Is it posible to pipe Nsis installer log to console druing the silent install. Installer is third party so I can't change it. Thanks in advance.
NSIS is a GUI app and does not really support output to the console.
There are two ways to get console output:
Recompile NSIS with logging to console turned on (NSIS_CONFIG_LOG_STDOUT)
Call AllocConsole with the system plugin and print custom output
Both of these require changes to the installer so it can only be done by the author of the installer...
Related
Sorry for the newbie-ish question, but for all my years, I've never dealt with windows installation except as a user and I'm not sure how to start this.
I have two 3rd party packages to install. One I know is msi based but the other I have not found out yet. It comes with a setup.exe and a wrapper.exe - which we use to install.
Both installation prompt the user for language and a number of various options.
I need to wrap or do something to make these unattended installations.
I may be able to get some property information and I've read Silent installation of a MSI package - is that how I go about doing this? There will be a boat load of properties.
Basically, how do I go about wrapping the setup.exe and building / providing some type of response file.
thanks,
jon
Try this procedure to test if the setup is an MSI:
In the folder where your setup.exe is located, hold down shift, and right click in an empty space. Click "Open new command window here".
Type in setup.exe /a and let the setup start. This should launch an "admin install" if the setup.exe is an MSI setup at all. If you see a way to specify a path, define one and press next. This should now extract all files from within the setup.exe exposing the MSI file.
Once you have the MSI file extracted, it can in most cases be installed via a standard msiexec.exe command line like this: msiexec.exe /i setup.msi
To learn how to install an MSI file silently, check this thread:
How to interactive a silently installing msi? (Progress data and cancel it)
Just one final question: are you delivering these setups as a product, or are you trying to install to your work network or similar?
If those wrapper/setup programs don't have a silent mode then the whole process can't be silent. As far as the MSI files are concerned, the msiexec command line stuff is what you need, including specifying properties on the command line, such as TARGETDIR- if the default is wrong, and TRANSFORMS= assuming the language choice is a transform choice. If you turn on Windows Installer logging policy (or the wrappers let you create a verbose log) you'll see what command lines the wrappers use, so duplicate them except you'd add a /qn type of option to make them silent. If they require elevation to admin to install you'd have to launch them from an admin prompt because a silent install won't ask for elevation on UAC systems.
I've created an NSIS installer that installs a certain program. Everything works fine but I wonder if it is possible to abort the installation when it runs in silent mode.
So is there a way to abort an installation when I install an NSIS installer via the command line with this command: installer.exe /S /D=Path/To/Directory?
I tried to abort it via CTRL+C as it works for other programs, too, but that didn't work.
NSIS is not a console program so it is not going to respond to console keyboard shortcuts.
Even if you could trick it into behaving like a console program when started silent it is not going to work in a stable manner because CTRL+C will just kill the process unless the program has added extra code to handle the aborting events...
I have been trying to install a msi file using cmd. The command looks like
C:\Windows\system32>msiexec.exe -q -i "Installer.msi"
But every time I run this the window for help options is opened for msi instead of running the installer. What could be the problem?
First, you need to specify the full path to the MSI file. Also, the command line is really picky if you are specifying anything else, and sometimes it doesn't like spaces between value=proprtyname. Those errors will give you the help screen because you got the syntax wrong in some way.
Note that the MSI file will not install successfully in silent mode if it requires elevation. It won't ask for the elevation prompt if you are in silent mode. That means you should try the command line install from an elevated prompt.
I think msiexec.exe /i installer.msi /qn should work.
See here for a similar thread on serverfault: https://serverfault.com/questions/30068/silent-install-of-msi/67001#67001
To deal with the complicated msiexec.exe command line interface, try this free tool from Installation tool developer Altiris: http://www2.wise.com/filelib/WICLB.exe - broken link resurrected from Wayback machine. Seeing as the tool was freeware I assume that is legal.
Please run the download by virustotal.com for safety.
Here is a screenshot:
While an installer (built via packagemaker) is running ... from the menu, we can select Window > Installer Log and then choose to Save it ... but this is not something that can be asked of all those who run the installer.
The installation itself is supposed to be a hands-off simple process. But in case something goes wrong and we need to go back and dig through logs, it would be great to configure packagemaker or the installer it produces ... to spit out the log file everytime it runs.
How can this be accomplished?
/var/log/install.log is written by Installer, and contains information about the packages being installed, pre-install / post-install scripts being executed, and any errors that occur along the way.
I am trying to make some silent installations with install4j, like running other executable programs but the user still can see the gui of these programs. What should I do to hide them?
When running an installer created with install4j add -q for unattended mode.
use below responce file with the following command.
yEd-3.20.1_with-JRE13_64-bit_setup.exe -q -varfile "response.varfile"
response.varfile:just install the application manually on any one machine, after you can get the response file on the location "C:\Program Files\yWorks\yEd"
I think it is impossible to hide a GUI of another process.