Re: [Wrapper-user] What is the best way to handle JRE updates on end user computers

[Leif M. <lei...@ta...>]

Stephen,
Currently the Wrapper does not directly support this.
What is the behavior that you are hoping to see?
If a new JVM version is released, it will get downloaded and can be set to
run the installer automatically.
But when that happens, are you hoping that the Wrapper will shutdown the
JVM during the installer and then relaunch it?

I have looked into this before, but have not yet figured out a reliable way
to detect if the installer is running efficiently.  There are some calls to
detect when Windows is in the progress of installing something but at that
point it would already have started in the install and an error would have
been thrown by the installer.

Once we have been able to detect that an installer is running, we would
have to decide if that installer even has anything to do with the JVM or
application being run by the Wrapper.  Stopping the JVM for any and all
installers would cause its own set of problems.

Even if we got this to work, it would need to be optional as auto upgrades
on any 24x7 server are risky.
1) There is no guarantee that the new Java version will work correctly with
the application.
2) The timing of the JVM getting stopped and restarted would be controlled
by when the installer ran, this could cause problems for users of the
application if it was restarted at a strange time.

We have also been thinking about ways to allow application upgrades and
even Wrapper upgrades as well.  These also quickly have the same issues.
It appears to be possible for an installer to detect if some of the files
that it wants to install are in use, but not so much for the target
application to detect if it or its components are about to be reinstalled.
That appears to be why installers ask you to shutdown the target
application or forcibly do it themselves.

Anything would of course need to be configurable so it could be disabled
for users that didn't want to use it.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or suggestions anyone has on these issues.

Cheers,
Leif


On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 2:22 AM, Paul Gale <pau...@gm...> wrote:

> >We have considered including a separate version of JRE used only by our
> service when our software is installed, so that the main JRE installation
> used by browsers could be updated without the wrapper service interfering,
> but our management considers this not acceptable because it would not get
> updated with the latest JRE security fixes.
>
> Bundling the JRE is definitely gets my vote. If you made your application
> auto-updating then that would handle the ability for your customers to
> obtain timely security fixes.
>
> Any other kind of solution is ultimately a hack with all sorts of problems
> that can arise not the least of which is that customers can install a JRE
> that your application may not be compatible with. We had a similar
> situation where users were upgrading JREs galore (which is not always what
> you want) causing all manner of problems. Bundling the JRE would have fixed
> that but we ended up switching to a web based application instead. Life has
> been a lot easier since.
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 6:50 AM, Stephen Slater <s.s...@ca...>
> wrote:
>
>> (Re-submitted after subscribing to the mailing list)
>>
>>
>>
>> What is the best way to handle JRE updates on end user computers once a
>> service is up and running using the wrapper?
>>
>>
>>
>> When a new JRE update comes out, on running the installer, it notes that
>> “java.exe” is running and asks to stop this so that it can update java.  If
>> I tell it to do this, the wrapper log shows “JVM exited unexpectedly” and
>> that it then automatically restarts it.  The JRE update install then seems
>> to complete OK but has actually failed with browser plugins not added.
>> Restarting the computer does not fix this, and it is necessary to uninstall
>> the JRE and install it again to fix it.  Until this is done Java client
>> applets run on the same computer are broken.
>>
>>
>>
>> If I manually stop the service while doing the JRE update then everything
>> goes fine, but if the software is installed on a customer’s computer it
>> would be highly preferable for automatic Java updates to go through without
>> them having to worry about stopping a service.
>>
>>
>>
>> We have considered including a separate version of JRE used only by our
>> service when our software is installed, so that the main JRE installation
>> used by browsers could be updated without the wrapper service interfering,
>> but our management considers this not acceptable because it would not get
>> updated with the latest JRE security fixes.  We also considered using the
>> wrapper.restart.delay setting to delay restarts by 15 minutes to give the
>> JRE updater time to finish, but our management also declared this
>> unacceptable.
>>
>>
>>
>> What is the best way to deal with this?
>>
>>
>>
>> (We’re running version 3.2.3 by the way.)
>>
>>