HTML Display in InstallAnywhere swing Panel.

As a Install Anywhere user you might have been asked to display HTML files in IA Swing panels quite a lot of time, as a installer developer its quite tedious for the engineer to code and format html files.

Recently I had a change to do the same thing here I followed a trick, created a nice word document with all the formatting (text, paragraph and alignment) then saved the file in filtered html format. The result was a nice looking html page with all the formatting present when viewed in IE.

 

Without worrying any thing I added the file into HTML display panel and few of the surprises came in front of me

 

1. The preview panel button showed my HTML document inside the SWING but all the formatting was lost.

2. When the project was build the HTML display panel showed the HTML inside the frame with lots of white spaces, although the formatting was there but some of the special characters were visible in it.

 

The above experience left me scratching my head as what might have gone wrong, if I am opening the same .htm in IE or other browser things look quite good then why do I see weired results in case of Installer panel???

 

After close inspection and ofcource some hit and tries answered me,  and here's what I found

 

1. If your html document uses tags like col span, table to format the content and wrap it after say 55 characters from left

2. If you use <p> paragraph in your html file to format the look and feel of your html document

3. If you use xhtml where a schema is present to validate the DOM elements in your html

 

You might get experience the same kind of UI issue, to resolve the issue use all the tags for do not intend to use col span, table, paragraph that restrict the rendering of html file from left to right.

 

The root course

 

Install Anywhere uses text wrap to format the rend erring of html in its swing panel, so when a pre formatted document is encountered by IA it tries to reformat it thereby resulting into lot of white space and sometimes a left to right scroll bar also appears thereby taking away the nice look of your html and also poses difficulty to the user to read the mesage.

 

Use the above mentioned ways to get rid of cosmetic but yet irritating bugs like this...

Some more InDepth to segmentation fault on UNICES..

 

A segmentation fault occurs when a program attempts to access a memory location that it is not allowed to access, or attempts to access a memory location in a way that is not allowed (for example, attempting to write to a read-only location, or to overwrite part of the operating system).

 

Usually signal #11 (SIGSEGV) set, which is defined in the header file signal.h file. The default action for a program upon receiving SIGSEGV is abnormal termination. This action will end the process, but may generate a core file (also known as core dump) to aid debugging, or perform some other platform-dependent action. A core dump is the recorded state of the working memory of a computer program at a specific time, generally when the program has terminated abnormally.

 

Segmentation fault can also occur under following circumstances:

 

a) A buggy program / command, which can be only fixed by applying patch.

 

b) It can also appear when you try to access an array beyond the end of an array under C programming.

 

c) Inside a chrooted jail this can occur when critical shared libs, config file or /dev/ entry missing.

 

d) Sometime hardware or faulty memory or driver can also create problem.

 

e) Maintain suggested environment for all computer equipment (overheating can also generate this problem).

 

Suggestions to debug Segmentation Fault errors

 

To debug this kind of error try one or all of the following techniques :

 

• Use gdb to track exact source of problem.
• Make sure correct hardware installed and configured.
• Always apply all patches and use updated system.
• Make sure all dependencies installed inside jail.
• Turn on core dumping for supported services such as Apache.
• Use strace which is a useful diagnostic, instructional, and debugging tool.
• Google and find out if there is a solution to problem.
• Fix your C program for logical errors such as pointer, null pointer, arrays and so on.
• Analyze core dump file generated by your system using gdb

 

Re: Segmentation Fault

Segmentation fault on a UNIX machine occurs when there are paging or swap violation. Installers some times use OS services which try to buffer quite a lot of things sometimes thereby causing a buffer overflow resulting into the segmentation fault. This issue can reproduced when handling a lot of date parallel over the machine having limited amount of resources.

 

Segmentation fault is something more related to OS and can be analyzed with the help of core dumps generated.

 

Relating the issue with the installer, the issue can only be debugged with the help core dumps which would probably answer questions like which Op Code tried to violate the OS boundaries and create race conditions.

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 7:45 PM, tony prabhu <ruban142003@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi,   Generally why does segmentation fault appears in Linux machine when an installer with a huge payload is run. But this does not happen while running a simple project in the same machine with all the java compatibility. I believe this fault will appear when the rules of the Linux machine are violated for exampe: trying to access a resource in the machine which is not available. So, does the large installer tries the scenario like what i have mentioned above? Please explain to me.   Thanks for your time. Tony

--
FreshersDirect Team
http://www.freshersdirect.com

Re: InstallAnywhere details

You are absolutely correct, Execute Script returns the exit code for the action not of the underlying batch/script file. My experience with says that IA execute script does not work correctly in case of DOS batch files.
The reason being, execute run script uses Java Process.getRuntime.exec() thread to run the batch or command passed. Here Process.waitfor() method is used, if the underlying script uses @echo ON inside the script the behavior is very abrupt. Only the first script's 1 to 6th or 7th steps are run after that the script keeps on waiting thereby making the installation hang.

I would suggest to use your own plugin for executing command or batch specifically when the command or script calls another shell to execute the sequence of steps.

In the plugin spawn a thead and dont wait for the thread to complete. here the disadvantage is you will not get the complete the stderr, stdout till the theread completes but its a nice tradeoff done where you want to set gurentee for the underlying command to complete sucessfully.

I have developed a plugin which you can use if you want.

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 6:46 PM, tony prabhu <ruban142003@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi,   I am a beginner with IA and I want to know about the Execute Script/Batch action and how it works. I believe the exit code in this action is only for the action and not for the script or the commands it executes. So, how can i get an exit code for the executed script? Please explain to me in a detailed manner.   Thanks Tony

Re: Help

You are messing up two different things, earlier you said you want the user to input the architecture of the machine, now your requirement is going on the dev side.

Wait I will explain in detail

If your requirement is just to find the end users machine architecture

either run a custom java code or run a execute command utility in IA found under Add Action --> General Tab,

The command to run in uname -m, it will return u i386 which is 32 bit,

To find out more about various OS check out this link for determining the OS architecture, http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/win/64bit.html

Regarding running this write a Java class which would determine the OS version and subsiquently the OS architecture. Store the result in a IA variable

Code snippet

<>

class MyCustomCode(InstallerProxy ip) extends IACustomCode
{
   /* Run the logic to store the OS tye in a variable say MyOS */

   ip.substitute("OS_TYP", MyOS) // here the value of MyOS determined earlier is stored in a IA valiable $OS_TYP$
}

Inside the Install action under ur IDE you can add a compare installanywhere action to install any specific file or folder

e.g $OS_TYP$ equals 64bit then install else move ahead.

I do not have an IDE infront of me right now otherwise I would have sent you some screen shots.

If you are still face the issue I will create a sample project for you...for this logic

****************************************************************************************************

********************************************************************************************************

 

I am trying to download the enterprise version.

But there is still one doubt which is - the panel "get user input" is for the end user not for the developer (who is using InstallAnywhere for making installer e.g. me).

Can u throw some light on it please???

Actually I want InstallAnywehre to prompt me (developer) for taking the input as 32 bit or 64 bit at the time of building the project as shown below as per the requirement of the end user.

 

 

 

 

An issue with 32 bit and 64 machine

Problem :

 

Installerwhich build the application for multiple platforms (targeting Linux, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris and Windows).

My application has  binaries for above 5 platforms each of 32bit and 64bit (so kind of 10 platforms).

 

I have a directory structure like below

 

Application

|

|-----Linux

|              |-Linux32

|              |-Linux64

|

|-----AIX

|              |-AIX32

|              |-AIX64

|

|-----HP-UX

|              |-HP-UX32

|              |-HP-UX64

|

|-----Solaris

|              |-Solaris32

|              |-Solaris64

|

|-----Windows

|              |-Windows32

|              |-Windows64

|

 

Now what required is when I build as shown below my application and check the Linux box it should prompt  me to take input as "Linux32" or "Linux64" (user input) so that the  Linux installer of 32bit or 64bit is built.

 

 

 

 Solution :

Its quite easy to do that, installanywhere  has an inbuild functionality to check the OS architecture. You can store the OS architecture in the IA variable and implement your logic once you are known to end users OS architecture.

You will find this feature in Organization settings.

InstallAnywhere buildoutputs are independent to platform architecture, you can build your application for any desired platform with or without VM and run it. At the run time have a user input panel or at rutime decide the architecture of the user machine and cotinue with your installation logic.

Like this


Application ----
                      Folder 1 <Only if 32 bit>
                      Folder 2 <Only if 64 bit>

In the install section you can put a rule of compare installAnywhere variable so that it gets installed only when the rule is met.