choco insists on admin rights even with non-default installation directory

[gsal]

Whenever possible, all software that I install, I install in a folder of my own, typically c:\Programs. Sure, it is outside of my home directory, but it does not require admin rights to be created. My point is, I don't install software to c:\Program Files, nor c:\Program Files (x86), nor c:\ProgramData

So, I installed choco to c:\Programs; yet, when testing the installation of a package of my own, that does not touch the registry, and it too installs under c:\Programs, choco insists of wanting Admin rights.

How come?

Is there a way to tell choco to not check whether I have admin right or not? and
let the process crash if I don't ? or let a subsequent process pop the question about admin rights, if needed?

Is it choco itself pre-emptively wanting admin rights to run the chocolateyinstall.ps1, even though I have nothing privileged there?

[corbob]

(I'm replying from my phone, so please excuse any brevity or typos)

I believe you're asking basically two questions:

1. Why does chocolatey alert about admin every time it's run?
2. Can the option to alert every time be turned off?

Basically, for every chocolatey command there's a method called to determine if admin is required for the command. Many of them just return yes or no, and if it returns yes then chocolatey will alert when you're not running as admin. This is why it alerts regularly, because in the default and suggested configuration you need to be an administrator.

Now for the second question: yes, there is a feature that I do not recall the name of, but it allows you to suppress the alert. It will also default to accept the alert if you pass in -y or --confirm. If you go to https://docs.chocolatey.org and search for the feature command it will show you the list of features and you should be able to find the feature by searching for the word admin.

[gsal]

Ok, thanks. I will look into this and other options, today; will report later.

[gsal]

Ok, got somewhere.

Revisited the docs; thankfully, I saw the page where they group choco functions on the basis of needing admin rights or not.

I had put together a self-installing *.exe for my program using Inno-Setup and included it into the nuget package; thus, in choco, I had been using Install-ChocolateyInstallPackage. Reading the docs in detail, I learned that Install-ChocolateyInstallPackage does assert UAC/Admin privileges.

Continuing with the docs, I learned that Get-ChocolateyUnzip does not assert UAC/Admin privileges; so, I stopped using Inno-Setup and, instead, I simply added my program files into a zip archive. It works.

But, I still get the "not elevated shell" warning and passing --yes or --confirm does not make it go away; I believe this would keep me from doing an unattended install.

Here is the test install using the local nuget package:

$ choco install myprog  --version="2.0.0" --source="C:\Users\<myuser>\codes\myprog\choco" --confirm
Chocolatey v2.5.0
Chocolatey detected you are not running from an elevated command shell
 (cmd/powershell).

 You may experience errors - many functions/packages
 require admin rights. Only advanced users should run choco w/out an
 elevated shell. When you open the command shell, you should ensure
 that you do so with "Run as Administrator" selected. If you are
 attempting to use Chocolatey in a non-administrator setting, you
 must select a different location other than the default install
 location. See
 https://docs.chocolatey.org/en-us/choco/setup#non-administrative-install
 for details.

For the question below, you have 20 seconds to make a selection.

 Do you want to continue?([Y]es/[N]o): y

[corbob]

It shouldn't prevent you from doing unattended. The --yes or --confirm will default to yes after 20 seconds. You can eliminate that prompt completely by running choco feature disable --name="'shownonelevatedwarnings'": https://docs.chocolatey.org/en-us/configuration/#shownonelevatedwarnings

[gsal]

That did the trick.

Thank you so much.