Opened 9 years ago

Closed 9 years ago

Last modified 7 years ago

#465 closed Bug / Defect (fixed)

Windows 64 installer (vista+) overwrite SYSTEM PATH instead of appending

Reported by: littleg Owned by: Samuli Seppänen
Priority: critical Milestone:
Component: Installation Version: OpenVPN 2.3.4 (Community Ed)
Severity: Not set (select this one, unless your'e a OpenVPN developer) Keywords:
Cc:

Description

Windows 8.1
openvpn-install-2.3.4-I604-x86_64.exe

installer overwrite SYSTEM PATH instead of appending to it! This actually kills a lot of other sotware!!!

Change History (7)

comment:1 Changed 9 years ago by Gert Döring

Owner: set to Samuli Seppänen
Status: newassigned

I'm fairly sure it appends, as we'd get LOTS more complaints otherwise.

There was a bug in 2.3.0, I think, where we'd corrupt the path if it was extremely long, like over 2048 characters or so - but I thought we have that fixed. Samuli?

comment:2 Changed 9 years ago by Samuli Seppänen

I upgraded the build computer a week or so ago and it was using unpatched NSIS packages. Can you test if this installer fixes the issue?

comment:3 Changed 9 years ago by littleg

I finally managed to restore my PATH.
I tested the original installer, it clears the variable again and just put in openvpn path.
Reset the path again and tried the above installer by samuli, which works fine and just append the string.

comment:4 Changed 9 years ago by Samuli Seppänen

Resolution: fixed
Status: assignedclosed

Ok, closing this is as fixed.

comment:5 Changed 7 years ago by aatia

I know it's old, but just wanted to add my feedback.
Same issue happened to me today as described by original reporter. I lost all the values in System PATH environment variable as soon as I installed OpenVPN client on Windows 8.1 64-bit. It was replaced by OpenVPN directory, instead of appending it.
The OpenVPN client is downloaded from within a product called "Untangle NG Firewall" latest build as of April 11 2017. (12.2.1~vcs20170206T091727.10b7a54.release12.2-1jessie)
The version of OpenVPN client is 2.3.13.
My Path environment variable is 1340 character long, it's not over 2048 characters as mentioned by cron2.

comment:6 Changed 7 years ago by Gert Döring

@aatia: please open a bug with whoever makes "Untangle NG Firewall" - they seem to be using old/unpatched NSIS stuff to build their OpenVPN installers.

(Not sure if the actual limit really is "2048" characters - it is "if the path variable is very very long, more than on typical systems", so it doesn't happen on typical "install a new windows VM and test installers on it" systems)

comment:7 Changed 7 years ago by Samuli Seppänen

@aatia: all official OpenVPN installers are generated with a patched version of NSIS that has NSIS_MAX_STRLEN=8192. That variable determines how long strings (e.g. PATH) NSIS can handle.

Please file a bug report to Untangle. These links will help them fix the PATH truncation problem you've encountered:

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