Relaunch/Restart of Nextcloud client after an update/upgrade

Dear all,

I wonder why no one else didn’t ask this question before (at least I couldn’t find anything via Google and Nextcloud community):

Is there any option/parameter to automatically restart the Nextcloud client (on Windows clients) after a Nextcloud client upgrade? Cause if I install an update using the command below, Nextcloud gets closed and doesn’t come up again after the update has finished:

msiexec /package c:\install\Nextcloud-3.6.4-x64.msi /quiet NO_DESKTOP_SHORTCUT="1" NO_SHELL_EXTENSIONS="1" SKIPAUTOUPDATE="1" /norestart

The only available and admin-friendly way is to reboot the Windows client (as the Nextcloud client is enabled for autostart). However, as the Windows reboot isn’t necessary (we don’t use Windows Explorer integration), I would prefer to have some kind of relaunch mechanism after a Nextcloud upgrade…

(Edited)

Just right-click the icon in the lower right corner, choose exit, and then launch it again from start menu. But there is no remote restart option, as that would actually create quite a severe attack surface for endpoints, as a hacked nextcloud instance, suddently has the power of restarting (in endless looping) the clients after maybe having pushed some files for example. Nothing is impossible to hack anyway. Especially not if the server, gateway and OS of your Nextcloud has vulnerabilities.

@Kerasit : I know how to “restart” it manually. But as an IT administrator, I need a way to upgrade the application on many clients without rebooting the whole Windows machine. I don’t get your security concerns in this context - I have never talked about our Nextcloud server.

Btw: if other applications get updated (e.g. Firefox, AV solutions, team-communication applications…), they automatically get relaunched after the update has finished…

Ah sorry. I did read this wrong. Updating the client, should restart it already? It needs to stop it, to remove it, to install new version. So far so good. However this is the same with basically any other client packages I have installed any device? You has to specifically ask it to start, or add it to autostart applications.

If I updates my OneDrive application, it does not automatically start, unless I have configured it to do so (and not in the OneDrive app itself). I am no desktop management tecnician, and has very limited skills in that, however the few msi packaging I have been part of, we had to add an explicit command to start the application after rollout.

@Kerasit : we have already checked the checkbox “Launch on System Startup” (see Nextcloud manual https://docs.nextcloud.com/desktop/latest/navigating.html#general-window ). But after the upgrade, the application does NOT start automatically. But I understand that. This setting just means that the application starts after a Windows reboot. But we just do an upgrade (without reboot).

Do you remember the mentioned “command to start the application after rollout”?

Btw: by contrast the GUI installation DOES offer the possibility to launch the client after a successful installation:
Nextclood

How can this option be addressed when using CLI?

msiexec /i Nextcloud-x.y.z-x64.msi LAUNCH="1"

So they do have a launch command:
https://docs.nextcloud.com/desktop/3.4/installing.html#launch-after-installation

Sorry I do not know the command. However you could just execute the cmd with full path to the exe file. There is no, by Nextcloud builtin, command in the client itself. Same as with OneDrive and Google drive. For this you will have to use OS native commands for executing commands or start processes on the OS itself.

Please read the documentation carefully:

Note

This option does not have any effect without GUI.

Can anyone else help?

“Just” use a start command to start it?

I will try to do that as well, of course. However, I hope(d) to find a Nextcloud based solution for silent installations. And there is definitely a way to modify a MSI in the way I need it. I already tried to figure out how this works, but I ran out of talent :wink: Maybe someone else has more of it and may find my findings helpful:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/msi/customaction-table
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/msi/orca-exe

Or someone else knows anything about a built-in feature… let’s wait :face_with_monocle: