ADSM-L

Reply to Win95 Automated inst

1997-03-12 10:26:00
Subject: Reply to Win95 Automated inst
From: Mike Stewart <STEWAJM AT AUDUCADM.DUC.AUBURN DOT EDU>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 1997 09:26:00 -06
*** Original Author:  ADSM-L @ MARIST - ** Remote User **; 03/12/97 12:15am

>
Jerry Lawson writes:
 > A guy in my department has been working on automated installs of the Win95
 > clients.  We have followed the instructions in the ReadMe file with the
 > level 6 client, and have used the Setup -r command to build an setup.iss
 > file for use in the silent install, which we have also successfully done.
 >
 > My guy's question?  We have several different scenarios for installation -
 > each will have a different setup.iss file.  But since the file must be in
 > the same location as the setup.exe we were wondering if there were any
 > options available with the Setup program - an option that allows to point
 > to an iss file with a different name?
 >
 > Jerry Lawson
 > jlawson AT itthartford DOT com

Hi Jerry,

Here is some additional information regarding the use of
installshield. See the -f1 parameter below to specify alternate .iss
.
.
.
*** Comments From: STEWAJM - Stewart, Mike; 03/12/97 09:14am

We are running into a similar problem in trying to automate
a local setup.  We are finding silent mode difficult to
work with the ADSM setup.

The problem we are running into is that silent mode wants
a fixed, ordered sequence of dialog prompts.

However, the ADSM install can branch off and display
different sequences of prompts.  This means that we have
to generate a new response file for each potential branch.
Then we have to predict which way the ADSM install will
branch for a given machine, and start setup pointing to
the appropriate response file.

For example (and I'm not positive this is one of the
problem areas, but just as an example):

If ADSM finds a pre-existing DSM.OPT file, it
throws up a dialog asking if it should use the old OPT file.

This means we have to generate an installshield response
file to handle the dialog sequence where there is no OPT file,
and another to handle the dialog sequence where there is an
OPT file.

Then, when starting setup.exe we have to detect whether or
not an OPT file exists, and then start setup pointing to
the correct response file.

For every "optional" dialog or prompt we have to generate a
new response file, and try to detect before starting setup
which path will be taken so we can know what response file
to point setup to.

This is pretty unruly.  We'd be alot happier just to have
the setup rules file so we could modify it to local
specifications.  (Many other vendors make their
rules files available.)
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