I am using Smart Upgrade to upgrade our Notes clients in my agency from versions 6.5.1 and 6.5.6 to 7.0.3. Everything is working properly using the 7.0.3 client downloaded .exe kit files, but I want the install to be as silent and non-interactive as possible. I’ve download the Installshield Tuner for Lotus Notes, and used it to make a transform file that does a completely automated Notes 7.0.3 client install, without any user interaction after telling Smart Upgrade to do the install.
However, I’m using attachments stored in the Smart Upgrade kit documents, rather than on a shared network drive. I’ve found instructions on putting the client .msi file into the kit document as an attachment, and adding the arguments to tell it to use the .mst file, but I’ve not been able to find a way to also put the .mst file in the kit document as an attachment and download and use that. All the instructions I’ve found refer to putting the transform file on a shared network drive. Right now, I don’t have a common network share that everyone in our agency has access to, so that won’t work for me.
If anyone has a way that I can get this to work with the .mst as an attachment in the kit document, I’d greatly appreciate it.
Subject: Smart Upgrade - Add transform to attached kit for silent install?
Straight from the Notes administrator help. To do a silent install for an attached kit, add this to the field labelled “Optional Arguments for Attached kit”:
-a /v"qn"
however, I would suggest using
-a /v"qb+"
because it gives the user a progress bar, so they know stuff is getting updated, but doesn’t ask them any questions and lets them no when it is done. I was always afraid with the totally silent install that they would shut down their machine or something during the upgrade.
Subject: RE: Smart Upgrade - Add transform to attached kit for silent install?
I tried the recommended arguments for a silent install for the other MIS staff as a test group. It still went through the install with all of the options. I’ll give it another try. Thanks for the help.
Subject: RE: Smart Upgrade - Add transform to attached kit for silent install?
OK, I tried running the Notes Client kit install with the command line options from Windows Run. I used -d -s -a /s /v"gb+!" as my optional arguments, and got what I should have, a completely silent install, except for progress bar, with no Cancel, during the install. However, when an end user runs Smart Upgrade with the client kit attached to the kit document, and the same optional arguments in the kit document, those arguments aren’t getting acted on.
I’m going to do some more digging, but if anyone has dealt with this, or has any sugguestions on how to get the arguments working from Smart Upgrade, I’d appreciate it. Thanks.
Subject: RE: Smart Upgrade - Add transform to attached kit for silent install?
I had the same problem and somewhere I found a tip to fix it.
Open your Kit and select “Shared network drive & attached kit”.
Put your optional arguements in BOTH the “Optional arguments for shared network drive kit” AND “Optional arguments for attached kit”. (I used /d /px /a /s /v"/qb!+")
Then reselect “Attached to this note”.
Save and Close your kit.
If I remember correctly, the reason this will work is because the ability to attach the executable to the kit wasn’t available until a later release (6.5.4, I think) therefore earlier versions of Notes don’t know to look for optional arguments for the attachment.