Sometimes I need multiple versions of LiveCycle ES for JBoss installed, for instance a version 8.2 for delivering a training and a version 8.0 for a consultancy project. That is not easily supported out of the box. The official installation instructions for a customized install aren’t really difficult, but at over 200 pages the combined installation manuals are a bit tedious. So what we really want is to use the turnkey installation, but the standard turnkey installer will detect an installation is already present and will only allow to update and not to install alongside. Luckily that is pretty easy to circumvent if you know a little bit about the default installation paths on Windows. So here is how you do it.

  1. Do a completely standard TurnKey install of LiveCycle ES 8.0.
  2. Change the LiveCycle 8 services (JBoss and MySQL) not to start automatically.
  3. Backup the registry keys “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\JBoss for Adobe LiveCycle ES v8″ and “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MySQL for Adobe LiveCycle ES v8″ and then delete them.
  4. Search the registry for “Adobe LiveCycle ES” and when you find a key under “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\” back it up and delete it.
  5. Move your C:\Adobe\LiveCycle8\ folder elsewhere.
  6. Restart.
  7. Do a completely standard TurnKey installation of LiveCycle ES 8.2.
  8. Change the LiveCycle 8 services (JBoss and MySQL) not to start automatically.
  9. Restore your C:\Adobe\LiveCycle8\ folder.
  10. Restore the “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\JBoss for Adobe LiveCycle ES v8″ and “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MySQL for Adobe LiveCycle ES v8″ registry keys.

You can now start whichever version of LiveCycle you want from the services control panel. You can not run them at the same time due to port conflicts in both MySQL and JBoss, but fixing that is quite a bit more work. And I’m pretty sure this breaks the uninstall too.

4 Comments

  1. “it could be bunnies” » Blog Archive » Running multiple versions of LiveCycle ES simultaneously says:

    [...] yesterday I wrote about installing 2 versions of LiveCycle ES, but with the limitation that you can’t run them simultaneously. I didn’t really intend [...]

  2. els uyttenhove says:

    Hi,

    I found your blog when googling for information about LiveCycle ES. I’m doing an upgrade from version 7.2 to ES 8.2. Have you ever done livecycle upgrades? If so, can we discuss about it, because on the adobe site, I don’t find the information I’m looking for.
    I’m dutch speaking, and so are you, I think?
    Regards,
    Els

  3. Jochem says:

    I have not done upgrades from 7.2 to 8.x. If you have specific questions, you might want to try the LiveCycle group.

  4. els uyttenhove says:

    Thank you for your answer!