On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 1:50 AM, Gonéri Le Bouder <[email protected]> wrote: > 2010/8/4 Rob Townley <[email protected]>: >> Is there a .MSI to do the initial push of the windows client to >> windows operating systems using Active Directory. >> Is the only option the scripts that run on startup? logon? > > Hi Rob, > > I've to admit I'm not a Windows admin so please be tolerant :). Can you > explain > why do you prefer MSI package. > > Best regards, > -- > Gonéri Le Bouder >
i wish i wasn't a windows admin, but at least work lets me deploy Linux at will. MSI is the evil anti-thesis to NSIS. .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. 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. 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. 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. There are some tools listed close to the bottom of this wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer Tutorial on using WIX to create a MSI. Does not need Visual Studio, but does need .NET Framework 2.0 and its Service Pack 1: http://www.tramontana.co.hu/wix/ The bottom line is that providing a simple MSI agent, the userbase for Fusion / OCS would explode. _______________________________________________ Fusioninventory-user mailing list [email protected] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/fusioninventory-user
