Installing on networked computers

Suggestions
1

I’m wondering if the devs might consider something regarding installation. Or equally, if they’re not willing to consider it, perhaps my workaround (assuming it works, I’ll update when I know) could be included in the online documentation next to ‘running from a flash drive’ for anyone else in the same position who needs something to send their IT admins.

Context: I want to use Anki with my A-level students at my school.

Problem: When installing Anki, it saves all the files to the user’s Appdata in the C drive. The implications of saving to Appdata are 1 - you need to install separately for each user and 2 - because the files are saved on the C drive you’d also need to install separately for each machine they’d want to access the software from. This could be workable if the installer didn’t require admin rights, but it does. So the result is that a theoretical IT administrator would need to install Anki (accounts*computers)=(many) times if we wanted all students and staff to be able to use the software wherever they were on site.

Workaround: Similarly to the Flash Drive instructions, someone from IT installs the software, then copies the files from their Appdata to C:\anki.
Then they create a shortcut on the desktop “C:\anki\anki.exe -b I:\ankidata” as I is the user drive allocation. This would allow the user’s login, database, media and settings to persist when using different machines.

They’re trying it now so I’ll reply here if it does actually work. But ideally there’d be a way for them to be able to manage it all remotely, be able to install to every machine quickly and push future updates rather than me having to ask them to repeat the process every time there’s an update and only have it on the systems I use in my classroom to save them an inordinate amount of work. This would require the default installation to install to Program Files rather than Appdata, and the user profile location to be definable at installation.

I’m saying all this as if I know what I’m talking about, but really I have no idea it’s just what I’ve been able to figure out while I try to get it working!

Thank you so much for your time in developing this amazing software, I really hope I can get it working with my 16-18 year old students and that they find the value from it that I have.

2

Turns out it doesn’t like this. It creates the folder but then comes up with an error saying ‘cannot create data folder’ and then closes the program. But it does create the folder. This is with all admin privileges and permissions - perhaps it doesn’t like the data being in a networked folder?

However, running from C:\anki does work, it just creates the user data in their C drive Appdata which means they’ll need to re-enter login info on different machines.

3

Running from a network drive is not something I’ve tested I’m afraid. Running Anki from cmd.exe while pointing it at the drive may reveal a clue as to why it’s unable to write to the data folder, as that should show the underlying error.