Installing additional National Plug-ins

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matt.woodward
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2010 4:34 pm

Installing additional National Plug-ins

Post by matt.woodward » Sat Dec 11, 2010 3:23 pm

I am wondering whether anyone can advise me on how to install additional National plug-ins without 'uninstalling' all updates.
I need to do this on a number of OLF v5 installations and have attempted it on one local installation. I describe the process:
I ran 'OLF500.exe' and selected the 'Local' and 'Modify' options.
I was then presented with the 'Select Features' dialog.
This sensibly provides an appropriate selection of the following options for each installation item:
All features will be installed on the local hard drive
Will be left unchanged
Will be uninstalled from local drive
The default option is 'Will be left unchanged' as I would expect.
So all I did was to select the desired new National plug-ins for installation and allow the installation to proceed.
Unfortunately what happened was that it re-installed all the original OLF v5 programs thereby effectively uninstalling the updates issued since 'OLF500.exe' was created.
I have started (but cancelled) the same process on one of the other installations and I now see that the right hand panel in the 'Select Features' dialog actually shows that more recent versions will be replaced with older versions.
Now I accept that for a single machine it is not a great problem to re-install the updates at present but I have several installations to manage and it is likely that other National plug-ins will be required in the future.
I am therefore looking for a way of installing the National Plug-ins without affecting the rest of the installation.

Obviously the current behaviour is undesirable and probably unintended and so I would hope that it can be changed in a future update.
In the meantime does anyone know of a work-around to this problem or an alternative method for adding National plug-ins to an existing installation.
I would happily manually copy folders & files from the installation with the additional National Plug-ins installed if I was confident that this was sufficient.


matt.woodward
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2010 4:34 pm

Re: Installing additional National Plug-ins

Post by matt.woodward » Wed Dec 15, 2010 5:41 pm

Hmm, no immediate responses to this problem so I have investigated further and may have found a method that works.
I can give no guarantees that this method will not cause unknown problems so you follow it at your own risk.
Start by making a backup of your existing installation.
I have experimented on a 'Local' installation and made a copy of the 'C:\Program Files\EPO_OLF5' folder.

I discovered that, as with most programs, the 'OLF500.exe' installation program effectively runs in 2 parts.
The 1st is the configuration wizard which allows the user to select what should be installed.
The 2nd is the installation program that actually installs the selected components.
These two parts appear to communicate using a file called 'i5Setup.ini' which can be found in '<userprofile>\Local Settings\Temp' as soon as the installation is started.
Lines get added to this file as you progress through the wizard.
When you click 'Next' in the 'Select Features' dialog the installation pauses for confirmation before installing the selected components.
It is at this point that the 'i5Setup.ini' file can be edited to manually change what is installed.
At the end of the file is a section entitled [Install] and this will list each component with a code letter specifying the action to be taken e.g.
[Install]
FMMNGRACT=N
EP1038ACT=N
...
UK177EACT=N
...
FRDTP4ACT=U
...
SEPAT1ACT=I
My (limited) experiment suggests the following:
I = Install
N = No change
U = Uninstall

In light of the fact that my 1st attempt proceeded with the EP forms all shown with 'N' and yet they were down-dated to the original versions 5.0.0.020 I do not believe that this code does result in 'No Change'.
I therefore deleted all the procedure codes from the [Install] section except those for the national plug-ins that I wanted to add to our installation.
i.e.
[Install]
SEPAT1ACT=I
SEVAL1ACT=I

I do not know whether any of the sections between [eOLF Applications] and [Install] have any influence on the components installed but I took the precaution of editing the versions for those components already installed to show the actual version installed and I deleted the line that appears to define essential components:
e.g.
[FMMNGR]
DisplayName=EPO OLF File Manager
Description=EPO OLF File Manager
NewVersion=FMMNGR5020
MandatoryCountry=all

became:
[FMMNGR]
DisplayName=EPO OLF File Manager
Description=EPO OLF File Manager
NewVersion=FMMNGR5028

I saved my changes and allowed the installation to proceed.
It completed quickly and without errors and when I ran 'File Manager' the Swedish forms were available in addition to all those that had already been installed.
The 'Help/Info' option lists the installed procedures and their versions and it showed that none of the already installed procedures had been downgraded.
The only problem now was that the Swedish plug-ins had obviously not been updated since the original versions.
I decided to re-install the most recent update 'Epptch5040.exe'.
This displayed a message demanding that an earlier update be installed first.
I compared the 'OLFfm.conf' files from before and after the installation of the Swedish procedures.
Apart from the addition of the Swedish procedures to the [eOLF Applications] section, the only other change was that the [Patch] section, which records which updates have been installed, had been removed.
I copied this into the current 'OLFfm.conf' file and ran the 'Epptch5040.exe' update again.
This time it ran successfully and when I ran 'File Manager' it showed the Swedish procedures as having the same new version no. as the others i.e v5.0.0.031.

As far as I can tell at present I have succeeded in adding the latest versions of the Swedish procedures to an existing installation. I am waiting to see whether problems arise with this installation of 'Online Filing v5' before trying the same procedure on our network installation.
I would be very interested and appreciative if someone who was familiar with the installation programs could tell me whether I have succeeded or whether unknown problems lurk hidden somewhere.
It would be very useful if a description of the 'i5Setup.ini' file options could be made available.


matt.woodward
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2010 4:34 pm

Re: Installing additional National Plug-ins

Post by matt.woodward » Fri Jun 10, 2011 10:40 pm

Am I correct in thinking that the new v5 SP3 installation will solve this problem.
From what I have read about it, all national procedures will now be installed but only those selected will actually run.
This should mean that in future, all that will be necessary to use additional national plug-ins will be to enable them in Server Manager and to then install any national updates issued by those countries since the service pack.
For us, at least, this would be a major improvement and I am surprised that so little of it is made in the descriptions of the service pack.
Could someone confirm that I am correct in the above.
Thanks


D. Van Haken
Posts: 70
Joined: Thu Jan 29, 2009 2:14 pm

Re: Installing additional National Plug-ins

Post by D. Van Haken » Tue Jun 14, 2011 11:22 am

Matt,

sorry for the late reply.

Yes you are correct, all plugins will be installed but will only run when activated. One can switch them on and off at any time via the server manager.
regards,

Dirk Van Haken
Product Manager Online Filing
EPO


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