Windows 8.1 Installer Folder Cleanup

On my Windows 8.1 laptop with a small SSD (100GB), disk space was running out. When I checked disk usage by folder using TreeSize, I found that C:\Windows\Installer was taking up over 22GB! A quick online research revealed that I couldn’t delete files from this folder safely. However, I also learned that it could be holding files that were no longer in use or needed.

On further search, I found this neat little utility called Patch Cleaner, which looks for such unused files and gives you the option to delete them or back them up to another location. When I ran it, I found that about 15GB out of those 22 were being hogged by the files that were no longer needed! All of these 400+ unused files are MSP files. I have moved these files to an external hard disk just in case there is an issue later. Restoring the files is as easy as copying them back to the installer folder.

Thank you Patch Cleaner for freeing up over 15% of my disk space!

Big Error in Documentum Content Server 6.5 Fundamentals

EMC Documentum Content Server Version 6.5 Fundamentals has a big error about ACLs on page 134.

Erroneous statement about ACLs on page 134 of CS 6.5 Fundamentals

As highlighted in the figure above, it claims that ACLs assigned to folders are not used to define access to the folder. This is an incorrect statement. All you need to do to test this statement is to create a folder, alter permissions on it so that you have an effective permission of less than DELETE and then try to delete the folder. You will see that the deletion fails. Similarly, BROWSE permission is needed to look at a folder’s attributes and to retrieve it in query results.

Apparently, the intent is to explain the special usage of ACLs assigned to folders as mentioned in the last statement in the screenshot. However, that is in addition to and not instead of the regular effects of ACLs. In addition to controlling access to the folder object, the ACL assigned to it is used for enforcing folder security (if enabled), which restricts operations on objects linked to the folder. Further, when the default ACL mode for a Content Server instance is Folder, new objects created by that instance in the folder are assigned the same ACL as the one on the folder, by default. This is also loosely referred to as inheriting ACL from folder.