Getting the Typemock TFS build activities to work on a TFS build agent running in interactive mode

calendarAug 2, 2014 · 3 min read · Uncategorised  ·
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Windows 8 store applications need to be built on a TFS build agent running in interactive mode if you wish to run any tests. So whilst rebuilding all our build systems I decided to try to have all the agents running interactive. As we tend to run one agent per VM this was not going to be a major issue I thought.

However, whilst testing we found that any of our builds that use the Typemock build activities failed when the build agent was running interactive, but work perfectly when it was running as a service. The error was

 1 
 2
 3Exception Message: Access to the registry key 'HKEY\_LOCAL\_MACHINESOFTWAREWow6432NodeTypeMock' is denied. (type UnauthorizedAccessException)  
 4Exception Stack Trace:    at Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey.Win32Error(Int32 errorCode, String str)  
 5   at Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey.CreateSubKeyInternal(String subkey, RegistryKeyPermissionCheck permissionCheck, Object registrySecurityObj, RegistryOptions registryOptions)  
 6   at Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey.CreateSubKey(String subkey, RegistryKeyPermissionCheck permissionCheck)  
 7   at Configuration.RegistryAccess.CreateSubKey(RegistryKey reg, String subkey)  
 8   at TypeMock.Configuration.IsolatorRegistryManager.CreateTypemockKey()  
 9   at TypeMock.Deploy.AutoDeployTypeMock.Deploy(String rootDirectory)  
10   at TypeMock.CLI.Common.TypeMockRegisterInfo.Execute()  
11   at TypeMock.CLI.Common.TypeMockRegisterInfo..ctor()   at System.Activities.Statements.Throw.Execute(CodeActivityContext context)  
12   at System.Activities.CodeActivity.InternalExecute(ActivityInstance instance, ActivityExecutor executor, BookmarkManager bookmarkManager)  
13   at System.Activities.Runtime.ActivityExecutor.ExecuteActivityWorkItem.ExecuteBody(ActivityExecutor executor, BookmarkManager bookmarkManager, Location resultLocation)

So the issue was registry access. Irrespective of whether running interactive or as a service I used the same domain service account, which was a local admin on the build agent. The only thing that changed as the mode of running.

After some thought I focused on UAC being the problem, but disabling this did not seem to fix the issue. I was stuck or so I thought.

However, Robert Hancock unknown to me, was suffering a similar problem with a TFS build that included a post build event that was failing to xcopy a Biztalk custom functoid DLL to ‘Program Files’. He kept getting an ‘exit code 4 access denied’ error when the build agent was running interactive. Turns out the solution he found on Daniel Petri Blog also fixed my issues as they were both UAC/desktop interaction related.

The solution was to create a group policy for the build agent VMs that set the following

  • User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode - Set its value to Elevate without prompting.
  • User Account Control: Detect application installations and prompt for elevation - Set its value to Disabled.
  • User Account Control: Only elevate UIAccess applications that are installed in secure locations - Set its value to Disabled.
  • User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode - Set its value to Disabled.

Once this GPO was pushed out to the build agent VMs and they were rebooted my Typemock based build and Robert Biztalk builds all worked as expected