Cubase 8.5 Pro - Deployment of E-Licenser

[davethetekkie]

Steinberg are giving me a headache. I'll admit that Cubase 8.5 Pro is INFINITELY better than our outgoing Cubase Studio 4 software... it even looks like the .msi files provided for the main program and the included VST instruments behave themselves and install properly via GPO once you set it to ignore the language of the package... but that's where the good luck stops. The eLicenser dongle provided with Cubase only has a .exe installer with it... it's probably not the end of the world if I have to run it via Impero and do a run around the room for this one element (there are only 16 workstations in the room that will be running Cubase) but it's a loose end... and I'm not a fan of those. Has anyone had any success either getting hold of a .msi installer for the eLicensers or managed to get the thing to install via GPO via some other sorcerification?

 

Cheers!

 

D.

[MouseAT]

I've only done the e-Licenser as a scripted install (using System Center) for Cubase 7. Depending on the particular release of the e-Licenser, there should be a silent install command. For Cubase 7, the command was:

 

eLicenserControlSetup.exe --mode unattended --unattendedmodeui none

 

I believe older versions of the e-Licenser used the /S parameter.

 

The main problem is that if you try this on most PCs, you'll be prompted to approve the installation of the driver, as Windows won't trust the certificate out of the box. To work around that, perform the install on one machine manually, grab the Steinberg certificate from the local certificate store, then use a command like the following to install the certificate:

 

certutil -addstore "TrustedPublisher" Steinberg.cer

 

If you silently install the certificate with certutil first, you can then perform a silent install from the e-Licenser EXE without running into the certificate prompt.

 

Other than some sort of start up or shut down script (scheduled task?) to check for the presence of the e-Licenser and perform an installation if necessary, I don't know how you could do it with just a GPO unless you're enough of a wizard with MSI files to be able to create an MSI that just wraps around the existing EXE installer.

 

I suppose you could potentially build the e-Licenser components into a base image or deploy them as part of a task sequence in MDT if that's an option.

[jimmy_2k]

thanks Mouse. This was doing my head in as elicenser had changed the parameters!

[skell]

Apologies for digging up an old thread...

 

Where do you get the certificate from? I thought I'd exported it from the cert store, but installing it onto a different PC then running the e-licenser install results in still being prompted to trust the cert.

 

Also, the cert I extracted is WAY out of date. Removing the cert still allows to program to install on the original PC also.

 

What am I missing?

[MouseAT]

I think it's in trusted publishers, but I'm a bit rusty on this. I haven't built a Cubase deployment for a few years, and it's not in our deployment system at my current place of work.

[FWBD]

Anyone had any luck with deploying this through a MDT task sequence?

 

Currently pulling my hair out as I've got all the silent parameters for Cubase and eLicenser but whenever I set it up I always get a prompt to trust this publisher which halts the entire deployment. I've tested the command and got it working in a powershell script but it doesn't appear to be applying correctly in the task sequence. I've even tried creating an MSI of Cubase + eLicenser which works when run manually but fails again on the task sequence.

 

Am I missing something obvious here??

[MouseAT]

I wonder if it has something to do with the certificate import - perhaps the certificate store doesn't work the same way during the task sequence? Usually, if you're getting a prompt regarding trusting publishers, it's because the certificate isn't in the store.

 

I wouldn't know how MDT would be affected, as I've only done the install using SCCM, and it's always been done in the background after the task sequence has already completed.

Edited March 27, 2019 by MouseAT

[FWBD]

Yeah that's what we put it down to in the end. We think it's either permissions when accessing the UNC path where the certificates are stored or the administrative permissions needed for when installing said certificates.

 

We have a mapped drive which gets created temporarily as part of the imaging process to the MDT server so I put the files there so it was accessing a mapped drive instead of UNC. Worked a treat that time!

 

Now onto the next task of getting Cubase 10 to silent install

[MouseAT]

Nice, glad to hear you got there in the end.

 

I've never worked with Cubase 10, so I don't know if the command lines for the e-Licenser are any different, but now that you've sussed out the certificate part, that's bit's universal.