Friday, May 10, 2013

Install node.js on a Windows Azure Cloud Service (II)

Last time I showed you how to modify a node.js Windows installer so that you could install it on an Azure Cloud Service as part of a startup task.

As it happens, I just found out another way to perform this task without modifying the installer itself: just create a Windows installer transform file. The process is quite similar, and only Orca is needed.

  • Open the installer in Orca.
  • Click the Transform > New Transform menu.
  • Do your modifications.
  • Click the Transform > Generate Transform… menu to create the transform file.

As you will see, all your modifications are recorded, and appear in green in Orca:image

To use this transform file, use the TRANSFORMS property. For instance: msiexec.exe /qn /i node-v0.10.3-x64.msi TRANSFORMS="node-v0.10.3-x64-azure.mst"

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Install node.js on a Windows Azure Cloud Service

node.js is supported by default on a Windows Azure WebSite. But there are cases when you might need to deploy an application on an heavier (and more expensive) Cloud Service. Such a case is when you need SSL on a custom domain, as Azure WebSites do not yet support custom certificates.

Cloud Services instances can be customized through startup tasks. This is how you would install and configure node.js (and iisnode, presumably): create a startup task that installs node.js, iisnode, and runs npm –install on your package. It all seems pretty straightforward (though it may be the subject of a future post).

Except that node.js cannot be installed on a Cloud Service as is (yet): if you try to execute the installer on a Cloud Service instance, it will fail at the “Creating shortcuts” stage (as you’ll see in the installer logs). The default node.js installer tries to create shortcuts in the Windows start menu, which is (quite understandably) a disabled functionality  in this version of Windows. And there is no way to tell the installer not to execute this step. So we’re doomed…

Well, there is a way to get around this. We can edit the official installer with Orca, the database table editor for Windows installer packages. It needs to be installed first (the installer can be found along the Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4 binaries, in %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Bin). Once done, you can right-click the node.js installer and select the Edit with Orca menu.

Edit with Orca

As you can see, an installer package is nothing more than a database of all the components and actions performed during the install. Just select the InstallExecuteSequence table, and remove the 3 rows named WixSchedInternetShortcuts, WixRollbackInternetShortcuts and WixCreateInternetShortcuts.

image

Just save your changes, and there you go: this package will install properly on a Windows Azure Cloud Service. Maybe one day will there be a command line option to save us all this trouble…