RoboHelp's air installers no longer install with AIR 4.0 update?

[Alexandra Duffy]

Has anyone else encountered this issue?

After updating to AIR 4.0.0.1390, our RH air help installers no longer work. This includes .air help from 2 - 3 years ago, which have installed fine all these years, all the way up to a recent .air file we created for an upcoming release. This problem occurs on both Mac and Win, with the US version of AIR and the Chinese version of AIR, and it's a critical problem for us. Now when you double-click the .air file to install the help, you get this message:

"Sorry, an error has occurred. The application could not be installed because the installer file is damaged. Try obtaining a new installer file from the application author."

Well, the application author is us. But this isn't a problem that we can fix, because it happened with the AIR 4.0 update.

Version 3.8 of AIR works fine. Version 3.9 broke our context-sensitive help on the Mac (bug 3648177, filed in Oct, not that it did us any good). Now version 4.0 has broken our air help completely. We are transitioning to HTML5 help but not quickly enough, it seems.

Can anyone confirm that the same thing happens?

Thank you,

Alexandra

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Had me worried there – we distribute the 3.5 version of the AIR redistributable with our installer. I just stripped off all AIR versions and tried our installer. It deposits 3.5 fine & then AIR prompts for the version 4.0.0.1390 upgrade. Once upgraded, our AIRHelp .air file still installs fine. Something else must be happening here. I’d try a test like the one I did – strip it all off & reinstall it to see if it impacts the .air file’s install-ability.

[Alexandra Duffy]

Hi Jeff,

What do you mean by "stripped off all AIR versions?"

Knowing that this problem isn't happening to you is helpful, thank you. But it doesn't get me any closer to explaining what happened to our .air installations.

Thanks,
Alexandra

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Uninstalled my copy of AIR off my system to ensure that I had a clean environment to test our installer.

[Alexandra Duffy]

Yes, I did uninstall AIR and made sure I had a clean environment to test the installer. Our QA and Tech Support dept. are also involved and they always create a "clean" environment" to test out installers. People who never had AIR or our AIR help installed have also tested our installer, and the installation of the .air file fails.

Also, I got an update from our QA person. Using AIR 3.8 on Mac, he installed an .air file that worked just fine at release last September. Now, it fails. On a clean fresh installation on Windows with AIR 3.4, our .air installation failed. So it doesn't seem to matter what version of AIR or our .air - it won't install. This problem has appeared out of nowhere.

This problem defies any logic, unless something happened behind the scenes at Adobe and we don't know what that is.

* All of our installers, which install AIR and our .air file, worked fine until about two weeks ago.

* Installing a .air file on our systems (without going through our software installer) worked fine until about two weeks ago.

* Now during our software installation, AIR installs but the .air file fails to install.

* If I uninstall one of our .air files and reinstall it (without going through our software installer at all), it fails.

* Our customers are starting to have this issue as well and cannot re-install our help.

* We have a release in two weeks and the help won't install for that at all.

* Things seem to be working fine for you, ermphd and Jeff.

We're going to spend $250 to talk to AIR tech support.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

If you can share the .air file, I’d be glad to try testing on my Win7 machine – send me a PM if interested.

[Alexandra Duffy]

Thank you, Jeff. I would love it if anyone would be willing to try this:

http://app-help.nemetschek.net/2014/Vectorworks2014Help.air

Copying this link into your browser should let you download the .air file.

Thank you again.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Hmm, what you’re providing in this link isn’t coming across as a .air file – try zipping it up or stripping off the extension to package it for testing.

[Alexandra Duffy]

Our installer team thinks this has something to do with our "certificate keys." They may all have expired on March 1st without any warning. We didn't purchase certification, and I created a dummy signature key, not knowing that they could expire. I am going to regenerate our help as fast as I can now.

Thanks for everyone's help.
Alexandra

[Alexandra Duffy]

That's what it was...our "certificates" expired. This effectively kills all AIR help we have made over the last 5 years, and we've made lots of different versions in lots of different languages. We had no idea there was any kind of built-in expiration. Even if we create updated versions with new certificates, our context-sensitive help is broken because Adobe treats it like a new program. If there had been some information about this on the AIR properties dialog box, that sure would have been nice. This was a big slap out of nowhere.

Thanks again for your "help" and I hope this thread helps someone else.

Alexandra

[Peter Grainge]

Updating the expiry date of a signed certificate should not cause the help to be treated as new. That will only happen if the name on the certificate has changed in any way.

I am surprised this is happening with a self-signed certificate though as there is no date with them.

There is a section on certificates in http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/air/9/air_rh9.htm

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

I didn’t think a self-signed one expired either…

[VikasMahajan]

Private message sent.

[Peter Grainge]

@Vikas. Can the answer be shared please for the benefit of all forum users?

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Alexandra Duffy]

I will definitely let everyone know how we resolve this. (I haven't heard back from Vikas yet.) At the moment, our installer engineer is investigating an "AIR Development Tool" that might extend the certificate dates indefinitely.

The help was treated as new when I updated the certificate because the engineer told me to create a new one and select the timestamp checkbox. But now we may not be going that route. For years, I had been using the same self-signed certificate, copying it up to the next project, not really thinking about it. That's why all our projects were affected at the same time.

More later. And maybe I can get some sleep if we can figure out a solution today.

Alexandra

PS. When I said thanks for the "help" in an earlier message, I was attempting to be funny in my agitated state and make a joke about help and help files. I didn't want anyone who tried to help me think I was making light of the help provided! I appreciate all the posts.

[VikasMahajan]

Peter, I will share the answer after the resolution.

[Alexandra Duffy]

Here is the current status of this problem. I am going into detail in case this helps anyone else in a similar situation.

Five years ago, I created my first AIR help file and I used a self-signed certificate without a timestamp. Had I read Peter Grainge's info, I would have used a timestamp, but Adobe's help says "Select to include a timestamp on the digital certificate. The timestamp provides information on how long the certificate is valid." Since I thought the certificate would always be valid, I didn't know this was important.

Fast forward five years. I've created many, many .air help files in many languages, all using the same certificate that I originally created. Thousands of customers have these help files installed, and their certificates have all expired. No one can install or reinstall these help files now.

Our installer engineer worked hard to find a way to extend the certificates. However, it appears that even though I have the latest version of AIR (4.0) on my system, RoboHelp *may* be using AIR 1.5 to create the .air files, even in RH 11 (this is not confirmed by Adobe but in the output, the HelpViewer-app.xml file indicates that this is true). This is important, because apparently AIR certificates after AIR 1.5.3 have a grace period which allows them to be extended. Certificates from AIR earlier than that cannot be extended.

I can create new output with a new certificate and a timestamp (I have archives of all my help projects). But, the new certificate and timestamp causes AIR to treat the updated help as if it were new help. It won't install automatically over the old help, and our context-sensitive help is broken.Our engineer tried hard to find a way to prevent the updated help with the new certificate to be treated as a new help, but he says that for older versions of AIR (like 1.5), the "publisher ID" is not separate from the certificate. A new publisher ID is required with a new certificate.

This is a bad situation, to say the least.

Vikas has tried to help but what we were able to determine is that my context-sensitive help is functioning properly. I know this anyway, because when the engineer updates the publisher ID for our software to connect to the updated help, all works as expected. But we are not going to re-issue previous versions of our software so that the context-sensitive help functions correctly. All customers with older help who need to reinstall it for any reason, will no longer have context-sensitive help.

I am still hoping to learn something from an Adobe engineer that will help us be able to re-issue our help and have it not be viewed as a different help installation, or extend our certificates. Vikas does not have this information, though I appreciate that he tried to assist us.

In my research on this, I also found one person who used a certified, signed, certificate and had it expire after five years. And someone else who used a timestamp but still had the help expire. On the AIR support site, it definitely states that self-signed certificates expire after five years - now I know this. But not a word about this in RoboHelp help.

In hindsight, I am sorry that I created my help files with AIR.

Alexandra

[Alexandra Duffy]

To update my previous post, Adobe's engineers have helped us by providing an ExtendScript that uses AIR 1.5.3 to create our .air file. A little manipulation allows us to preserve the old publisher ID. Using the 1.5.3 AIR SDK means our certificates can be updated while preserving the old publisher ID. And this means that our context-sensitive help still works even though the certificate has changed. Now I'm recreating all of our old AIR help files with new, time-stamped certificates.

Thank you, Adobe!

I'm still very happy to be moving to responsive HTML5 for my help files this year
Alexandra

[Peter Grainge]

Really good to see what Adobe have done to help here.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[ermphd]

I just did the following test. My poject uses RH 11,

• Built AIR help w 3.9? and installed the AIR module.
• When the system prompted me for to update the AIR installer, I choose "update later".
• Exited the APP and made a tweak or 2 to the content, changing the skin, 1st topic and CSS, then rebuilt the AIR file.
• When the system prompted to update to 4.0? (did not write the build #), I updated and installed the AIR file. Attached is a snag of the result.

Suggestion:

DL another installer and check your content settings.

The SWF you see in the pic is a 1 slide CP7 project Audio note. Tested, Index, Glossary and Search. All work.