Windows installer automatically reboots the server

[Matt Gagliardi]

Does anyone know of a "good" way to handle a Windows server that's being automatically rebooted when a program is successfully installed?  My playbook is "failing" and ending because the WinRM connection is getting cut off.  FWIW there's no simple way for me to stop the reboot...it's due to a customaction that's resetting the flags I'm sending the installer to not reboot.  I'm guessing putting a failure action into the playbook is the accepted path?

[J Hawkesworth]

I don't have anything I have tested myself but I do have a couple of ideas.

Maybe the way to handle is to kick off a scheduled task to run the install and then take a look at trond hindenes' win_reboot role in galaxy which I believe can wait until a reboot has been achieved.

There is a PR for a module to run a scheduled task been submitted recently.

Hopefully you can put the two things together to get what you need.

Please let us know how you get on.

Jon

[Matt Gagliardi]

The suggestion was very much appreciated...in fact I'm already doing something like this (scheduled task to kick off the install) with SQL.  Unfortunately I ran into the same issue when I attempted the install with specific app...the custom action in the installer kept resetting the flags I was passing to kill any reboot.  It's a poorly-written (and documented) command line installer.  What I eventually found when reading a verbose install log was that there's an undocumented option to suppress the installer (so the app installer is over-riding the default Windows installer options...yes, it's pure genius) over-ride of the reboot flags.  I re-did my playbook with that option and now it's working the way I'd like.

Insanity.