Administrative install

[aecspades]

How exactly are we supposed to use InstallAware to create an installation package that can be run from a network share (run from source)? The typical scenario is to run msiexec /a on the install .msi to create an uncompressed image, and then users run the install from that uncompressed image. I've created Web and Single File install packages, and then I've used the InstallAware Group Policy wizard to generate a .msi. When I copy that .msi to the network share and run msiexec /a the installation splash screen briefly appears but the install doesn't actually run and nothing gets installed (there is no uncompressed image). I also tried running the Group Policy Wizard and then specifying /a for the Command Line Parameter and then just tried to run (double-click) the subsequent .msi policy but that doesn't seem to change the result at all. Both Web and Single File build options seem to behave exactly the same. Am I missing something or is this not possible using InstallAware? I'm using InstallAware 10.10 on Windows XP if that matters.

[FrancescoT]

Dear User,

it is quite strange!

For what I know it is not an issue that can be attributed to your release of IA or OS.

Just to check, I have just now executed a simple project on my environment using IA2012 and XP, then converted to msi and I have not found any problem.

I'm sorry for my stupid question: of course you have tested your single exe and it works? Correct?

Let me know.

Regards

[aecspades]

Yes, the single setup.exe works fine. When I try to run the administrative install (msiexec /a) the "preparing to install" window appears for a few seconds but nothing else appears to happen - no further installation dialogs appear and no uncompressed directories are created. Are you saying when you do the administrative install it does work and does create an uncompressed image that can be installed from? I've also tried the same steps on Windows 7 and get the same results.

[FrancescoT]

Dear User,


Please excuse me, but by mistake I had understood that you wish to proceed with an installation via Active-Directory.

Anyway ragarding your question,
this is an msiexec.exe command line parameter - our command line parameters are totally different (ex: for silent setups, etc.)

However, we don't have an administrative install switch in our command line parameters since the script decides at runtime where each files are copied based on the state of the target system.

MSI behavior is not really customizable at runtime - InstallAware extends MSI to make it customizable - with the drawback being you can no longer do admin installs that work for every scenario.

Hope this helps you.

Regards

[FrancescoT]

A note regarding this topic discussion from Developers team.

Basically InstallAware offers runtime customizability and therefore this precludes the standard notion of administrative installs. However, there are many ways for them to achieve what they want -

a) Get INI File Settings on a, for example, $SETUPPATH$\setup.ini, to read any kind of custom parameters that you will expose (this will work with even a GPO MSI).

b) Use a command like "if Variable CMDLINE Contains parameter=value", to permit customization via the command line.

c) Or even any other method/combination of methods that uses MSIcode's runtime branching capabilities to achieve whatever the customer wants to do at runtime.

Essentially this eliminates the need to create an administrative install point, while preserving the full flexibility of other automatic runtime customization that the developer embeds into MSIcode. The customer here does not appear aware of the inherent meaning of MSIcode and the flexibility this affords. InstallAware will never support an administrative installation mode, because that beats the entire point of having MSIcode and runtime customization.

[aecspades]

Actually, I do understand that I can customize the installation with MSIcode. Apparently the "Developers team" doesn't understand that common command line switches like /a or /x could (and should, I would think) be automatically supported by the code that the project outliner creates. Sure, I can write code to do whatever I want, but the point is that InstallAware should automatically support certain common scenarios.

This line:

The customer here does not appear aware of the inherent meaning of MSIcode and the flexibility this affords. InstallAware will never support an administrative installation mode, because that beats the entire point of having MSIcode and runtime customization.

...is, frankly, rather arrogant and unhelpful and shows little regard for what the customer is asking; something as simple as "sorry, we don't support that feature but we might consider it in the future" would have been much more appropriate. The other part of the answer is at least useful and tells me that it's not available, thank you for that.