Tomasz Chmielewski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
My "dream" software upgrader/installer/remover for Windows:
a) installable silently when doing unattended install (preferably
in windows_installer.bat file to hide username and password when
doing unattended install):
windows_installer --silent --server 192.168.1.1 --user john
--pass password
Currently I'm storing the values in the registry and changing the access
rights so that only System can read them (Might need to add Administrator
to that too).
b) runs on Windows in the background, connects to the server
using SSL (to secure username and password) when booting, and
fetches the instructions, sends software installed etc.
I've not considered the need to use SSL at this stage. (And I'm not sure
that I've configured MySQL to use that correctly yet either - but I will,
one day.)
c) server part as a dameon (on Linux, as most of use run Samba I
think):
- configurable via https web interface
Time to confess - I've never done anything using https. My inclination
would be to 'get it working' using http and then hope that someone else
would be inclined to help me convert to https. (Although as I write this I
realise that there's someone thinking 'but it's sooo easy! You just do
and there it is.')
- can configure what clients should have which software
This I like.
- report which software which client has installed (and what is
to be installed)
I think I'm coming at it from the other (wrong?) way - the client finds out
what it has and what it *should* have and then tries to make the lists the
same. I like the idea of the server being able to do the same calculation
and "predict" what the client should be doing, though.
- "install" button to install/uninstall/upgrade the missing
software now
For users? Sounds attractive. I've been thinking about having a web
interface which would allow users to select applications for which we have
a site license or are freeware and allowing them to choose which of those
packages are installed on their desktop. Or to remove packages they don't
like. (I have one user who swears by virtual desktops. I have others who
swear *at* virtual desktops...)
- configure to install software on Winodws boot
I'd been thinking of installing software on the next boot always, but I can
see that this would cause problems when, for example, a user has to reboot
in the middle of work because Windows Update has just installed lots of
stuff and only then remembers that he asked for to be installed on
his machine at the next boot. And takes ages to install...
- configurable to install software from a password protected file
server / ftp / http etc.
Don't immediately see how easy it would be to implement installations from
ftp / http servers. Password protected samba servers would probably cover a
high-enough percentage of uses for the time being, I hope.
So far there is nothing like it I think, WPKG would be the
closest to it (but very far from what I described, too) - so I
decided to develop a web interface for it (should be available in
a month or two).
Sounds good - my initial attempts with WPKG were disappointing. I tried to
perform an AutoIt install, which persisted in hanging when run from WPKG
but worked fine when running on the desktop. A quick mail to the wpkg list
didn't produce any examples of 'known good' autoit scripts, alas, so I
don't know whether WPKG and AutoIt are compatible. (I know AutoIt is the
last resort for many of us and in my opinion should Be Avoided if possible,
but it's not always possible and I'd hate to implement a solution which
only worked for those installers which play by *our* rules.)
These XML entries are quite OK - it's relatively easy to make a
web backend for it, which I think would attract far more people
than when they had to rely only on editing text files.
I think that's a very sensible point. Maybe I should add the ability to
store 'simple' {install/remove/upgrade/test} commands in a database, using
batch files as a last resort. I think it's important to have batch files
(or perl / JScript / VBScript scripts, perhaps) available because they
allow us to perform conditional processing which would get rather difficult
in an XML entry. Well, so I think, but I'm speaking from a position of
ignorance... anyone care to enlighten me?
WPKG lacks a lot, too - checking for installed software against
Windows Add/Remove Software is one example.
That's more or less where I've been populating my 'test.bat' scripts from.
(-:
How do we determine what should be installed/removed etc.?
Make a query to the SQL server with the work stations MAC address. Now, in
my case (and I might or might not be representative of others) I'd like
that query to lookup which licences I (as sys admin) have allocated to that
hardware address, and then tell me the directories containing the
install/remove/test scripts. I can see that might not be relevant for other
people, so perhaps this query sh
