Network Install when client need to be customised
Hello,
(Apologies if this is in a FAQ somewhere, however I couldn't find anything obvious).
I'm not an expert on installer technology (I'm a S/W engineer by trade, & my personal experience of installers under Windows is limited to the Inno Setup compiler), but I've been asked by an acquaintance about deploying some software on a Windows domain, where the clients have restricted access rights, and the S/W need to be silently installed on the clients (could possibly be triggered by the client running a menu item, but that's about the limit).
I know he could set up an MSI on the deploy server etc. however there are client-specific things that need to be configured as part of the install. For example, each client needs to know the location of a database held on the server, & the UNC path of the DB won't be known until the master MSI is deployed on the server. There are also licence keys etc. Ideally he'd like some kind of Wizzard that the server admin can run once to set these things, which are then incorporated into the MSI/whatever install for the clients.
Is there something low-cost that can do this? Client numbers are likely to be a few tens of seats per site, and he doesn't have funds for a hugely-expensive solution.
Ta,
Tim.
(Apologies if this is in a FAQ somewhere, however I couldn't find anything obvious).
I'm not an expert on installer technology (I'm a S/W engineer by trade, & my personal experience of installers under Windows is limited to the Inno Setup compiler), but I've been asked by an acquaintance about deploying some software on a Windows domain, where the clients have restricted access rights, and the S/W need to be silently installed on the clients (could possibly be triggered by the client running a menu item, but that's about the limit).
I know he could set up an MSI on the deploy server etc. however there are client-specific things that need to be configured as part of the install. For example, each client needs to know the location of a database held on the server, & the UNC path of the DB won't be known until the master MSI is deployed on the server. There are also licence keys etc. Ideally he'd like some kind of Wizzard that the server admin can run once to set these things, which are then incorporated into the MSI/whatever install for the clients.
Is there something low-cost that can do this? Client numbers are likely to be a few tens of seats per site, and he doesn't have funds for a hugely-expensive solution.
Ta,
Tim.
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Posted by:
anonymous_9363
14 years ago
the UNC path of the DB won't be known until the master MSI is deployed on the serverIsn't now the time that things like that should be planned? Surely the share name and the eventual path should be standardised, meaning that th eonly variable will be the server name? In that case, it will be simple to either create a transform for each server containing the server name or, more efficiently, build a Custom Action in a single transform that identifies the Business Unit/Department/Company/whatever and sets the servername and assigns it as a property value. The property is then used for the relevant file or registry entry. License keys can be set in a similar way.
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