Strange issue with P3D Addon Organizer v1.52

[edpatino 1,959]

Hi Oliver:

I'm getting the strange message below when trying to save my scenery list (hitting the "save" button). The Palma De Mallorca scenery was installed yesterday using their own installer using the addon-xml method. The Palma installer put the scenery in the "Ecosystem" folder in the P3D root.

I'm running your tool with administrator rights (in fact I've never paid attention to that before, but now it's checked with admin rights).

What could be happening?.

Thanks, Ed

Edited April 19, 2020 by edpatino

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

25 minutes ago, edpatino said:

What could be happening?.

Hello Ed,

hard to tell, I would have to be at your computer. What P4AO is trying to do is to create a backup of the add-on.xml by renaming it - and that fails. 

• Check if the P4AOBAK file that it wants to create already exists, and remove it.
• Check the ownership of the add-on.xml. Does it belong to you? Can you rename it if you wanted to? This check is not about access privileges (read, write) but about file ownership.

It happened to me in the past that when using installers I used "As administrator" - but that resulted in the files belonging to the Admin (or the "Trusted Installer" which is just as bad). As a consequence I could no longer delete those files. Because on a Windows system your user account never is the administrator, it only has administrator rights.

Best regards

Edited April 19, 2020 by Lorby_SI

[edpatino 1,959]

Hi Oliver:

Thanks for your answer. I'm away from my sim computer at this moment (back in about 2 hours), but will try your suggestion about removing the existing backup P4AOBAK file and see what happens.

The addon-xml file in question does not belong to me. It came with the MK-Studios installer. I left it the way it is, because it contains references to several folders (effects, scenery, textures and scripts) and that's why I also decided to leave all its files in the suggested default install path.

Will post the outcome a bit later today.

Thanks for your support.

Cheers, Ed

 

[mikealpha 266]

1 hour ago, Lorby_SI said:

P4AOBAK

I had exactly the same error with MKStudios Palma, with Addon Organizer run as Administrator . And yes, removing the P4AOBAK file manually cured it. 

Mike

Edited April 19, 2020 by mikealpha

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

29 minutes ago, edpatino said:

The addon-xml file in question does not belong to me.

That is not what I meant. This is about what user account on your computer owns the file on your disk.

Windows is a multi user operating system. So for every file there are two aspects to consider: ownership and access privileges. If a user account owns a file exclusively, then another user account can't remove it, Windows will not let him. But the owner can have granted read and write privileges at the same time, so you can use the file normally.

So it can happen (has happened to me) that files belonged to the Administrator account on my Windows computer. Problem is, as a user, I cannot access that account that easily. I may have administrator rights, but that does not touch on file ownership.

Best regards

[edpatino 1,959]

1 hour ago, Lorby_SI said:

That is not what I meant. This is about what user account on your computer owns the file on your disk.

Windows is a multi user operating system. So for every file there are two aspects to consider: ownership and access privileges. If a user account owns a file exclusively, then another user account can't remove it, Windows will not let him. But the owner can have granted read and write privileges at the same time, so you can use the file normally.

So it can happen (has happened to me) that files belonged to the Administrator account on my Windows computer. Problem is, as a user, I cannot access that account that easily. I may have administrator rights, but that does not touch on file ownership.

Best regards

Ok.On my computer there's only one user account (myself, the Administrator). But, if I understand you well, I guess that folder/file (MK Studios Palma De Mallorca folder and sub-folders) are under the ownership of the "trusted installer" exclusively?.

2 hours ago, mikealpha said:

I had exactly the same error with MKStudios Palma, with Addon Organizer run as Administrator . And yes, removing the P4AOBAK file manually cured it. 

Mike

Yes, manually deleting the P4AO backup file solves the issue!. Thanks for posting.

Cheers, Ed

 

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

2 minutes ago, edpatino said:

On my computer there's only one user account (myself, the Administrator).

I don't think so. Yours is a user account with administrator rights. That is not the same thing. AFAIK you can never be the "Administrator" on a home computer version of Windows.

Did you run the installer "As Administrator"?

Best regards

[edpatino 1,959]

2 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

Did you run the installer "As Administrator"?

Do you mean your P4AO installer?. The answer is Yes.

If you mean the MK Studios Palma?. Yes. The installer suggests you to do so.

Cheers, Ed

Edited April 19, 2020 by edpatino

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

1 minute ago, edpatino said:

If you mean the MK Studios Palma?. Yes. The installer suggests you to do so.

Because they want to write to the P3D folder which normally is in ProgramFiles - protected by UAC.

And running the MK installer like this will probably have caused the issue. P4AO was allowed to rename the add-on.xml file, but it could not delete the result.

The thing to check in this case is file ownership, what user account the file belongs to. Right-Click the file in Explorer -> Properties -> Security -> Advanced. Note the second line at the top, that should tell you which user account has ownership. You may find that this is not your principal, and that your own access rights to the file are limited. When you can't delete a file, check here, and if necessary, take posession of the file (button at the top) - if possible.

Best regards

 

[edpatino 1,959]

Please look here:

Seems to me that I have the ownership.

Cheers, Ed

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

3 minutes ago, edpatino said:

Seems to me that I have the ownership.

Is this the original file, that the installer created, or is it rather the one that P4AO made? 

As I said: if you encounter a situation like this, try to delete the file yourself. If that works, everything is fine. But if it doesn't work, file ownership is what you need to check.

Best regards

 

[edpatino 1,959]

2 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

Is this the original file, that the installer created, or is it rather the one that P4AO made? 

It's supposed to be the original one created by the installer, but if look to the date (today) and time (local time US East 01:26 pm) of the file, it seems it was already modified by P4AO. Not really sure if I'm answering your question here (I'm referring to the add-on.xml file of the product).

5 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

As I said: if you encounter a situation like this, try to delete the file yourself. If that works, everything is fine. But if it doesn't work, file ownership is what you need to check.

Yes, that worked out well. Have saved the scenery several times in P4AO and it's working Ok now.

Cheers, Ed

 

 

[bbuckley 133]

I'm getting the same errors and deleting the P4AOBAK file isn't doing anything mine is failing on the add-on.xml file.

I've used P4AO for a long time now including 1.5 & then 1.51 without issues and without installing anything new. When I updating ORBX today is completely rearranged my config so I was going to load a P4AO backup zip, but I can't save it now because of access. I haven't changed anything so I have no idea what to do.

Sorry Oliver, I love this tool.

 

[bbuckley 133]

Just to add info. Yes ALL of the files in my \Documents\Prepar3D v4 Add-ons\ folders are "Owned" by Administrator (not me as User) but it's been that way forever. I've never received a message about access before and use the tool every day to enable and disable groups (strict package law activated) groups of scenery's. So tonight I changed the owner to me as User but got the same message on the same file. My scenery.cfg is all messed up now (ORBX fault) but I can't use P4AO to fix it... Desperate.

EDIT: I just reverted back to P4AO v1.45 and all is well! I even restored my previous backup zip and it restored correctly. 1.52 did not restore the zip into the same order. I should have mentioned I'm still on P3Dv4.5. I'm updating things that I can to be ready when I do go to v5. The only glitch now is I got a message warning of non sequential ordering when I went to save the config. I've never seen that before and I didn't change any order from the backup zip. I went ahead and saved anyway...

Edited April 20, 2020 by bbuckley
Later info

[bbuckley 133]

Hi Oliver- does 1.53 fix or change the file access behavior? I had to go back to 1.45 and afraid to try 1.53 given the issues I had above. 
Thanks. 
Bruce