Nine fixes from a review of the installer against its actual audience: DT leads
at sister sites who are not Windows, IIS or Python specialists and who will lean
on an AI assistant to get through it.
TRUTHFULNESS. The preflight was advisory - an operator read 'IIS is not
installed', pressed Next, answered five more pages and the install died partway
through with Python already on the box. The results page now blocks while
anything is failing, repaints on every run instead of latching after the first,
and offers 'Check again' so a fixed problem does not mean starting over. On
failure the wizard said 'Nothing was left running', which is false in every path
because the stages run with -OnFailure never: it now says the server is
part-configured, that re-running is safe, and how to remove it. The final page no
longer reads 'ShopDB-Flask is ready' after a failed install.
SECRETS. The generated MySQL root password went to Write-Host in a process the
wizard runs hidden - so nobody saw it - and stdout is forwarded into the setup
log operators are told to send to support, so it was permanently recorded for
everyone who did not need it. It now goes to an ACL'd file. Database dumps, which
contain every user password hash, landed in a ProgramData directory readable by
every user on the box; the directory is now locked at creation.
UPGRADES ON REMOTE-DATABASE SITES. mysqldump was looked for only under local
MySQL install paths, so a site whose database is on another host silently skipped
every pre-upgrade backup - after stage 2 had already stopped the pool and
replaced the tree. Find-MysqlTool now prefers a client shipped in the bundle,
stage 2 stages it onto the server, preflight reports when it is missing, and
mysqlclient\ is an optional locked payload.
UNINSTALL. A subpath install is an IIS Application, not a site; removing only the
site left the application pointing at a deleted directory, so the parent site -
at West Jefferson, the live classic ASP - served 503 on that path forever while
Add/Remove Programs reported success. Uninstall now reads MOUNT_PATH and removes
the application. The firewall rule was created as "$SiteName $SitePort" and
removed as the literal 'ShopDB-Flask 8090', which matches nothing.
DAY-2 TOOLING. Every shortcut now passes -AppRoot and -SitePort, and the console
forwards them through its own elevation and 32-bit relaunches instead of
discarding them - a non-default directory or port made it report a healthy site
as broken, from a shortcut the installer wrote. 'Open ShopDB-Flask' resolved to a
hardcoded localhost:8090 that was wrong for every subpath install; it now asks
the console, which reads the address the installer recorded, and no longer
demands administrator to open a browser.
SMOKE TEST. The parent-site port lookup filtered for an http binding and
defaulted to 80, so an https-only parent site failed a working install with a red
dialog.
DOCS AND /api/docs. The installer was invisible: nothing in docs/, README.md or
CLAUDE.md mentioned it, so a DT lead or their assistant landed on the manual IIS
runbook and hand-built the very server the installer then refuses to upgrade.
docs/INSTALL-WINDOWS.md and docs/OPERATE-WINDOWS.md are now the canonical route,
the two manual runbooks are bannered as reference-only, README and CLAUDE.md
route by target, and llms.txt tells an assistant which document to follow and to
ask for 'check -Json' before diagnosing. Both ship on the server, along with
openapi.json and llms.txt - without those the self-hosted /api/docs was broken on
every installed box, which matters most to the sites least able to debug it.
Stage 5 now checks it actually serves.
shopdb-admin.ps1 gains 'check -Json': one structured, secret-free block covering
version, publishing method, IIS state, HTTP reachability, database, Python
version, plugins and errors. That is the cheapest useful answer to 'the operator
will ask an LLM' - it works with no infrastructure, which a install-time MCP
server could not.
REQ-D: restore waitress and tzdata to requirements.in. They existed ONLY in the
generated requirements.txt (hand-added in bf9e60e), so the next
`uv pip compile` would have silently removed the WSGI server and the IANA
timezone database from every Windows install.
REQ-E: split production and development requirements. requirements.txt was
installing pytest, pytest-cov, pytest-flask, coverage, iniconfig and pluggy onto
production servers. Verified on a real Windows Server box before this change.
CI, scripts/test-external-plugin.sh and the dev docs now use requirements-dev.txt.
REQ-F: standardise on Python 3.14. The repo declared four different versions
(Dockerfile 3.12, DEPLOY-WINDOWS-IIS 3.12, INSTALL-WINDOWS-IIS 3.13, CI 3.13,
plus README, web.config and PLUGIN-EXTERNAL-REPO). 3.14 is in active bugfix
support until ~Apr 2027 and supported to Oct 2030; 3.13 entered security-only in
Apr 2026. All four compiled dependencies publish win_amd64 wheels for 3.14
(cryptography via an abi3 wheel), verified by building an offline wheelhouse and
installing it on Windows Server 2025.
REQ-G: state MySQL 8.0 as the standard for new installs; 5.7+/5.6 remain
supported on an existing server.
Lockfiles regenerated with uv pip compile. Production deps 44 -> 38.
Prod runs Python 3.13.7, not the originally planned 3.12. Align the
stack: CI both jobs 3.12->3.13, the IIS install runbook and the dev
setup guide to 3.13 (winget Python.Python.3.13). NOTE for whoever
maintains the offline kit: its wheels are still cp312 and must be
regenerated as cp313 before the next air-gapped deploy.
The plugin registry (instance/plugins.json), uploaded logos, floor
plans, item photos, and print files all write under instance/; with
the app pool at read-only, toggling a plugin in Settings surfaces as
an internal error and every upload fails. Grant Modify in step 7.3
and add the troubleshooting row.
The X-Forwarded-For rewrite rule alone is not enough: waitress 2+
strips forwarded headers from untrusted proxies by default, so the app
still saw 127.0.0.1 with the rule active. Trust the loopback proxy and
consume x-forwarded-for on the waitress command line; waitress then
rewrites remote_addr to the real client. Runbook gains the
allowedServerVariables unlock (500.52) and both troubleshooting rows.
The app can run as an IIS Application under an existing site
(e.g. https://host/ops/) instead of its own site + port:
- frontend: vite base via VITE_BASE_PATH; router history, axios
baseURL, and root-absolute asset/route paths resolve through
utils/basePath.js withBase()
- backend: MOUNT_PATH (env or .env) wraps the app in a WSGI
middleware that shifts the prefix into SCRIPT_NAME, so one knob
serves API + SPA under the mount
- docs: INSTALL-WINDOWS-IIS.md section 7b runbook + troubleshooting
rows; DEPLOY-WINDOWS-IIS.md pointer; commented examples in
deploy/windows/web.config and .env.example
Root deployment unchanged (MOUNT_PATH unset, base '/'). Also folds
two stray root-absolute callers into the shared plumbing
(MachineForm relationship-types fetch, reports CSV window.open).
Make the app distributable to other GE Aerospace sites (one self-hosted
instance per site, ADR-004). GE values remain the shipped defaults; every
site-specific behavior is now a Setting an admin can change in the UI.
Settings-driven site config:
- Branding: site/QR/badge logos, favicon, primary color (upload endpoints
mirror the map-blueprint pattern; new Settings > Branding section).
- ServiceNow: search/incident/change URL templates ({ticket}), ticket
prefixes, enable toggle. Defaults point at the current
geaerospaceqa.service-now.com global search. Disabled = plain-text tickets.
- Employee-id regex (employeeid_pattern), printer hostname template,
QR label targets (qr_target_printer / qr_target_usb, blank = asset page,
else URL template with placeholders), usb_label_style (barcode|qr).
- West Jefferson floor-plan PNGs removed from the tree; generic placeholder
ships as the map default and sites upload their own blueprint.
Security closeout:
- dashboarddefaults writes now require admin.
- Collector: generic error messages (no str(exc) leak); API key accepted
via X-API-Key header only (BREAKING: querystring api_key removed).
- IP-based login rate limiting (AUTH_RATELIMIT_* knobs) atop account lockout.
- Setting.set() creation race fixed (IntegrityError retry).
Release engineering and docs:
- __version__ 0.5.0 (distinct from __contract_version__, ADR-007),
CHANGELOG.md, Gitea Actions CI config, frontend version aligned.
- One wizard-first install story across README/DEPLOY; new CONFIG.md,
UPGRADE.md, BACKUP-RESTORE.md; CLAUDE.md and ROADMAP de-staled.
- Dockerfile multi-stage build now bundles the frontend; compose binds
MySQL to 127.0.0.1; stale database/schema.sql and one-off SQL removed.
Debt and fixes:
- .query.get() -> db.session.get() sweep; datetime.utcnow() removed
(naive-UTC via timezone-aware now); users.py on authz decorators.
- Fixed 4 stale tests (slides feed shape, shopfloor splitperemployee,
plugin contract purity) and the USB label page field mapping (both usb
modes emit the cmmc shape: device_id/device_desc).
- Health endpoint reports the real version.
248 tests pass; naming/style check green; frontend builds; fresh-DB
flask db upgrade + seeds verified; QR targets verified by decoding
rendered codes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
