Thread: Silent Setup in 6.0

Hi,

I have a setup that provides for many different installation options of my database software. I have a few customers with a very large # of computers that must be individually updated. Since I don't always know what setting they use or need it is difficult for me to create a silent update for them. Is it possible to pass the installer some kind of switch and reference to a file (or something) so that instead of me building a custom setup for each of these folks, they could use my generic setup and by passing a file name the setup process could obtain the answers to various prompts etc. by reading the values from the file?

I hope I am making my question clear....

Thanks

I had a similar task some years ago. The necessary setup information can be read from an INI file. If the Setup.exe finds the ini file (On Startup actions), the screens can be skipped. The customer edits the ini file when needed (according to your instructions). You should do some error checking with respect to the ini file.

OK, that seems reasonable. Is it then necessary to have that INI file located in the same directory as the SETUP? IOW, ultimately what my customers want to do is place the setup on a server, then send all the employees a link to the setup file, that when clicked upon will launch the setup routine on their respective computer. How does the setup file know where to find the INI that has the parameter information?

In my project the ini file was located in the same directory as the setup.exe (on the server), but you can store the file wherever you want (on a mapped network drive accessible to all workstations). Problem: Your setup app has to know WHERE to look. I don’t recommend a File Search on a network drive.

Another solution: Enter the ini directory as a command line argument.

Originally Posted by csd214

Problem: Your setup app has to know WHERE to look. I don’t recommend a File Search on a network drive.

Another solution: Enter the ini directory as a command line argument.

I agree that a File Search would be a disaster. I did not see in the manual or help file where I can pass a directory or path as a command line argument.
My documentation suggests that the only allowable values are:

/L /S /T and /W

Am I missing something?

Check up the built-in variable %SetupCmdLineArgs%.

You can start your app with these arguments:
/S -INIdir=R:\Installers\Accounting\

I prefer to use hyphen with the application specific arguments (not necessary). Use FindString() to look for “-INIdir=”, extract the folder information “R:\Installers\Accounting\”.

My setup apps are perhaps not very complex, but up to this day I haven’t had a task I couldn’t solve with Setup Factory!