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4.3.1.2 Installability
About
Installability and its mirror requirement of un-installability allows for an individual product or an entire system to be installed and uninstalled on a system easily, efficiently and with a minimum number of side effects. A side effect occurs when removing a product or system has adverse effects on other products or systems running on the same computer or network. For example, when a product was installed, it installed a library to access a particular DataBase Management System (DBMS) but, in so doing, removed a library required to access a different DBMS. These side effects can also occur when a product or system is un-installed. For example, when a product is un-installed, it removes a library used to access a particular DBMS; however, this library is required by other products or systems on the computer or network.
In addition, the complexity of installing or un-installing a product or system may be extremely tedious, detailed, and laborious with many steps and decision points. Each step in this process introduces risk. It is important to remember that risk is multiplicative, thus as the number of steps involved increases, even if the individual risk of each step is low, the overall risk to the success of the installation or un-installation increases.
Many of these issues were the bane of new systems and products in the past. Fortunately many of these issues have been addressed through the use of Wizards, Package Manager tools, containerization processes and orchestration tools. Installation usually entails the following checks and functions:
- The target system has the correct system resources available
• Hardware architecture (32-Bit or 64-Bit Central Processing Unit (CPU) etc)
• Operating System (OS) such as Android, IOS, Linux, MacOS, Windows, Unix, etc.)
• Network connectivity
• Hardware resources such as memory, disk space, etc.
- The target system does not already have the software installed (i.e., previous or current version of the software). If so, perform an upgrade.
- The target system has the proper directories, files and operating system privileges
- Add configuration data (i.e., configuration files, Environment Variables, or Windows Registry entries) to the target system
- Make software accessible on the target system (i.e., setting privileges, creating links, and shortcuts)
- Configure components required to run the target system (i.e., Daemon, services, etc )
- Activate software on the target system (i.e., license agreements, license activation, system registration, etc.)
- Update other third party components to acceptable levels on the target system
Installers can be classified according to the amount of interaction with the user:
| Kind of Installer | Description |
|---|---|
| Attended installation | This generally requires a user to attend the installation process to answer questions about where to do the install on the target system, provide information about the user, accept any terms and conditions, etc. 1) |
| Silent installation | This allows installation of a system or program on a target system without any notification to the user. This is often the backdoor used by dido:public:ra:xapend:xapend.a_glossary:m:malware. It differs from Attended and Unattended installations only in that the user may be completely unaware of the installation. |
| Unattended installation | This installation is similar to the Attended Installation but does not require any human interaction, thus allowing for systems or programs to be installed with the user just monitoring the installation rather than interacting with it. |
| Headless installation | This refers to the graphics head usually used to drive a monitor. If there is no graphics head, there are only command line interfaces and logs for detailing the installation process. Often these installations use Telnet where the installation on one computer (or machine) is being done from another computer (or machine). Note: could be a virtual machine. |
| Scheduled or automated installation | This term is usually used with Attended or Unattended installation. The installation process is scheduled for a later time, or on a schedule (i.e., every first Tuesday of the month). |
| Clean installation | This installation can be considered “hostile” in that no regard is made for previous installations. It can also mean that it does not care about other systems or programs that are installed. It makes clean and then starts the installation process anew. |
| Network installation | This kind of installation is made using a shared network resource. It often requires the installation of a minimal or skeleton operating system before the rest of the installation can occur. This kind of installation is used often for large corporate, government or other institutional organization. |
In addition to the kinds of installations. Installers programs can either be self contained1) and specific2) in what they can install (i.e., Wizard) or they can be generalized to handle any kind of installation (i.e., Package Manager). Sometimes, installer programs themselves need to be installed or updated, a pattern referred to as "bootstrapping", which entails the use of a lightweight, simple and small executable file that is initially downloaded and started on the target system. This executable updates the installer software and then launches into the installation of the desired software. Often in complex systems or programs, the initial bootstrapping process updates other components that the desired software depends upon. For example, an operating system or DBMS update.
DIDO Specifics
- To be added/expanded in future revisions of the DIDO RA
