Software Deployment

Hi DuncanPaul,

Have you tried creating a log file and looking in there for the problem? Or doing a manual install and creating a log to see what the command lines in the manual installation are? "setup.exe /s /V /L*v c:\blah.log" - look in the log for "command lines" or "properties" down the bottom of the log.

A lot of setup.exe driven MSI's require a property called ISSETUPDRIVEN = 1 - you can pass this through on the command line or as a property in a transform.

You may also have to do some creative Custom Action editing, some vendor "packages" (cough cough) have custom actions to determine if they are being run from the MSI or being run silently and do some rather interesting things.

Hope this has helped somewhat. Good luck

Paul

thanks Paul, excellent tips, but I'm still having a shocker...

no matter what I try I can't seem to get it to log using command line, for some reason the command line you gave me didn't work, and I've messed around using a bunch of other options, it just doesn't seem to create the log file, and the install stops without any dialogs.

I have logged it using the reg property in
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer]
"Logging"="voicewarmup"
but this doens't give me any clues as to what they're using to install the HASP drivers.

ISSETUPDRIVEN does work however, but it doesn't seem to install the full product, it doesn't install the hardware lock drivers, or shortcuts etc.. even if I use the property to do a typical install.

another thing you've discovered for me, is that while ISSETUPDRIVEN does work, it doesn't appear as a property in the properties table.. any ideas much appreciated

Hi DuncanPaul,

Actually just did one similar, where I had to do a record of the setup "setup.exe /r" which generates a setup.iss in the c:\windows folder - copy this file to the same directory the setup lives in and run the setup.exe /S and it installed silently following the steps in the setup.iss - worth a try

Rgds

Paul

thanks Paul, yeah, I've tried that, no go unfortunately, as in the original post.

Oops yeah you did mention that. Sorry.

You did get a log file though right? Are there any properties in there that look interesting? Or if you search for "Command Line" minus the quotes you might see something like "ADDLOCAL=" and a list of features.

The other thing I thought of was that they are using a custom action to install the HASP drivers that may be in the UI section, or might have a condition on not being a silent install... worth a squizz in there to see if thats so and if it is, maybe put it in execute deffered and take out any conditions. But this is starting to get into "clutching at straws" territory.

Failing all else, you can try contacting the vendor.

Sorry I haven't been more help

Rgds

Paul

hey thanks Paul, yeah I followed your advice but couldn't find anything useful in the log, will look into each of the custom actions, thanks for the help, and although I'd say this is also clutching.. I did contact the vendor, who doesn't support silent installs. sweet.

...


in the end with this I removed the drivers from the snapshot and used a CA to install, but involved a bit of trial and error to get installed

When you need to watch the spaces and quotes with these. See http://unattended.sourceforge.net/installers.php


InstallShield with MSI
Recent versions (7 and above) of InstallShield's tools are able to produce MSI files. Read InstallShield's documentation for full details.

These MSI files may be shipped alone or with a setup.exe installer. These installers in turn come in two flavors, called "InstallScript MSI" and "Basic MSI". InstallScript MSI uses the traditional InstallShield switches. Basic MSI is another story.

To perform an unattended installation using a Basic MSI installer, you provide the /s /v"..." switches, where ... represents any additional switches you want to pass down to msiexec. These should include the /qb (or /qn) switch to make the installation non-interactive, so a minimal invocation would be:

setup.exe /s /v"/qb"
Just to make things interesting, any of these mechanisms might be combined with PFTW. For example, we eventually figured out that the IBM Update Connector requires these flags for unattended installation:

updcon532.exe /s /a /s /v"/qb"
The first /s tells the PFTW installer to extract silently. The /a tells it to provide the remaining switches to the underlying setup.exe. The second /s tells setup.exe to run silently, while the /v"/qb" tells it to pass /qb to msiexec, which causes msiexec to run non-interactively but display a basic interface.

Finally, InstallShield has a KnowledgeBase article which is less helpful than you might expect. Are we having fun yet?