Silent/Unattended Installations

[az]

I'm working part-time (as a student) at a small software company, and I'm going to be responsible for the installer in the future. Some bigger customers (Unis, mostly) have asked for more support for silent or unattended installs (I'm now quite sure which, actually).

Anyone of you working at a larger organization have any insight on how this is usually done or tips how you would ideally want this done (short of installing from a server onto all the clients). We'll likely be shipping MSI based installers, I'm evaluating at InstallAware at the moment.

Is it usually just done with a command line switch on each machine?

[Jammrock]

There is always a command line flag to do a silent/quiet/unattended install. If you are using an MSI you will need to learn the command lines for msiexec.exe:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/9361d377-9011-4e21-8011-db371fa220ba1033.mspx

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/227091

If you have a vendor supplied exe you can almost always get the command line options by going into command prompt and running:

program.exe /? [if that doesn't work try -?, -h, -help, /h, or /help]

But almost always the silent command is -s[/s] or -q[/q], or sometimes -silent[/silent].

When I install software like this I use a batch file and store the software on a network share. I use "net use" to map a drive using a generic local account (the the server hosting the share) that only has read rights (NTFS and share) to that folder, that way it is not a security breach if someone gets the username/password. To be paranoid sure about the security you can remove the user from the User group and in the user properties you can disable remote control and terminal services rights, which will block anyone from using the ID to log into the server.

Anyway, then run the installer from the batch file with the command line parameters, delete the drive when done, and that's it.

If you are using SMS/SCCM/WSUS (or equivelant) then you just need to advertise the package with the proper command line arguements and you are done.

A sample batch file would look like:

@echo off
echo *** Installing Program 1  ***

net use x: \\server\share passw0rd /user:installer

"x:\program 1\setup.exe" /s /log:c:\temp\prog1.log

net use x: /delete

[cjolley]

...
When I install software like this I use a batch file and store the software on a network share.
...

It's a good idea to run the batch file off the network too if you have a place to put it.
Then if you need to change the installer you only have to do it in one place.

[Jammrock]

True. I don't copy the batch to each computer. I usually store that in a network location as well and either call it from the network drive (in the case that the drive is associated with my tech AD ID) or if I push it I call it from a central location.

[MultimediaMan]

Lately, I've been pushing out batch files inside of self-extracting exes which "clean themselves" after installation: it makes things look a lot neater, with the files "disappearing" after installation.

WinRAR and WinZip both support creation of self-extracting exes which will call a program or file after extraction. FWIW, these have been for driver installation packages.