I want to detect current windows 10 update status programmatically.
I tried wuapi and it works well but there are some problems in wuapi.
First, it takes long time to get update information.
Second, it can not be used at offline.
Is there any other method to detect current windows 10 update status?
Is there any registry or system file to detect it?
I tried procmon to analyse but there are too many files and registries linked with windows udpate.
Thank you...
There is no documented way to access the search results that Automatic Updates is using (the results that the Windows Update page in Settings displays).
However, there are two things that might be of use to you:
You can use IAutomaticUpdatesResults::LastInstallationSuccessDate to immediately see the last time the computer installed updates successfully. If all you want to know is "Is this PC processing updates successfully?", then this may be all you need.
You can use a Windows Update API search to see what updates are needed. Here's a script you can use as a starting point. If you use this script as written, it will go online to find newly-released updates, which isn't what you want in your scenario. But you can set your IUpdateSearcher object's Online property to false before calling Search. Doing that will perform an offline scan, in which WU just re-evaluates the updates it already knows about. This will work offline and will also return faster results.
"COM API
The COM API is a good way to directly access Windows Update without having to parse logs. Applications of this API range from finding available updates on the computer to installing and uninstalling updates.
You could use the Microsoft.Update.Session class to run an update search and then count the number of updates available to see if there are any updates for the computer.
PowerShell Example:
$updateObject = New-Object -ComObject Microsoft.Update.Session
$updateObject.ClientApplicationID = "Serverfault Example Script"
$updateSearcher = $updateObject.CreateUpdateSearcher()
$searchResults = $updateSearcher.Search("IsInstalled=0")
Write-Host $searchResults.Updates.Count
If the returned result is more than 0 then there are updates for the computer that need to be installed and/or downloaded. You can easily update the powershell script to fit your application.
Just a heads up, it appears that the search function is not async so it would freeze your application while searching. In that case you will want to make it async."
Registry method
Source:
https://serverfault.com/questions/891188/is-it-possible-to-detect-the-windows-update-status-via-registry-to-see-if-the-s
Related
Build time of XPages application containing several JARs, Java sources and ~50 XP/CC elements takes about minute to build on server via WAN. I have replicated application to local, build time dropped to ~10s.
Since few days ago build of local application is extremely slow, about 2-5 minutes. After some experiments there is workaround: to disable TCP port in location document - it drops build times to just few seconds. Even tho it works, it does not help much - testing requires user to be authenticated, so I need to replicate design changes to remote or local server - and that means to change location (online/offline) every time.
UPDATE 2013-04-04: I have duplicated my current location document and removed home and directory servers. To my surprise, with this location build times went back to few seconds - with TCP port enabled so replication is possible. Bigger surprise was the fact, that returning home/directory servers back to new location did not reproduce the problem - in fact they do not affect performance. I know it because I have renamed current location document and everything went to normal. From my understanding, "something" in client configuration was connected to location name. Thanks to Simon's tips I will investigate further.
The question is still open: I am looking for some (eclipse) preference controlling this behavior - unintended communication with server during build of local application.
Solution:
Teamstudio CIAO hooks into designer and checks for every update of design element. Seems to be lack of code optimization to me: it checks whether currently built design element (every single one, one by one) should be controlled in CIAO config database.
This explains why the problem was solved by renaming of location document. I was disappointed yesterday, when performance problems started again. Fortunately, I recalled CIAO setup to that location document about that time. CIAO uses teamstudio.ini file in DATA directory to configure what CIAO configuration database is used for every location document. Look for entry:
CIAOConfigDb[location name]=server name;CIAO\CIAOConfig.nsf
For development on local replicas with connection to server (for replication or local server), use location document with CIAO disabled.
This works only with property ForceConfigLocation=0.
Not a solution (yet!), but may help in the investigation. I'll update further if you post results later.
Debug instructions.
Add the following to the shortcut that launches the Designer client.
-RPARAMS -console -debug -separateSysLogFiles -consoleLog
Start the designer client. This will also open up the OSGi console.
Reproduce the issue. While it is still in progress in the OSGi console type the following:
dump threads
Do this three times, with a small amount of time between completion of each dump. Once done open the three heap dumps (in the IBM_TECHNICAL_SUPPORT folder) in the Heap Dump Analyser.
It will show you what threads are consistent through all three dumps. Take a look at those and look for package names/calls which may appear to be a functional area. Once you have that then you can try adding the debug for the related class.
For example: Let's say you notice "com.ibm.designer.domino.ui.commons." in the thread, then you would edit the rcpinstall.properties file. It will be in:
<Notes Install>\Data\workspace\.config\rcpinstall.properties
and you would add (start with FINE, then FINEST if nothing):
com.ibm.designer.domino.ui.commons.level=FINE
Now when you restart the designer client it will generate debug output in the workspace\logs folder for that package. You need to then go through the trace logs looking for the time when the delay occurred and see if it makes any references to related design elements.
Other open applications may get built at the same time (which looks like a bug top me). Be sure to close all other applications and the server based replica. Open applications have their icon showing in the application list and they stay open even if you close and reopen the Designer. In Designer 9 right click application and select "Close Application". In 8.5 you need to use Package Exprorer for closing.
Another good way is to use Working Sets. Only applications in open Working Set will be built (AFAIK). Have a Working Set with this one app only (and the app only in this Working Set).
update 1
If these don't help I would delete/rename bookmark.nsf, Cache.NDK and desktop8.ndk. Then open just this one app and see what happens.
update 2
Check that there are no referenced projects. Right click the application and select "Project Properties". From there "Project Referencies" and make sure no check boxes are checked.
update 3
Based on your update I would check the item names starting with $ in location document. Sometimes there are saved IP addresses etc. which could cause this problem. All those items can be removed.
If possible (and if You are not using it yet) try to use version 9 of the Domino designer (You do not have to use Domino 9 to do that - it works fine with Domino 8.5.3).
For our projects build times went down to only few seconds from few minutes. I guess that they finally noticed at IBM that the build process used to heavily relay on connection to server and done something with it.
With new designer You don't event have to replicate to local. You can directly work on Your local server.
I've tried the Win32_DesktopMonitor and checked the "Availability", but the value returned is always 3 (powered on), even when the monitor is physically turned off.
Is the data cached and there's a "force refresh" command in WMI, or in this particular case, the "Availability" is just not reliable ?
I think there is caching going on somewhere. I've observed it recently.
I wrote code that was polling for updates to Win32_PnPSignedDriver via SelectQuery / ManagementObjectSearcher and the results appear to be cached because it never realizes that a new device/driver has been added. Running the query from a separate app instantly sees that it was updated.
You may have a look to your driver. According to the documentation, starting with Windows Vista, hardware that is not compatible with Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) returns inaccurate property values for instances of this class. For me it's an another way to say that it's not reliable.
I'm trying to test the happy-path for a piece of code which takes a long time to respond, and then begins writing a file to the response output stream, which prompts a download dialog in browsers.
The problem is that this process has failed in the past, throwing an exception after this long amount of work. Is there a way in selenium to wait-for-download or equivalent?
I could throw in a Thread.sleep, but that would be inaccurate and unnecessarily slow down the test run.
What should I do, here?
I had the same problem. I invented something to solve the problem. A tempt file is created by Python with '.part' extension. So, if still we have the temp, python can wait for 10 second and check again if the file is downloaded or not yet.
while True:
if os.path.isfile('ts.csv.part'):
sleep(10)
elif os.path.isfile('ts.csv'):
break
else:
sleep(10)
driver.close()
So you have two problems here:
You need to cause the browser to download the file
You need to measure when the downloaded file is complete
Neither problemc an be directly solved by Selenium (yet - 2.0 may help), but both are solvable problems. The first problem can be solved by GUI automation toolkits, such as AutoIT. But they can also be solved by simply sending an automated keypress at the OS level that simulates the enter key (works for Firefox, a little harder on some versions of Chrome and Safari). If you're using Java, you can use Robot to do that. Other languages have similar toolkits to do such a thing.
The second issue is probably best solved with some sort of proxy solution. For example, if your browser was configured to go through a proxy and that proxy had an API, you could query the proxy with that API to ask when network activity had ended.
That's what we do at http://browsermob.com, which is a a startup I founded that uses Selenium to do load testing. We've released some of the proxy code as open source, available at http://browsermob.com/tools.
But two problems still persist:
You need to configure the browser to use the proxy. In Selenium 2 this is easier, but it's possible to do it with Selenium 1 as well. The key is just making sure that your browser launcher brings up the browser with the right profile/settings.
There currently is no API for BrowserMob proxy to tell you when network traffic has stopped! This is a big hole in the concept of the project that I want to fix as soon as I get the time. However, if you're keen to help out, join the Google Group and I can definitely point you in the right direction.
Hope that helps you identify your various options. Best of luck!
This is Chrome-testing-only solution for controlling the downloads with javascript..
Using WebDriver (Selenium2) it can be done within Chrome's chrome:// which is HTML/CSS/Javascript:
driver.get( "chrome://downloads/" );
waitElement( By.CssSelector("#downloads-summary-text") );
// next javascript snippet cancels the last/current download
// if your test ends in file attachment downloading
// you'll very likely need this if you more re-instantiated tests left
((JavascriptExecutor)driver).executeScript("downloads.downloads_[0].cancel_();");
There are other Download.prototype.functions in "chrome://downloads/downloads.js"
This suites you if you just need to test some info note eg. caused by file attachment starting activity, and not the file itself.
Naturally you need to control step 1. - mentioned by Patrick above - and by this you control step 2. FOR THE TEST, not for the functionality of actual file download completion / cancel.
See also : Javascript: Cancel/Stop Image Requests which is relating to Browser stopping.
This falls under the "things that can't be automated" category. Selenium is built with JavaScipt and due to JavaScript sandbox restrictions it can't access downloads.
Selenium 2 might be able to do this once Alerts/Prompts have been implemented but that this won't happen for the next little while yet.
If you want to check for the download dialog, try with AutoIt. I use that for uploading and downloading the files. Using AutoIt with Se RC is easier.
def file_downloaded?(file)
while File.file?(file) == false
p "File downloading in progress..."
sleep 1
end
end
*Ruby Syntax
Given an MSI product code I want to get the upgrade code (among other properties) from an already installed product. I have tried this by calling the MsiOpenProduct method, followed by MsiGetProductProperty(). An (abbreviated) example looks like this:
MSIHANDLE handle = NULL;
MsiOpenProduct(strProductCode,&handle);
CString strUpgradeCode;
MsiGetProductProperty(handle,_T("UpgradeCode"), strUpgradeCode.GetBuffer(GUID_LENGTH), &dwSize);
strUpgradeCode.ReleaseBuffer();
MsiCloseHandle(handle);
This gets me the desired value, and judging from the MSDN documentation this seems like a valid way to do this:
The MsiOpenProduct function opens a
product for use with the functions
that access the product database. The
MsiCloseHandle function must be called
with the handle when the handle is no
longer needed.
However the call to MsiOpenProduct() pops up the "Windows installer is preparing the installation..." dialog. The call to MsiCloseHandle() makes it disappear again.
This left me wondering:
What does the call to MsiOpenProduct() do under the hood? I do not want to trigger any actions, I just want to read properties.
I don't mind the dialog popping up, as this is only for unit test code as long as this has no side effects. And as there are many unit tests that do this, it must still work when opening and closing handles in rapid succession.
Although I stumbled over the MsiGetProductInfo method, there seems to be no way to get the upgrade code. Am I right?
Is MsiOpenProduct the correct way to read properties like the upgrade code?
MsiOpenProduct should be fine So long as you don't run any sequences or actions, it won't do anything. If you want to silence the dialog, you can with careful use of either MsiSetInternalUI() or MsiSetExternalUI().
Another approach you can take, as long as the ProductCode and UpgradeCode are safely static (i.e. as long as they aren't changed by transforms), is to locate the database using MsiGetProductInfo() and call MsiOpenDatabase() on that. The difference is that MsiOpenProduct() (or similarly MsiOpenPackage) applies the transforms that were used at installation time and prepares a session, whereas MsiOpenDatabase() does neither.
There is a comprehensive answer with information on how to get the UpgradeCode using Powershell or VBScript and WMI here: How can I find the Upgrade Code for an installed MSI file?
Below is a quick, basic example using VBScript / COM automation (MSI API, not WMI) and the approach discussed by OP (using the OpenProduct method - the COM equivalent to the Win32 installer function).
As discussed in my comment above, I will just add this little VBScript to do the same as OP does in C++. Note that Windows Installer can be accessed via WMI (Win32_Product object), COM automation and Win32 C++ installer functions.
For some reason the UpgradeCode for a package appears to not be available directly from the COM API or the Win32 API. Very strange indeed, especially since it is an input parameter to functions like Installer.RelatedProducts - it is not clear in the documentation that the actual call should be RelatedProducts(UpgradeCode), but looking in the msi.IDL you see: StringList* RelatedProducts([in] BSTR UpgradeCode);
The WMI option works, but so does this OpenProduct call demonstrated below (which is significantly faster and appears safe - WMI is completely read-only as far as I know though - but heaven knows what they are doing "under the hood". Are they spinning up a session object? Or are they reading from a WMI database? WMI does "feels" safer somehow).
The beauty of the below method is that it will apply all transforms that were applied to the product in question at installation time. If you want to write to disk instead of showing message boxes and can't be bothered looking up the docs, here is a similar VBScript that writes package info to a desktop text file: How can I find the product GUID of an installed MSI setup? - quite a bit down the page, just copy a couple of lines and you are message box free).
Note! The script below will create one log file per opened MSI if automatic logging is enabled on the system. As it stands the script will only open one MSI before it exists though (the Exit For construct).
On Error Resume Next ' This "tersified" script has no error handling
Const msiUILevelNone = 2
Set installer = CreateObject("WindowsInstaller.Installer")
Set products = installer.ProductsEx("", "", 7)
installer.UILevel = msiUILevelNone ' Suppress GUI (MSI progress dialog)
'Iterate over all MSI packages on the box
For Each product In products
' productcode = product.ProductCode
' name = product.InstallProperty("ProductName")
' version = product.InstallProperty("VersionString")
' pkgcode = product.InstallProperty("PackageCode")
Set session = installer.OpenProduct(product.ProductCode)
upgradecode = session.ProductProperty("UpgradeCode")
MsgBox upgradecode
Set session = Nothing ' Important, close the session (doesn't work in Javascript btw)
Exit For ' End after one iteration (so you don't get a million message boxes)
' Alternatively something like: If i > 4 Then Exit For
Next
Set installer = Nothing
MsgBox "Finished"
I have tried to look in the C++ Win32 installer functions for any other way to retrieve the UpgradeCode, but I can't see anything obvious. The session approach should work in C++ as well, but I am a little apprehensive about the release of handles and resources. I am not properly potty-trained with C++, but know more than enough to be dangerous. Fire In The Hole. Etc...
I wonder if the OP retrieved all packages on the box, or just a single one. I wonder if the timing issues and concurrent session object problems seen with Javascript would strike in C++ as well? I will give it a go I think - someday.
For the information you want, it sounds like you can just call ::MsiGetProductInfo(). ::MsiOpenDatabase() is a very slow operation while ::MsiGetProductInfo() is (IIRC) more on par with registry look ups.
Trying to honor a feature request from our customers, I'd like that my application, when Internet is available, check on our website if a new version is available.
The problem is that I have no idea about what have to be done on the server side.
I can imagine that my application (developped in C++ using Qt) has to send a request (HTTP ?) to the server, but what is going to respond to this request ? In order to go through firewalls, I guess I'll have to use port 80 ? Is this correct ?
Or, for such a feature, do I have to ask our network admin to open a specific port number through which I'll communicate ?
#pilif : thanks for your detailed answer. There is still something which is unclear for me :
like
http://www.example.com/update?version=1.2.4
Then you can return what ever you want, probably also the download-URL of the installer of the new version.
How do I return something ? Will it be a php or asp page (I know nothing about PHP nor ASP, I have to confess) ? How can I decode the ?version=1.2.4 part in order to return something accordingly ?
I would absolutely recommend to just do a plain HTTP request to your website. Everything else is bound to fail.
I'd make a HTTP GET request to a certain page on your site containing the version of the local application.
like
http://www.example.com/update?version=1.2.4
Then you can return what ever you want, probably also the download-URL of the installer of the new version.
Why not just put a static file with the latest version to the server and let the client decide? Because you may want (or need) to have control over the process. Maybe 1.2 won't be compatible with the server in the future, so you want the server to force the update to 1.3, but the update from 1.2.4 to 1.2.6 could be uncritical, so you might want to present the client with an optional update.
Or you want to have a breakdown over the installed base.
Or whatever. Usually, I've learned it's best to keep as much intelligence on the server, because the server is what you have ultimate control over.
Speaking here with a bit of experience in the field, here's a small preview of what can (and will - trust me) go wrong:
Your Application will be prevented from making HTTP-Requests by the various Personal Firewall applications out there.
A considerable percentage of users won't have the needed permissions to actually get the update process going.
Even if your users have allowed the old version past their personal firewall, said tool will complain because the .EXE has changed and will recommend the user not to allow the new exe to connect (users usually comply with the wishes of their security tool here).
In managed environments, you'll be shot and hanged (not necessarily in that order) for loading executable content from the web and then actually executing it.
So to keep the damage as low as possible,
fail silently when you can't connect to the update server
before updating, make sure that you have write-permission to the install directory and warn the user if you do not, or just don't update at all.
Provide a way for administrators to turn the auto-update off.
It's no fun to do what you are about to do - especially when you deal with non technically inclined users as I had to numerous times.
Pilif answer was good, and I have lots of experience with this too, but I'd like to add something more:
Remember that if you start yourapp.exe, then the "updater" will try to overwrite yourapp.exe with the newest version. Depending upon your operating system and programming environment (you've mentioned C++/QT, I have no experience with those), you will not be able to overwrite yourapp.exe because it will be in use.
What I have done is create a launcher. I have a MyAppLauncher.exe that uses a config file (xml, very simple) to launch the "real exe". Should a new version exist, the Launcher can update the "real exe" because it's not in use, and then relaunch the new version.
Just keep that in mind and you'll be safe.
Martin,
you are absolutely right of course. But I would deliver the launcher with the installer. Or just download the installer, launch it and quit myself as soon as possible. The reason is bugs in the launcher. You would never, ever, want to be dependent on a component you cannot update (or forget to include in the initial drop).
So the payload I distribute with the updating process of my application is just the standard installer, but devoid of any significant UI. Once the client has checked that the installer has a chance of running successfully and once it has downloaded the updater, it runs that and quits itself.
The updater than runs, installs its payload into the original installation directory and restarts the (hopefully updated) application.
Still: The process is hairy and you better think twice before implementing an Auto Update functionality on the Windows Platform when your application has a wide focus of usage.
in php, the thing is easy:
<?php
if (version_compare($_GET['version'], "1.4.0") < 0){
echo "http://www.example.com/update.exe";
}else{
echo "no update";
}
?>
if course you could extend this so the currently available version isn't hard-coded inside the script, but this is just about illustrating the point.
In your application you would have this pseudo code:
result = makeHTTPRequest("http://www.example.com/update?version=" + getExeVersion());
if result != "no update" then
updater = downloadUpdater(result);
ShellExecute(updater);
ExitApplication;
end;
Feel free to extend the "protocol" by specifying something the PHP script could return to tell the client whether it's an important, mandatory update or not.
Or you can add some text to display to the user - maybe containing some information about what's changed.
Your possibilities are quite limitless.
My Qt app just uses QHttp to read tiny XML file off my website that contains the latest version number. If this is greater than the current version number it gives the option to go to the download page. Very simple. Works fine.
I would agree with #Martin and #Pilif's answer, but add;
Consider allowing your end-users to decide if they want to actually install the update there and then, or delay the installation of the update until they've finished using the program.
I don't know the purpose/function of your app but many applications are launched when the user needs to do something specific there and then - nothing more annoying than launching an app and then being told it's found a new version, and you having to wait for it to download, shut down the app and relaunch itself. If your program has other resources that might be updated (reference files, databases etc) the problem gets worse.
We had an EPOS system running in about 400 shops, and initially we thought it would be great to have the program spot updates and download them (using a file containing a version number very similar to the suggestions you have above)... great idea. Until all of the shops started up their systems at around the same time (8:45-8:50am), and our server was hit serving a 20+Mb download to 400 remote servers, which would then update the local software and cause a restart. Chaos - with nobody able to trade for about 10 minutes.
Needless to say that this caused us to subsequently turn off the 'check for updates' feature and redesign it to allow the shops to 'delay' the update until later in the day. :-)
EDIT: And if anyone from ADOBE is reading - for god's sake why does the damn acrobat reader insist on trying to download updates and crap when I just want to fire-it-up to read a document? Isn't it slow enough at starting, and bloated enough, as it is, without wasting a further 20-30 seconds of my life looking for updates every time I want to read a PDF?
DONT THEY USE THEIR OWN SOFTWARE??!!! :-)
On the server you could just have a simple file "latestversion.txt" which contains the version number (and maybe download URL) of the latest version. The client then just needs to read this file using a simple HTTP request (yes, to port 80) to retrieve http://your.web.site/latestversion.txt, which you can then parse to get the version number. This way you don't need any fancy server code --- you just need to add a simple file to your existing website.
if you keep your files in the update directory on example.com, this PHP script should download them for you given the request previously mentioned. (your update would be yourprogram.1.2.4.exe
$version = $_GET['version'];
$filename = "yourprogram" . $version . ".exe";
$filesize = filesize($filename);
header("Pragma: public");
header("Expires: 0");
header("Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0");
header("Content-type: application-download");
header('Content-Length: ' . $filesize);
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="' . basename($filename).'"');
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
This makes your web browser think it's downloading an application.
The simplest way to make this happen is to fire an HTTP request using a library like libcurl and make it download an ini or xml file which contains the online version and where a new version would be available online.
After parsing the xml file you can determine if a new version is needed and download the new version with libcurl and install it.
Just put an (XML) file on your server with the version number of the latest version, and a URL to the download the new version from. Your application can then request the XML file, look if the version differs from its own, and take action accordingly.
I think that simple XML file on the server would be sufficient for version checking only purposes.
You would need then only an ftp account on your server and build system that is able to send a file via ftp after it has built a new version. That build system could even put installation files/zip on your website directly!
If you want to keep it really basic, simply upload a version.txt to a webserver, that contains an integer version number. Download that check against the latest version.txt you downloaded and then just download the msi or setup package and run it.
More advanced versions would be to use rss, xml or similar. It would be best to use a third-party library to parse the rss and you could include information that is displayed to your user about changes if you wish to do so.
Basically you just need simple download functionality.
Both these solutions will only require you to access port 80 outgoing from the client side. This should normally not require any changes to firewalls or networking (on the client side) and you simply need to have a internet facing web server (web hosting, colocation or your own server - all would work here).
There are a couple of commercial auto-update solutions available. I'll leave the recommendations for those to others answerers, because I only have experience on the .net side with Click-Once and Updater Application Block (the latter is not continued any more).