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Network installation


1 reply to this topic

kukumar

kukumar
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Posted 16 January 2007 - 10:59

Hello,

I have a special Problem:


We have computer measuring systems, which are also delivered to the power plants. Normaly there is a main control room with central computers which are connected than to measuring computers. These measuring computers can be far away (Several hundred meters). Therefore the idea was born to update the applications on the measuring computers directly from the central computer.

In order not to start an adventure having a real network installation I thought about the following approach:

- One puts the Original-CD into the CD driver of the central computer. One Installshield preprogram has the task only to copy the Installshield Release files from the CD into one predefined folder of the remote computer (Now I have the originals on the remote computer)

- On the measuring station there is an application waiting for command "There is new update data, please start the setup .exe file

- Taking security aspects into consideration I am thinking now about the question how to comunicate with the Waiting Task on the remote comupter. Additionally the measured systems are closed systems...

One of ideas was to put a flag in a definied reigistry key. This key is continuosly read by the waiting task. CAn i access the registry via network? I think not...

What i have else to think about when realising this approach? Has somebody an idea of something better? What about WMI?

Zweitze

Zweitze
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Posted 20 January 2007 - 00:49

Actually you can access the registry from a different computer through the network. For example, start Regedit.exe, then select File-Connect Network Registry, and you can browse the registry of a remote computer. You can write your own programs to do this too, the Win32 API has these functions.
Note that this solution relies on security - you may have to ask for credentials of the remote computer.

A better solution would be using a 'drop folder', just elect one folder as a drop zone, every remote computer checks this folder, and installs its contents.
Also consider using Active Directory - you can install software through Group Policy Objects. Or use SMS, which has better control.

Finally, you can install an MSI package on a remote computer. Like the registry solution it has security issues. To do this, you'll need WMI - look into the win32_Product object.