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Conference pamsrc::objectbroker

Title:ObjectBroker - BEA Systems' CORBA
Notice:See note 3 for kits; note 5 for training; note 1134 for releases
Moderator:TLE::PARODId
Created:Tue Jul 11 1989
Last Modified:Thu Jun 05 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:1413
Total number of notes:6391

1389.0. "Autoinstallation procedure for multi-client site" by STKAI1::T_ANDERSSON (Tomas Andersson) Mon Mar 24 1997 05:20

 Our customer wants to install OBB on up to 350 NT v3.51 clients.
 Each user is a Power User on her/his respective client.

 They want to perform the installation using some sort of script,
 i.e. without any user interaction. However, the users do not have
 the priviliges required for adding components in the Control Panel
 Network applet. Although this problem can be overcome using SMS
 from Microsoft, the users still have to interact with the
 installation dialogs, i.e. by answering a series of questions.

 According to Microsoft, this problem cannot be solved unless Digital
 can supply an installation program which installs all necessary
 components and make the required changes in the OS.

 Hence, we have come to the conclusion that there are two possible
 solutions:

 1. We, i.e. Digital, delivers some sort of software which installs
    OBB according to the contents of setup.inf and default settings,
    with some sort of /Q (quiet) switch to avoid all dialogs.

 2. We specify exactly what files have to be installed locally on the
    client, and what the necessary changes to the registry are. This
    information is probably available in the setup.inf file? However,
    our customer does not want to dig up this information by themselves.

 In short, is there a standard procedure for this type of multi-user
 installation?

 Thanks,

 - Tomas Andersson -

T.RTitleUserPersonal
Name
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1389.1REQUE::ctxobj.zko.dec.com::PatrickObjectBroker EngineeringMon Mar 24 1997 09:3415
I don't know of any standard procedure for multi-user installation.
Further, if they don't have privileges to run control panel applets, they
probably can't write into the areas of the Registry required for services
and probably can't install the images into the various system directories
with that very same privilege.

We'd need to know information like:

1.  What rights do their "Power Users" have?  

2.  Do they use NTFS for the system disk?


Paul Patrick

1389.2STKAI1::T_ANDERSSONTomas AnderssonFri Apr 04 1997 09:3438
 I'll try to give a more complete description of the problem:

 What our customer wants to do is to automate the installation of
 OBB on a large number of NT3.51 client machines. Under normal
 circumstances, this involves two GUI steps: (1) starting the OBB
 installation program from the Network applet, and (2) interacting
 with the installation program.

 The basic requirement is that the user should not have to answer
 any questions during installation, i.e. no GUI interaction at all.
 The installation process should take care of that. This problem has
 been solved with respect to the OBB installation routine itself;
 the OBB installation routine can be modified so that no questions
 are asked, i.e. no interaction is necessary.

 Problem number two is that the users do not have sufficient
 priviliges to install OBB. This problem has also been solved; the
 installation is performed in a tailormade NT service featuring all
 the necessary priviliges. This service is started whenever a user
 wants to install an application requiring OBB.

 The third problem, the one that has yet to be solved, is that in
 order to start the actual OBB installation itself, it is necessary
 to enter the Control Panel GUI and start the installation from the
 Network applet. In NT4, it is possible to start the Control Panel
 Network installation program programmatically, with the OBB install
 file as an argument. Hence no GUI interaction at all, which is what
 is desired. Unfortunately, this is simply not possible in NT3.51,
 according to Microsoft.

 So, when installing OBB on a large number of clients running NT3.51,
 it appears that each user has to do some manual work. Is there any
 way that this can be avoided, so that the installation process can
 be accomplished with no user interaction at all?

 - Tomas A -

1389.3REQUE::BOWERPeter Bower, ObjectBrokerSun Apr 06 1997 19:488
    
    Can you somehow send keystrokes to the display to bring up the
    control panel, then enter the appropriate info into the
    dialog boxes to start the install program ? Microsoft Test
    provides this capability - is it available through the
    win32 api ? Your service could probably do this and might have
    the privileges.