Software Deployment

to Wise and the world of repackaging. I am trying to specify the location of the msi within the msi so that it is displayed if the package has to self repair. At the moment the packages are pointing to c:\winnt\temp but I want then to point to a network share as users don't have the rights to specify the location manually under our lock down policy.

I am using Altiris to deploy the packages.

It is not required for you to point to the location of the msi for the self-healing to happen as the msi is deployed.

go to regedit

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products\317A1D89C83432A4A86B143BC7A4D274\SourceList\Net]you will have the information from where exactly it is installed from.

I hope this was useful to you.

Open your MSI in ORCA.
Go to the property table and add the following:
PROPERTY=SOURCELIST
VALUE=\\PATH TO YOUR MSI LOCATION ON YOUR SERVER\..
example if your MSI is on server LONDON in a share called PACKAGES and in a folder called ADOBE6.0,
Enter, SOURCELIST=\\LONDON\PACKAGES\ADOBE6.0\, in the property table. please note that SOURCELIST must be in CAPITALS!!

You also may want to consider putting your MSI source on a DFS share. It has several advantages.

- Redirection With straight Server\Share defined, moving this location would break the source links of all previously deployed MSIs. With DFS you can simply point the same DFS root to a different server.
- Load balancing If your MSI Source server gets overwhelmed (even temporarily during a major deployment) you can easily copy the files to a 2nd server and load balance.
- Site Aware If you have (or will have) multiple sites, DFS can determine which site you are in and point you to local server(s).
- Redundancy You can set up multiple MSI Source servers if one becomes unavailable, users can be redirected to another available server.

All in all, it gives you many more options down the line.

I agree with everything above.

Additional note: if you're working in a locked-down environment, consider these things:

1) Does your network environment allow MSIs to automatically run with elevated priviledges? If so, they your MSI WILL be able to access restricted files and keys.

2) You can manually set permissions on certain keys and files to allow your application/installation to function properly. Look this up in Wise help, OR learn how to use the free command-line utilities RegDacle and XCacls... call these utilities in/as CustomActions.