Question / Help Disabling Updates (OBS 0.625 Beta)

AlexWLV

New Member
I'm setting up OBS 0.625 Beta on Windows 7 64-bit for students to use in a classroom environment and I'd like to make sure that updates are disabled and that their roaming profile doesn't get bloated.
Do you have any advice?

I've noticed the %AppData%\Roaming\OBS\updates directory is empty following a fresh install and I presume that this might be used in future if there's a new release found when clicking Help > Check for updates.
Is this correct?

Students will be using standard user accounts so wouldn't be able to perform any action that requires administrative privileges.
 

R1CH

Forum Admin
Developer
The updater requires administrative rights, so in effect it will be disabled if the students can't write to the install folder (they won't be able to start the update process). When updates are available, the updates folder will contain a copy of the manifest and the updater, this will be ~100KB.
 

AlexWLV

New Member
Thanks for the quick reply R1CH.

That's a relief, I was worried that there may be another ~8MB installer similar to the current OBS_0_625b_Installer.exe dumped into the updates directory (our students only have a 25MB roaming profile).
A ~100KB updater isn't such a big deal and as a standard user, there won't be a lot they can do with it.

From what I can tell, there doesn't appear to be any automated update checking; the user has to actively click Help > Check for updates Am I correct?

It'd be nice to hide the update check menu option if possible just to spare a "why can't I do this?" call to our support teams but it's not essential.

P.S. I hadn't heard of OBS until recently and I'm pretty impressed with what it can do.
 

R1CH

Forum Admin
Developer
There is automated update checking, but it won't actually download anything until a new version is available on the server. It will prompt once every 24 hours if an update is available.

If you can configure ACLs in the user profile, removing write permission from the OBS/updates folder will prevent any kind of updating from working. OBS will handle the write error gracefully and not offer to provide any updates.
 
When you say remove write permissions from OBS/Updates folder do you mean write permissions for any security principal including System or just the currently logged on user? I also need to prevent the update notification from appearing.
 
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