Zulip on Active Directory working in 5.8.1 and not Working in 5.9.2

[Atygor]

Instead of running as intended for low priviledged users, on the same server, it requires to run as an administrator since the update, but we really don't want to grant them admin rights.

Why is that?

Is there a way to disable Update Notifications? Since in both of current ways Zulip results in being not usable for our specific needs.

[dalstede]

We're having the same problem. Windows Server 2019 x64 Terminal Services environment and users have no administrative permissions. Working fine with 5.8.1 until yesterday, now after the Update to 5.9.2 the desktop application does not open on login and users don't seem to be able to open the application manually.

Executing as Administrator seems to work but won't help the users. Users also are identified via Active Directory.

[Atygor]

What i did, maybe it helps: rollback to 5.8.1 and then edit the Zulip settings.json (in user Appdata) in order to disable Auto-Update. That way it is running and not spaming that insisting Push Notification.
Greetings.

[dalstede]

Thank you for the follow up. I'll probably have no choice. I checked with the few users that were only and they were either using the web version or a user profile local version in AppData\Local\Programs\Zulip.

[andersk]

I can’t reproduce this. When testing with a low-privileged user on Windows 10 (member of the Guests group), I have no problems installing 5.9.2 for myself, upgrading 5.8.1 to 5.9.2 for myself, using 5.9.2 if it was installed system-wide by an administrator, or upgrading to 5.9.2 for myself if 5.8.1 was installed system-wide by an administrator. No administrative rights are required.

Can you clarify exactly what you saw that suggested administrative rights are required, and what you did to trigger that?

[Atygor]

Well we have strongly restricted users, and when I updated it and/or reinstalled it system wide as administrator, only one low privileged user could open up the programm normally, the second to start would not get anything, no start up of the app nore notification why, if I would start the programm on the same low privileged user as admin, filled in uac, I could have it start and then could run multiple instances that way, but since granting them admin rights is not a possible scenario, that seems to be the problem. Did you try to open the app on multiple Users while reproduction?

[andersk]

Running the system-wide installation of 5.9.2 from two different users in the Guests group works fine for me.

[dalstede]

Can you clarify exactly what you saw that suggested administrative rights are required, and what you did to trigger that?

I don't know if OP also uses a Windows Remote Desktop Services environment but that's where I encountered the Problem. On the RDP Client (Windows 10) I could install 5.9.2 as the Administrator and run it as unprivileged user. In the remote sessions however the unprivileged users could not open Zulip. Per the zulip client settings it was configured to open on startup but it didn't. When users clicked the desktop icon, it wouldn't start either.

I logged in via web access and noticed 3 of our users were online. I checked with them and one had opened Zulip in the browser, while the other 2 must've had an old config where I hadn't yet deactivated the auto-update, so when confronted with the "update for me / update for all" dialog they will have installed a local version in their AppData directory because that's what they were using.

As Administrator I uninstalled 5.9.2 and reinstalled 5.8.1 and users could log in again. We run 2 Windows Terminal Servers and the behaviour was the same on both.

[Atygor]

Yes, indeed we are using Windows Remote desktop, with one centralised install and for each user own appdata config, I think that the users had no access to one of the new files in install folder, if it was already opened in an other instance.

[dedisoft]

Hi,
Same here. Each user has Zulip installed on their own profile (app-data).
So they are all rights on folders used by Zulip.
But since 5.9 version, Zulip refuse to start. The program starts and then close without any errors or error on any log file.
How can we enable a debug log at startup ?
Thanks

[dedisoft]

Hi,

As I see, Zulip Desktop use Electron 18.0.1.

Electron 18.2.2 includes a fix for "crash on Windows when opening apps in multiple, separate user sessions.".

https://www.electronjs.org/releases/stable?version=18&page=2
electron/electron#34161

Perhaps this is the cause of the bug.

Can you try using Electron 18.2.2 ??

Thanks !

Regards,

[dedisoft]

Hi,

For our internal needs, I've compiled Zulip desktop using these versions of eletron (by modifying package-lock.json file) :

    "electron": "^18.3.14",
    "electron-builder": "^23.5.1",
    "electron-notarize": "^1.2.1",

Zulip desktop now runs fine on our Windows Server 2022 environment.

Regards,

[xchemax]

Same problem here, 2 users without administrative permissions can't run on the same server with Remote Desktop Services. Tested on Windows 2012 and 2022.

[xchemax]

I have compiled 5.9.3 with the electron versions indicated by dedisoft and works perfectly. Thanks dedisoft!

[andersk]

We released Zulip Desktop 5.9.4 today with Electron upgraded to 22.0.0. Can someone affected by this issue check if it’s now resolved?

[xchemax]

Thanks for the upgrade, I can confirm that the problem is solved with this version.