Software Deployment

i know there are many different releases of this product but as I recall this was an MSI from the vendor isnt it ? if so then you really shouldnt be snapping it unless absolutely necessary.

as for passing params to things such as this. Does the exe run when the user executes the app ? or is this running as part of the installation ? If the latter then you can add the paramaters as part of the custom action that executes the UI.exe

usually params would be added to the target column of the custom action table. (this is however dependant on the type of CA you use to run the exe)

Thanks for that, I probably should have given more information.

The installation comes as an msi and an msp. In the script I have

msiexec /I "setup.msi" ALLUSERS=1 /qn
msiexec /p "ArcGISServer91sp2.msp" /n{529CC8E9-5F7C-46AB-87CC-480A44F1A718} ALLUSERS=1 /qn

Not sure if I need the ALLUSERS=1 /qn when applying the patch, but anyway.

Then once it's installed, part of the application needs to be run, ServerPostInstallUI.exe to configure the application/users/groups etc.

Taking a snapshot of this configuration I've found that users and groups are created, and the application refers to the users and groups by their SID, not by their names. As part of the script I could add users and groups, but the SID would be different every time wouldn't it?

So I think this is a bit of a non-starter.
Unless someone can come up with a solution, I'll just have to add this configuration as part of the general server configuration.

Thanks.

You could create and admin install of the main install and then streamline the SP2 patch into the admin install. You could then create a Transform and add the ServerPostInstallUI.exe as a custom action which runs as one of the last things in the MSI. If the ServerPostInstallUI.exe has any command line switches that need to be used, you can add these into the custom action.

SID's are generated as a collection of a number of things. most importantly each SID has part of domain SID and part user SID information tied to it.

As you say each user will have different SID's but I expect the app you are using is capturing the SID as part of the creation of the user / group. Then using it later.

Michael's proposal seems sound and workable. Can you give a little more detail about the SID issue's if you still have issues are trying his options.