Standard projects & Active Directory - InstallShield "InstallScript MSI" Projects

valg

Members
1 posts

Posted 27 May 2002 - 16:54

Hello,

I would appreciatte ANY help in the following problem.

I have a set of products with a Server-Client architecture, and all the products have Standard InstallShield Developer 7 installations. That means that I have a Setup.exe along with the .msi file.

For some of the client products, the number of workstations using them can be large. That means that I want to have a way to perform distributed installation of these products. For that purpose I would like to use Group Policy & Active Directory. The problem is that although my installations are Windows Installer based, the Active Directory snap in does not allow to select an Setup.exe file, only a .msi from an administrative installation. But as we all know, the .msi file from a standard project will no run directly. Does this mean that I have to convert the standard project to a basic project in order to be able to use Group Policy ? Isn't this a big limitation?

Another problem is that I want to perform silent (unattended) installations, because I only want to anwser the setup questions once and record a response file (/r option in the setup.exe). If I have to change my project to a basic one, how can I do this?

I also want to distribute patches in the same way. How can I distribute them considering these problems?

Last, I would appreciate alternative suggestions to solve this problem, like using logon or startup scripts (and the inherent problems like administrative privileges, etc).

I thank you all for your help.

My Regards
Virgilio Gaspar

JohnAlt2

Members
6 posts

Posted 12 October 2004 - 11:00

QUOTE

Another problem is that I want to perform silent (unattended) installations, because I only want to anwser the setup questions once and record a response file (/r option in the setup.exe). If I have to change my project to a basic one, how can I do this?

Intrinsic to the Windows Installer Service (MSI) technology are "Transforms" which if you are producing MSIs you should be familiar with. These are configuration files that can modify an MSI installation to cope with different installations requirements. A Transform can do almost anything from changing the working directory to adding custom actions and other major changes.

There are various books, courses and ebooks that will tell you about MSI technology (including Transforms).

"ORCA" database editor can create transforms and is freely available in the Windows Installer SDK from the Microsoft web-site. See Wininst.com for links.

Any MSI installation that is not able to be directly run, or not able to run directly in silent mode is not a legitmate MSI as it does not comply with the Microsoft Windows Installer standards! More and more client sites use Microsoft best practise (i.e. Active Directory) for deploying software, not just huge corporates but much smaller sites as well.

John Bryan
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www.ALT2.co.uk
Application Integration Specialists

Stefan Krueger

InstallSite.org

Administrators
13,269 posts

Posted 12 October 2004 - 19:44

This is one of the limitations in Standard (now called InstalLScript MSI) projects, and one of the reason why sýou shuld better use Basic MSI. However there's a workaround that may work for you, please look at kb.installshield.com

InstallShield X (and maybe your version too) has a tool to generate "response transforms" which automatically creates a transform from the information you input on the dialogs

Stefan Krüger
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