mandatory add-in by showing the message "To use this application, you need the Adobe ConnectNow Add-in.Would you like to install it now?". Once we agree, it downloads and installs acaddin.exe at the location %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\www.macromedia.com\bin\acaddin on our local machine. Then automatically launches the acaddin.exe and allows the user to close the browser window from where the acaddin.exe was launched.
From the next time onwards, when we login to connectnow, it launches the exe directly.
In this context:
If I were to load my own exe/add-in from flash, How can I acheive that?
How does connectnow application/flash determine whether an add-in was already installed or not?
Connect, and I assume ConnectNow, use hidden, undocumented, private APIs for much of their functionality.
You will not be able to do this.
The best you can hope for is to pass the location of your executable to the browser as a local URL and let the browser handle it. I assume in most cases the browser will reject its' execution. Can you imagine the potential for abuse of such a feature?
Instead of using a browser based app, you may want to investigate using AIR and Native Process.

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