Friday, March 10, 2006

Macromedia's Homesite+ issue

The first work that I did here, in In-Site, was the configuration and deploying of a lot of Macromedia's programs.
I don't know how this boys do their programs, but ALL of them have a LOT of problems with the Windows XP User permissions...

... and Homesite+ wouldn't be the exception...

Once installed (via Administrator user), when you switch to another User (with User rights), Homesite ABSOLUTELY don't work. This MM programs tend to highly carve into the registry keys, where the Users don't have permissions, and that cause that those programs fail when you start 'em.

When you have that kind of problem, what do you do?... Yes! see the MM FAQ!
But I don't want to lie you... MM FAQ is useless!
The official "Macromedia's registry permission policy" (that's the way that I like to call that damned way to solve the problems) is to change the permissions of the ROOT keys ("HKEY_LOCAL MACHINE\Software" and "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT").

That's a damn hole in my security policy!!!

There's when the Google and a lot of another search-engines start to work.

My boss and partner Andrés (my Jedi Master) find around of ELEVEN registry keys that must be changed (AppDeploy.com shows more than 25).

And all work's fine!...

...Until you want to summon HS+ from Dreamweaver's "Edit with external editor" menu...
When you try to start HS+ using this way, HS only says "Bye" and give you a Window's "Appology" screen...

Must I say to you how many time we use to find the registry key from this problem?...

WEEKS!

In a despairing movement I used Sysinternal's Regmon and try to log EVERY key used by HS+.
I made a lot of useless changes to my registry... Until it works!

But there was a problem... I didn't remember the registry key that I changed!
Oh, Lord! How STUPID I was!

Well... To say it in a few words... I tryed everything... Undo some changes, see the files permissions... and nothing...

But a light in the end of the tunnel appears...

One day I was doing... nothing... and run Sysinternal's AccesEnum, a program to see the Permissions of Files and Registry keys... and say: "well, try to map the permissions of the Classes, maybe you find something..." and watching slowly I see a key with a strange set of write permissions: "Administrator,USER" (!)


I checked that it certainly was the key...

There was the key that I've change! God! Yes!

I documented the change and deploy it on all the office network.

The learn of all this story is: NEVER, but NEVER change the permissions of the registry roots keys, and find! the groups and search engines are full of help! (and never see the Macromedia's FAQ!)

Here are the registry keys for HS+ (5.5 version):
\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{04B6FA96-C717-4EE9-B4F7-D6153E4460A5}
\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{0AC6C6C5-F7A8-11D2-BEF4-00C04F990001}
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{29B869C5-DB0A-11D1-A316-0060973D093D}
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{6FC23E98-38AD-11D3-9084-0060B0EF0A86}
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{9E4BDB98-E70B-11D2-834F-00C04FA35857}
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{CEAECB9C-E513-11D1-A340-0060973D093D}
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{DB01A1E3-A42B-11CF-8F20-00805F2CD064}
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{DBCFBAB5-E2E7-11D2-834D-00C04FA35857}
\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{DDC45E09-38CC-4ADD-BC4E-0DA61FDAE192}
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{F7EE4E9D-CD64-11D1-8C81-0060973D093D}
\REGISTRY\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{FA7357F9-A85B-4179-9319-1F0C4653FA36}
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Allaire.Validator
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\AllaireClientApp.ActiveScript Host
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\AllaireClientApp.TAllaireActiveDocument
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\AllaireClientApp.TAllaireClientApp
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\AllaireClientApp.TAllaireDeploymentManager
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\AllaireClientApp.TAllaireDocumentCache
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\AllaireClientApp.TAllaireHTTPProvider
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\AllaireClientApp.TAllaireZIPProvider
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\TypeLib\{F7EE4E9B-CD64-11D1-8C81-0060973D093D
}
(this was the hard one)

and change:
:.Query Value
:.Set Value
:.Create Subkey
:.Enumerate Subkeys
:.Notify
:.Delete

That's all... I hope that it help all the System Administrators that must deploy Dreamweaver and Homesite+ 5.5

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Hi all!
The main idea of this Blog is lend a hand with Application Deploy and another SysAdmin issues.
I´ll thank you if you take some time to write comments about this WebLog.