Third Party Software Deployment

[sqdge]

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?

[plexer]

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

 

Ben

[contink]

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

 

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

[Oakie]

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

[tscnmuk]

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

 

[gnarlyc]

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

 

http://wpkg.org/

[contink]

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

 

Whoops.. .main site is here:

http://www.softulz.net/

 

Download link on this page:

http://www.softulz.net/products.shtml

[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.

[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.

[sqdge]

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.

[contink]

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.

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..

[Bobo]

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

 

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

[softulz]

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

[contink]

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

 

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

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

[sqdge]

Were you able to get purgos installed?

 

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

[contink]

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.

Actually I'd beg to differ somewhat, especially for primary school software (welcome to our world/hell/etc..). For all that we've a good wiki and oft quoted resources like appdeploy to help though..

 

If nought else the command line functionality is a {deity} send

 

 

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.

[whine] but that's too much like hard work surely.. [/whine]

[softulz]

I stand corrected.

 

Is there a particular operating system that purgos is not able to connect to? What errors show up in the history?

[sqdge]

I stand corrected. )

 

Is there a particular operating system that purgos is not able to connect to? What errors show up in the history?

The only difference between the computers that do successfully get the client and those that don't, are that those that don't are located in a different room. All the switches and routers are the same - none of which are firewalled.

 

I have had this problem in the past with another program, and found the only solution was to install the client manually on the machine. Is that an option with Purgos?

[softulz]

Sorry for the delayed response, I didn't see the email notification for the reply.

 

Manually installing the agent should be as simple as copying the sftzExxCmd.exe file to the agent in the C:\Purgos directory and running sftzExxCmd.exe -install

[chrbb]

Resurecting an old thread here - very silly question but I have my neurotic head on today!

If I use purgos to install software on the teacher's laptops (used it in suite and it's brill!) does it leave any sort of software running that would make their laptops vunerable whilst on their home broadband? They have windows firewalls turned on but I'd thought I'd err on the side of caution before I use it on the laptops.

[softulz]

The agent uses 2 forms of communication.

 

1) DCOM for Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)

2) RPC for agent server communication

 

The first is configurable by the user but default requires that the connect be made using Administrator credentials.

 

The second is specific to purgos and uses NTLM authentication and requires the that server connecting to the agent be an local administrator on the computer that is running the agent software.

 

So in short only adminisrators may connect to the purgos agent.

 

Ryan Ackerman

[email protected]

http://www.softulz.net

[sktrdie]

At our office we're using uDeployer. It's a very simple application that does its job. It especially works great for 3rd party software deployment to many computers - we have about 150 computers and it works great.