[Fusioninventory-user] Is there a MSI to initally push the agent out to win clients?

[Rob Townley]

On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 4:09 AM, Guillaume Rousse
<Guillaume.Rousse at inria.fr> wrote:
> Le 07/08/2010 00:22, Rob Townley a écrit :
>> .MSI files are  Microsoft Installer format.  With a OCSagent-setup.MSI
>> installation program,
>> current MS Active Directory administrators would be much more likely to
>> deploy the agent because it can be seamlessly pushed out with a couple of
>> clicks to all 10,000 workstations at next bootup.   I push out
>> OpenOffice.msi and FrontMotionFirefox.msi
>> and their updates to all workstations by default using this.  But to
>> use ActiveDirectory to _push_ software,
>> the software must be packaged as a MSI.  So obviously, OCS / Fusion
>> can fill a major void.
> Hi Rob.
>
> I've been very interested by msi packages too, hence the creation of a
> ticket in fusioninventory tracking system:
> http://forge.fusioninventory.org/issues/199
>
> However, unless I'm wrong, msi package deployment only occurs when
> rebooting the target computer. Which largely reduces the difference
> between 'pushing' software and 'pulling' them from boot-time scripts.
> And I don't want to reboot my hyperv servers just to install new software...
>
> Otherwise, they still seems to have advantages over standard interactive
> installers:
> - installation/upgrade logic handled by AD, garantishing consistent
> behaviour between software for users, and less work for developers
> - ability to uninstall automatically the gpo doesn't apply anymore
> - automatic restoration point creation on target computer
>
>> What is a little trickier is configuring the default install, but not
>> too difficult and
>> there are options.
>>  1.) If sysadmin can use a default hostname for the server, then no
>> configuration is necessary.
> Being a slave to default configuration values is not very appealing.
>
>>  2.) Server 2008 uses XML for creating Group Policy Objects to
>> configure pushed out
>> Microsoft Installer Files so that a single MSI could be configured as
>> Group Policy Object.
> We have initial admx/adml templates already, see in the contrib
> directory. The only issue being fusioninventory using two different
> locations in registry on 32 and 64 bits hosts, because it is only
> available in 32bits. Separating perl itself from the agent package would
> help there.
>
>>  3.) Or the admin could make a Microsoft Installer Transformation
>> (MST) package to modify - which isn't
>> too hard either because it is really just the diff from the original MSI.
> Really too much work, compared to previous solution, and still suffering
> from the you-have-to-reboot-to-apply-the change issue.
>
>> The bottom line is that providing a simple MSI agent, the userbase for
>> Fusion / OCS
>> would explode.
> Or just make life eventually easier for the current user base. At least,
> having a exhaustive list of available deployment strategies would be a
> huge benefit for unix admins coming to windows world.
> --
> BOFH excuse #33:
>
> piezo-electric interference
>
>
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>
>


Yes, MSI installs generally are installed on reboot, but most AD
admins i know do not bother
with .EXE installs from login scripts.  If they can't find a .MSI
installer, they move onto another solution.

When i searched for adml, nothing was found, but i did find them manually.
I hope i can figure out the translation and howto translate to english.
Would the ADMX/adml templates work for ocsinventory-ng agent installer as well?