[CELayoutEditor] wrongly assumes that user has write access!

[reptor]

Hello

I downloaded the latest version of the CELayoutEditor, the 0.6.1 version. I use it on Windows XP.

It has the same problem as the earlier version I had which was 0.5.0 I think.

It has to be installed as an administrator user. So it goes into the "C:\Program Files". This is OK.

What is not OK, then? Now, normally we should not use these kinds of programs as administrator users. When I start the CELayoutEditor as a user which has restricted privileges (non-admin user), it refuses to start, it throws some exception and stops there.

Of course I already know that this is because the CELayoutEditor wrongly assumes that it has write access to its installation directory.

Please change the CELayoutEditor to do all its writing by default into a sub-directory of the "Documents and Settings\username" folder. Maybe a good place could be "Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\CELayoutEditor". This will solve the problem. Everything that the program wants to write, would go into that directory by default. No problems with not having write access.

Remember this also with other programs that you create. Do not require the user to use an administrator user account to run this kind of programs.

[reptor]

If you have this problem as well, possible workarounds are:

- Install the program to a hard disk drive partition which has FAT32 filesystem instead of NTFS. NTFS stores the file&folder access rights information while FAT32 does not do it.

- Or modify the access rights of the default installation folders under "C:\Program Files" so that the users that should be able to use the program, can write there.

Both of the workarounds are not good solutions. A good solution would be if the CELayoutEditor would be changed to behave correctly in this regard, as described in the first post.

[scriptkid]

Hi and welcome

Good post actually. I think that 'we' as coders are so familiar with running in 'admin' mode (at least on Windows), that this just slipped in. Using the Documents & Settings won't be too hard i guess, since it's only the INI and LOG file which are getting written to.

Also, the installer is just a convenience thing. We can also just use a zipped package with the binaries. The installer does not add something to the registry or so.

What if you install the editor into another directory? Will that still be seen as the installation directory?

btw here's a ticked, so we don't forget this
http://www.cegui.org.uk/mantis/view.php?id=217

[reptor]

I think there is no reason why you as a programmer should be using an administrator user account.

In fact it would be much better if you didn't do so.

When it is your own computer as I have to assume here that it is, you will have the admin password when you need it. So only use it when it is actually needed.

Then you would spot these kinds of problems right away and wouldn't have to wait for other people to tell about it.

There are good articles and discussions around the web that talks about this.

One example: http://discuss.techinterview.org/defaul ... .130949.15

I'll go further to say that anybody who writes software that doesn't work for non-admins should be shot, drawn, quartered, set on fire, and their bits get jumped up and down upon. Twice.

I'm not that radical but it is good exaggeration to make the point that it is serious.

If you use a restricted account to use Windows, as would be better for a number of reasons, you can still easily start programs using an administrator user account if a need arises, without switching the whole desktop. You can right-click on the link of the program and choose "Run as..."



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I just installed it to a FAT32 filesystem in which the access rights do not exist. But this isn't really a solution, it is just a workaround which is ok for me but might not be ok for many other people.

Thanks for creating the mantis ticket!

[scriptkid]

Hi,

you have some nice reasons to not run as an admin yourself. I didn't know about the 'Run As...' options. Thanks for the hint.