Python 2.2 unwise.exe

Bengt Richter bokr at oz.net
Sat Apr 13 21:34:51 EDT 2002


On Sat, 13 Apr 2002 17:40:32 -0400, Tim Peters <tim.one at comcast.net> wrote:
[...]
>[Robin Becker, on unwise.exe vanishing]
>> Installed under C:\Python; system is Win2k. I installed win32all-146
>> after Python-2.2, but didn't save backups.
>>
>> I have a couple of other things installed eg Numeric-20.3 and PIL, but
>> nothing  that came with an installer. I don't remember anything untoward
>> about the Python-2.2 install.
>>
>> The unwise.exe was just not there for some reason.
>
>Crud, I was hoping it was unique to Win9x.  "Just not there for some reason"
>is the same thing I've seen.  I build the PLabs Windows installer, so I get
>more practice with it than anyone else.  "Just not there" has definitely
>happened more than once after I've run an install and verified that
>UNWISE.EXE is indeed exactly what and where it should be after the install
>completes.  Yet two hours or two weeks or two months later, it's plain gone.
>Nothing else is missing when this happens, just UNWISE.EXE.  That's all I
>know for sure about it ... OK, I'm going to change UNWISE.EXE in my install
>trees to read-only.  Maybe that will catch whatever is deleting it in the
>act.  Heh:  Just did that.  UNWISE.EXE still existed in my 2.1 and 2.2
>trees, but had already gone missing in my experimental 2.3 tree.
>
>windows-is-an-adventure-ly y'rs  - tim
>
>PS: The PLabs Windows installer is a zip file of a kind WinZip knows how to
>read.  That is, e.g., you can open Python-2.2.1.exe directly from WinZip.
>If UNWISE.EXE goes missing for you, you can extract it from the installer
>.exe, using WinZip.  Extract the file UNWISE32.EXE into the root of your
>Python installation, and rename it to UNWISE.EXE.  Then the "Uninstall
>Python" shortcut should work fine again.  Using an older version of
>UNWISE.EXE from somewhere else may or may not work completely; the newer
>version we ship knows how to perform rollbacks, and does a much more
>complete job of undoing *all* Windows install fiddling than older versions
>are capable of doing.
>
If it happens in a Windows (eg NT) where you can set up access audit on a file so
_anything_ done to/with unwise.exe gets logged in the security log, that might
be even more effective than just read-only (which afaik won't prevent a rename or move
(or attrib ;-) BTW, could it have gone invisible rather than missing?). You could scan
the whole disk (including normally hidden files) for a file with identical data, I suppose.

You should also be able to control access better than simple read-only, e.g., by giving
ownership to a special user that reserves all the permissions except read. The most privileged
admin can always get around it, but a ISTM a program would have to have been written to do
the special steps, and I don't know that it could avoid getting caught in the log anyway.
In any case, such a prog doesn't seem like the kind of cause being hunted here.

Regards,
Bengt Richter



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