setup.exe does not allow specfile creation

[Thrawn 6.7]

I am attempting to create an automated installer for our NI ACADEMIC SITE LICENSE DVD.  I have installed the Volume License Manager and created a network installer area.  It said that the files on the DVD did not require modification and simply copied them to the server.  I now need to create a fully automated script to install the software to around eighty PCs.  Looking at the FAQs it seems that the setup.exe in the network installation folder should allow me to create specfiles and do silent installations.  When I query the setup using /? it simply says "The following are valid arguments: [/log <log file>] [/root <root folder>] [/results <installation results file>"  This doesn't seem to be the same setup.exe as the one referred to in the FAQ.  Any ideas where I get the one that allows /createspecfile, etc?

Many Thanks in advance

Message Edited by Thrawn 6.7 on 12-18-2007 10:16 AM

[Thrawn 6.7]

BTW my VLM version is 2.1 and the setup.exe is 2.4.1.5

[JamesC]

Hi Thrawn,

The Academic DVD is slightly different to our normal installers, as it is a wrapper to call the individual product setup.exe files.

If you go into the individual product folders under the root DVD level, you will find another setup.exe this is the the exe you want to add to a batch script. Then in either the bin folder of the individual products or the root of the individual installers, there will be a template.spec file or silent_install.txt file that will allow you to modify the install parameters and add in registration information.

Regards
JamesC
NIUK and Ireland

[Thrawn 6.7]

Thanks for the info James.  That works fine but I'm still having trouble getting the machine to recognise the license server.  I don't know if it's a problem with this non standard academic installation but the instructions provided say that network installations should have a client folder.  Mine doesn't as VLM said before it created it that it did not need to be modified.  The only client folder I have is in the VLM folder on the server.  This does contain the vlmclient.exe but when you run this on the client it says -

There was an error configuring your software to check out a license from a network server. 

I've tried copying the vlm files to the root of the network installation and the local installation and running them from there too, but no luck.

Any ideas?

Many Thanks

[JamesC]

Hi Thrawn,

Ahh ok, to create the mslsetup.exe file, that you need to get the client computers to register with the server. You need to put the DVD into the VLM machine. Open VLM and go to create network installer. Find the DVD drive, and then go under the root folder and find say the LabVIEW folder open the folder and clcik OK, to tell VLM to create a network installer for this program.

Once that is finished, you will have a few extra files in the network installer than you do on the DVD. These files (mslsetup.exe, mslsetup.xml, xerces??.dll off the top of my head.) are the program to register the client machine to the network. These will only ever need to be done once for each machine, or whenever you change the network card.

You should be able to add mslsetup.exe to the end of your batch script, to register all licensable NI software to the VLM server.

Then on the VLM server, you can either setup the server to allow you to selectively allow or deny computers, or you can setup VLM to automatically allow all requests, upto the number of licenses you have.

Regards
JamesC
NIUK and Ireland

[Thrawn 6.7]

Hi James,

                 That worked brilliantly!  Thanks very much.  Unfortunately, it seems the MSIs provided only work when the computer is logged in.  If not they give the error -

Required MSI directory property PersonalFolder is in an invalid location "C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\My Documents\". 

I've spoken to support and they say they've never tried a silent install using pre login scripts.  I've got 100 machines to install it on so this is going to take a while...

Thanks for your help

Thrawn