How to take control on temp-buffer IA uses

[mayita]

Hi,
I noted somewhere that IA uses the %TMP% (system variable) when decompressing an IA setup. Is that correct? Or what is the best way to redirect the taken space to another targetsystem device?
Thanx in advance.
Eddy

[Alex_Ronquillo]

Just set the TEMPDIR variable to the path or target system device you would want.

[mayita]

Setting the TEMPDIR variable to a target device is not sufficient. Please consider: IA internally needs space for the decompression starting the single file exe on the target system. I don't refer to the TEMP space what the developer i.e. we can manage during setup and after the decompression.

[Alex_Ronquillo]

mayita,

I am really sorry, I misunderstood your question at the beginning. There is no way you can do that in IA. The environment variable would need to be manually changed before setup starts. Any change made by the script cannot be made before the extraction of the files completes.

[mayita]

Sorry Alex

The fact is that on June, 28 this year I asked the same question to Michael but the problem I dont find his answer anymore
I remember somehow he said that IA takes %TMP% variable. The question now is: Is it possible to control it like f.e.: set variable TMPDIR to E:\\tmp (for example) and TMPDIR was defined before as "get environment variable %TMP% into variable TMPDIR.
Could you ask him this please if necessary?
Thank you...
Eddy

See below my mail to Michael:

Dear Michael

I have an urgent problem. Please help me if you can. Until tomorrow I have to make an installation on a server which has only 1.5 GB space available on the system disk. My setup (single file with best compression) works perfectly but starting it, it takes about 3 GB space. And it takes it on system disk. And this is the reason I cannot make the installation until now. . We tried to redirect (set temp=D:\\) the %TEMP% WINDOWS system variable to another disk (we defined it on the global system not only on a cmd shell (process), so it should work). But it always takes it from C:\\ Why? Can I control it? What is the solution in this case?

I really apreciate your very quick answer...
Thanks a lot
Eddy

[Alex_Ronquillo]

Eddy,

I just tested this and it works, please try it.

Change the environment variables in the system, but you need to make sure you change the system and user variables. Maybe you are just changing one set and the application is using the other set. I would recommend you to change %TMP% and %TEMP% for both user and system levels. After doing the change, run your installer, and you are set.

Hopefully it works for you.

[vrichards]

Hi! I tried this trick for a full install and it worked! I was able to have the temporary install files directed to another folder, the one pointed to by the TMP environment variable.

I tried the exact same steps with a patch, however, and it seemed to ignore the environment variable, and put the temporary files in %USERPROFILE%/Local Settings/Temp, which doesn't match any of my environment variables.

Could someone confirm whether this is expected behavior or not? Thanks!