[For the record: I'm running 32bit Windows XP (Pro) SP2 and installing "for all users."] TL;DR: No matter what I tried this morning re uninstalling and reinstalling 3.4.0b2, pip or no pip, MSI still tried to connect to the Akamai URLs. On Sun, 05 Jan 2014 23:06:49 -0500, R. David Murray wrote:
Still wondering why, all of a sudden after years of using a firewalled msiexec.exe, I get it now trying to connect out while installing 3.4.0b2 from my harddrive...?
The ensurepip developers will have to say for sure, but my understanding is that it does *not* go out to the network. On the other hand, it is conceivable that pip 1.5, unlike the earlier version in Beta1, is doing some sort of "up to date check" that it shouldn't be doing in the ensurepip scenario.
I presume you did have the installer install pip.
To be honest, I forgot all about pip until after I become a wee bit alarmed by the installer going out to the interwebs -- didn't even notice a checkbox for that option.
If you haven't already, You might try reinstalling and unchecking that option, and see if it msiexec still tries to go out to the network. That would confirm it is ensurepip that is the issue (although that does seem most likely).
Working again on this, this morning: Uninstalled and then reinstalled 3.4.0b2. No check box for pip, but there was that strange "tree" of collapsed options which included a pip one and which appeared to default to "install pip." Left pip on as was the default. Curiously, although I hadn't remembered this happening yesterday, this morning, the installer said there was already a 3.4x installed and do I want to overwrite it. (Uninstalling 3.4.0b2 had left behind my addition of sympy and another file or two of my own from 3.4.0b1.) I told MSI to go ahead and overwrite. Sure enough, the installer tried to connect to the same two IPs (Akamai I'm now told) with the installer left at default options. --- Next, I uninstalled 3.4.0b2 again, this time removing the entire dir after uninstalling. Reinstalling (still default settings on installer) this time gave me a bunch of *new* additions to site-packages including pip, setuptools, easy_install.py -- all of which were *not* installed into site-packages when priorly overinstalling. Again, this time, msiexec.exe still attempted to connect (two bursts -- each time, twice to each of the aforementioned URLs). --- Finally, I uninstalled 3.4.0b2, removed the dir, and reinstalled yet again, this time selecting the "don't install pip" option in the funky Windows "option tree" in the MSI installer. Yet *still* again, there were several sets of attempts by msiexec.exe to connect to the same two Akamai URLs -- but, no pip or other cruft in site-packages nor any pip-things in Scripts after the install finished. So, whatever I have tried -- pip or no pip -- msiexec.exe still attempts to connect to those Akamai URLs. [Hopefully, I kept accurate notes this morning and didn't typo them above.] At any rate, the attempts to connect to the network seem like undesirable behavior to this man. If pip is necessary, then some Window users may well end up without it -- and then not know why something later doesn't work. Got to go now, but will check in this evening or in the morning, tomorrow. Again, many thanks to all for the help -- Bob Hanson