Software Deployment

Open the MSI in your MSI authoring tool. From there, you should be able to access the dialogs used and thus the names of the properties, the values of which the controls will populate. Once you have those, you can specify the properties and their values on a command line. Let's say that the IP address and port number text boxes populate two properties called IPADDRESS and PORTNBR:

MSIExec /i [path_to_and_name_of_MSI] IPADDRESS="192.168.0.1" PORTNBR="80" [other_cmd_line_arguments]

Hi VBScab

Thanks for a very early response. I open the MSI in Wise and looked for dialogs and there are not dialogs and dialog table is also blank. I think the dialogs are generated via some custom action. Any ideas now.

Thanks

look @ the custom actions and see if they are appropriately named. Look at the conditions, sometimes they use the properties as conditions. Look in the property table and see if u can identify anything obvious. Look in the registry and see if there are any properties being written to the registry. just trawl for clues... plus u can always create a response file to the setup.exe if all fails...

Hi Kiptek

Thanks for the response. Avaya itself is recommending to do setup.iss silent installs. But i think modifying MSI-MST is the best way to do it. So far i couldn't find any clue about the dialogues from property table or custom actions.

if u can't find the properties then u can't do it, can u. i mean, it is not wrong to do a setup.iss coz it still does install the MSI. In fact u can pass whateva changes u have made to the config to the MSI while still using the setup.exe e.g:

Setup.exe /f2"C:\temp\Myapp_Setup.log" /v"ALLUSERS=1 REBOOT=REALLYSUPPRESS MYAPPPROPERTY=TRUE /qb- /lv C:\temp\Myapp_MSI.log"

its all a matter of company policy, and how hard u want to make a relatively simple thing. if the app just requires basic configuration i would just go the setup.iss way.

ORIGINAL: samanta123
there are not dialogs and dialog table is also blank. I think the dialogs are generated via some custom action. Another reason to hate InstallScript-driven installs...

Enable Windows Installer Debug mode in the registry, run the install interatively & and view the debug output using DebugView - this will tell you the property names and values in real time as they are modified on the dialogs.

Edit:
http://blogs.msdn.com/windows_installer_team/archive/2005/09/21/471793.aspx

Further to Jamie's reply, a simpler route would be to run a normal user install- i.e.with a UI - with a verbose log. ALL the properties set by the MSI will be recorded in it. It won't tell you which control the properties relate to but that won't matter - just sett hem appropriately in your transform or on the command line.