Does the Windows Local installer require an account with administrator privileges?
Or can it be run from a non-administrator account with “run as administrator” checked?
I tried the latter and it seemed to work ok. But a couple of days later, I tried to start Local, but the EXE file that starts it disappeared, so the desktop icon failed.
FYI I prefer to run day-to-day with a non-administrator account for security purposes.
Same issue here. Installation of Local on a secure network is a complete nightmare. Would appreciate some input and advice from the Flywheel crew on this very subject! Oh, and if you do install with temp admin privileges, then revoke them and return to being a “standard” user, every time you create or delete a site in Local, you still need admin privileges to amend the HOSTS file (via node.js request).
Local can run without administrative priveledges. If it needs to escalate something you will receive a UAC prompt while running Local. Like @neilh said, you’ll commonly see this when the hosts file needs updated or when installing Local.
I can’t think of any reason why this would happen outside of Local’s files getting removed somehow. Does local-by-flywheel still exist in %LocalProgramFiles%/Programs?
Can you describe the issues you are running into?
This is intentional and it works similarly on macOS.
@clay The issue was around there being no guidance as to HOW we should implement Local on a secure network. We’ve had to find our way in the dark, but we appear to have got there, esp if the HOSTS admin requirement is a deliberate feature of the product. In which case I guess we can live with that. However, one thing we noticed - like @aqi - is that the install disappeared if Local was installed using elevated privileges, then the user logged out, elevated admin privilege was then removed, and finally the user logged back in as a standard user. Next day the Local install had disappeared. We’re currently testing an alternative approach whereby we remove the admin privilege during the same elevated session as the install. It seems to have fixed this bizarre behaviour, but time will tell…
Aha, makes sense! Local’s installer will install per-user. When right-clicking on Local’s installer and running it as an administrator, it’s not installing it into the current user’s %LocalAppData% folder.
Long story short, you should never have to use “Run as Administrator…” with Local including installing it. If you do, let us know and we’ll look into why.
Hi @clay we tried the right-click method, and that didn’t work. Hence our frustrations. The install that disappeared was the second approach whereby we granted the user elevated admin privileges, they then logged in (as a de facto admin), installed Local, logged out, admin privileges for that account were removed, and then they logged back in as a standard user. The next day the Local install had disappeared. Removing the admin privilege during the same session (rather than getting them to log out first), seems to have resolved it. But we’ll keep an eye on it.
Got it. I really appreciate all of the details!
When you tried right-clicking and running as administrator, was this the installer/setup or Local after it had been installed?
Do you remember what happened? Would it simply not open?
The right-click approach installed Local in the localadmin user folder tree, so then we tried giving permission to these folders to the user, but that just threw up other issues, which I think included an inability to download and install WordPress? Certainly when running Local as an ordinary user, Local couldn’t detect and display the WordPress version being used in VirtualBox. Bit vague, but we quickly ditched that approach, so details are a bit sketchy.
Aha. I don’t blame you!
One last question for now, did you ever try installing it without running the setup as an administrator?
Thanks again for all of the info.
Should I interpret this as “I don’t need to have admin rights to install Flywheel”?
I can’t install without getting admin rights on my computer. And it is kinda of a big deal to have in my organization. I can have it for like 30 minutes at a time and only if my teammanager grants it first. So being able to do this without admin rights would sure be nice!
I need to grant admin rights for a change to Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 Redistributable - or something like that.
Is there a guide to installing without admin rights?