Third Party Software Deployment

OK, so I'm expecting to get a lot of quizzical comments from this - so just accept that this is the situation I am in, and that there isn't much I can do about it in the near future.

Does anybody know of a third party (preferably free) way of deploying software across a network without using GPO?

My curriculum server is currently corrupted to the extent that I am not able to modify GPO, or doing anything GPO-related. It is due to get fixed at the end of the summer holidays, but in the mean-time I have some MSIs that teachers are quite keen to have on the network.

Any ideas?

Use psexec from sysinternals to remotely run an msiexec command on the remote machine?

Ben

Haven't had a chance to try this yet but Purgos is an option...

http://albacore.softulz.net/phpbb2/index.php

I use Purgos. Short learning curve, easy deployment. It's free.

This product looks brilliant - apart from being an idiot and can't find the download link/location anywhere? :roll:

:roll:

I have not tried it, but you might want to look at -

http://wpkg.org/

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Originally Posted by tscnmuk

This product looks brilliant - apart from being an idiot and can't find the download link/location anywhere? :roll:

:roll:

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Whoops.. .main site is here:
http://www.softulz.net/

Download link on this page:
http://www.softulz.net/products.shtml

Flippin heck, looks like a tasty bit of free kit to be fair. I read up on its deployment abilities, does it do any package building as in snapshot as well as Msi and Exe deploys? In other words can it bulk modify registry and other machine tweaks easily?

I normally use ranger with its package builder but this almost looks better and it's free.

Flippin heck, looks like a tasty bit of free kit to be fair. I read up on its deployment abilities, does it do any package building as in snapshot as well as Msi and Exe deploys? In other words can it bulk modify registry and other machine tweaks easily?

I normally use ranger with its package builder but this almost looks better and it's free.

Has anyone else found that the purgos installer comes up with an error when you click on it.

I agree with Bobo, it does look tasty. I just wish I could get my teeth into it.

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Originally Posted by Bobo

Flippin heck, looks like a tasty bit of free kit to be fair. I read up on its deployment abilities, does it do any package building as in snapshot as well as Msi and Exe deploys? In other words can it bulk modify registry and other machine tweaks easily?

I normally use ranger with its package builder but this almost looks better and it's free.

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Best place to ask questions like that is going to be the forums for Purgos (see my first link) as they'll obviously know more.. I suspect it doesn't do stuff like repacking.. but then if it works as I suspect it might, you probably can run command line silent installs instead which is pretty much as good.

Another "todo" for me to play with at home though..

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Originally Posted by contink

"todo" for me to play with at home though..

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How you can bring IT work home with you is beyond me, I cannot stand to be near a computer after work anymore. Well home jobs have to happen but you know what I mean

sqdge,

Were you able to get purgos installed?

As for repackaging, no, but most programs are msi based even if they are compressed in some .exe so you can get them out, and if they are exe based typically they have /q or /s option to install the silently.

As for the bulk registry updates not yet, but you could push out a .reg file and run regedit /s RegEntries.reg to acomplish that task.

SofTulz.Net

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Originally Posted by Bobo

Quote:

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Originally Posted by contink

"todo" for me to play with at home though..

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How you can bring IT work home with you is beyond me, I cannot stand to be near a computer after work anymore. Well home jobs have to happen but you know what I mean

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Ah... I work from home for a number of schools so thankfully I don't spend all my time in with the kids. So slightly different kettle of prawns ;)

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Originally Posted by softulz

Were you able to get purgos installed?

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I was able to successfully install the older version of the program that's on your site. I am really impressed by the software - it does everything that I would want.

The only minor problem I'm having is that it is able to see some of the computers but it can't install the client on them. They have their firewalls switched off - so I can't quite work out why it isn't liking it. Annoyingly, they are the computers I most want to use this software for.

Thanks