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I haven't tried it yet but it sounds good... Maybe it could be integrated with unattended.sf.net (?) Regards Rosario -----Original Message----- From: Jerry Haltom [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, December 29, 2003 10:10 AM To: Patch Management Mailing List Subject: Windows automated software deployment tool This message is a copy of one sent to NTBugTraq, as requested by Norberto Meijome. I have put together and have been using in production (about 25 computers, not much) a very simple, bare-bones, Windows automated software installation and management tool. The basic idea follows that of SMS and other similar products: pushing software installs and upgrades to a variety of workstations, unattended, with no user interaction, with "profile" support for different system configurations. The difference between these other products is how simple this one is. It boils down to nothing except a 1200 line .js (JScript) script. It's very easy to maintain and understand, and has absolutely no server side overhead (it is installed on each workstation, as a service, and pulls it's package list from a standard Windows share). It's worth noting that I use it with a Samba PDC. No Windows server back-ends. A common problem I've noticed with all the commercial systems of similar class is they require something on the server end: either Active Directory, IIS, etc. This doesn't. This doesn't even require a Windows domain at all. Just a centralized file share. It also doesn't rely on any particular packaging method. MSIs are nice, but worthless until every piece of software you use comes in one. Since running it as a service is the best way to do it, it will install packages in the background, without user interaction. In fact, I've had instances when I've installed software such as Office while the user was using their system. The icons just appeared on the desktop while they were working. All the configuration files are in very simple XML. No GUIs. Anyways, it's free/open source (GPL) and such, so anybody is welcome to take a look at it, improve it, and use it themselves. I just now stuck the package up on SourceForge (for lack of a better place). The .zip includes some instructions for getting it up and running (Windows Resource Kit necessary). I welcome all feedback! I've only tested it on Windows 2000 by the way. The SourceForge project page is http://wpkg.sf.net Jerry Haltom Feedback Plus, Inc. And this part was added by me just now: Wpkg as i've said is very simple. You just set up command lines to run an installation procedure unattended (differs by package, except for MSIs). Thus, it wouldn't seem to hard to me to automate scraping Windows update or MS's hotfix .xml file and creating wpkg packages for them automatically! -- Jerry Haltom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Feedback Plus, Inc. |
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