Re: [GOLDSTAR] Re: [PATCH] setup: allow running as non-admin

[Christopher Faylor <cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please@cygwin.com>]

On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 01:28:02PM +0100, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>On Nov 10 02:28, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>> On Sat, Nov 09, 2013 at 06:30:50PM +0100, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>> >What changed is the way how normal users can install for "just them".
>> >No name tweak but an option instead.  Given what you wrote, an
>> >installation as normal user right from the net was not possible before,
>> >so just the method to do it changed slightly.  By documenting it
>> >somewhere, we should be all set, shouldn't we?
>> 
>> So, in other words, an end user will no longer have to rename setup*.exe
>> to foo.exe to bypass enforced elevation but will, instead, just have to
>> use a command-line option.  Sounds good to me.  We can add words for
>> that to the install.html web page and to the FAQ.
>
>Exactly what I had in mind.  I have some changes to setup-net.xml in the
>loop.  I'll add some more to the FAQ and upload that next week.
>
>Nevertheless, on second thought we *could* do more, if we want to,
>now that we have our permissions completely under our own control.
>
>Provided somebody has fun working on that stuff, what we could do,
>for instance:
>
>- Per the Microsoft UAC guidelines(*) the elevation prompt should not
>  be shown at all if UAC is switched off.  The idea is to show a dialog
>  instead, telling the user "this application requires admin privs,
>  yada yada", but in fact our setup would run as normal user just fine
>  if we let it.  See the next point.
>
>- Right now setup simply exits if the elevation didn't work or was
>  canceled.  What about a dialog instead, which asks the user something
>  along the lines of "Elevation canceled" or "UAC turned off", and then
>  "Setup can run without admin privs with some restrictions, are you
>  aware of them and do you want to do that? [Yes/No]"
>
>- This could be even more elegant if setup checks if the installer path
>  in the registry is in HKLM.  If so, it could refuse to do its stuff
>  without admin rights, because it knows that the original installation
>  has been performed with admin rights.  Chances are high then, that a
>  normal user won't have enough permissions to update the installation.
>
>- Something we could have done all along (and which has been mentioned
>  on the Cygwin ML): We could drop the "All users"/"Just me" choice if
>  the user has no admin rights.  After all, the "All user" stuff can't
>  be written anyway without admin rights.

All good SHTDI ideas.

cgf