Unattended installation

[stg]

Hey guys,

Almost at the end of my trial period and liking almost everything I see so far, with two nitpicks. One is the lack of file transfer, but I'm told that's "on the roadmap."

The other is "unattended installation." To me "unattended" means someone just has to run an executable and it works. For example, I'm coming from Meraki Systems Manager. They produce an installer that is account specific, so I just need the person at the remote machine to download and run that file, hit next next next, and then the agent checks in with home base. The user doesn't need to know anything about anything. Most of my user base is spread very far apart, with one or maybe two machines per customer, and these non-technical people need to be able to easily install this thing at least to the point that I can get in. How do you folks with similar issues handle that?

th

 

[Chris]

Hi,

You could modify the msi files and add your credentials in them with Orca, see guide here. They only need to open the msi, next next next and then when the Pulseway Manager opens everything is configured and they can close it by pressing the Ok button.

Chris

[stg]

The mst thing works as described in that post but I can't quite sort out how to modify the msi and just have one file. I'm a network guy not a Windows admin, so this is relatively new territory for me.

That part aside, even after applying the transform using the supplied instructions to insert the username and pass during install, I still need to rely on the user to click "Validate Account" afterwards. And it puts the interface front and center before the user.

I guess my point is that I would pay money for an installer that runs, validates itself, and just shows the user a "Finish" button to close the thing.

[Chris]

Hi,

You don't need to validate the account for Pulseway to work. That function is there just to ensure that everything is correct. Instead of producing a MST file you can open the msi file directly, append the changes to the property table and press the save button. This way you will modify the msi file directly and have only one file.

Chris

[stg]

So modifying the MSI directly was the way to go.

Just a tip for the next guy who is not a Windows programmer type - when you edit the MSI file in Orca, go to Tools -> Options -> Database and check the box that says "Copy embedded streams during Save As" before you save your new MSI.