SOLUS MSI and GPO Deployment

[Arthur]

Not sure, did you get a PM from anyone?

Nope. No explanation whatsoever (which is unusual). I usually get a PM from a mod.

 

The MST didn't contain any school-specific info or copyrighted Capita files/code.

 

@Dos_Box. Any ideas on what happened?

[sparkeh]

Anyway, SaaS for the win

Well, that we can agree on

[matt40k]

Nope. No explanation whatsoever (which is unusual). I usually get a PM from a mod.

 

Might have been me being a twonk - saw MSI and hit report - then re-read 30 secs later and went, pleb, its MST. Sorry if it was me - this is why I do frequent releases and have undo options\backup options

[nick3young]

Ha... I have started a bit of a debate here haven't I?!

 

The way I see it, similar to what Matt40k has said... we use 'Symantec Endpoint Protection'. And like with SOLUS, we can push out the AV agent to clients using the 'Symantec Manager'. But it is much more convenient to deploy the agent as an MSI via GPO and then have the agent pick up the definitions from the server. This is exactly what I would want from SOLUS - deploy the agent via MSI and pick up future updates from the SOLUS server. We deploy 250+ applications and SIMS is the only single one (after a new computer build or reimage) that we have to remember to add back on! Deploying via MSI will solve that.

 

As far as I can tell, there are three bits of information that needs inserting into the MSI to make the install 'silent': (1) Agent Service Address (2) Deployment Server Address and (3) RSA Keypath.

 

I've managed to insert the first two into the MSI via an MST... but I'm struggling with the 3rd one, the RSA Keypath. This file is created when you click 'export files' in SOLUS (like you can see in Michael's post at the top of this page). When you install the SOLUS agent manually, you specify where this file is as part of the installation process. The problem I'm having is trying to bundle this file as part of the MSI and suppress the prompt for it.

 

Arthur... can you repost your MST please? Does that have the answer?

[psydii]

Why they couldn't just put a custom action in the msi to run the script is unknown.

 

Except that Capita just own one programming book: How to write Windows 3.1 software, and they've not finished it yet.

 

To be fair(*) to them, they have two: Introduction to the .NET Framework (v1.0) . (If memory serves, back in 2001/2 the pure dotnet way eschewed msi for application deployment)

 

 

(*not actually fair.)

[Arthur]

can you repost your MST please?

MST attached again. Hopefully this time it won't get deleted!

 

Does that have the answer?

It does almost everything you want. Here's what you need to do...

 

1. Export the SOLUS 3 agent files using the previously mentioned 'Export files' option.
    
    
   
2. Download the attached MST to the same folder as the MSIs and Solus3.Keys.DeploymentService.Public.xml.
    
    
   
3. Open the MST in InstEd or Orca. Go to the Property table and edit the DEPLOYMENTSERVERADDRESS to point to your SIMS server. Save the MST.
    
   
    
    
   
4. Install SOLUS3AgentInstaller_x64.msi with the MST on a test computer (at least to start with). e.g.
    
   

   @echo off
   setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
   set SCRIPTDIR=%~dp0
   set SCRIPTDIR=%SCRIPTDIR:~0,-1%
   
   msiexec /i "%SCRIPTDIR%\SOLUS3AgentInstaller_x64.msi" TRANSFORMS="%SCRIPTDIR%\SOLUS3AgentInstaller_x64.mst" /L*V "%TEMP%\SOLUS3AgentInstaller_x64.log" /qb!

   
    
   

5. In SOLUS 3 on your SIMS server, deploy the SIMS client (and FMS / Discover if required?) to the PC you just installed the agent on (via Environment > Targets > Clients). Within 30 seconds or so you should see the agent display a dialog box saying it is going to install SIMS.
    
   
   

 

I'm struggling with the 3rd one, the RSA Keypath.

The way I dealt with that in my MST was to change the SourceFolder in the MoveFile table from RSAKEYPATH to SourceDir. This forces the MSI to copy the RSA key (Solus3.Keys.DeploymentService.Public.xml) from the same folder as the MSI.

 

 

As far as I can tell, there are three bits of information that needs inserting into the MSI to make the install 'silent':

AGENTSERVICEADDRESS is already set by a custom action to net.tcp://localhost:52966 so I didn't bother with this in my MST.

SOLUS3AgentInstaller_x64.mst

Edited December 5, 2016 by Arthur

[minimoo]

I must be missing something here - extracted solus3 has 2 MSI's and a .bat and a .vbs - the .vbs will do an agent install - surely just add the .vbs/msi's to the MDT/SCCM deployment? (Of course, if you do that, that you hit the issue that solus 3 now tries to find match up existing agents in the database and gets in a mess and does't do the initial deployment of sims anyway until manually kicked in some way)

[mavhc]

Yes, but that's no good for GPO deployment, which is free. OT: Seems like MS hates either MSIs, or people not paying them for SCCM, or both.

[danpitman2]

Hi

 

Thanks for this great info, been looking for a silent way of installing for a while without success

 

However although it installed fine silently, SIMS Workstation would download but then the installs would fail

 

When i ran the MSI Manually with the MST i found the RSAKey was defaulting to C:\ and not the MSI path which you say the SourceDir property takes care of, but i am not finding this to be the case?

 

Im assuming this is the cause of my SIMS install fails

[skell]

Does this method still work? I can't get it to work.