I’ve been trying all day to deploy the 6.0.1 Incremental Client Installer via the “Smart Upgrade” feature.
First, here are some "gotcha"s to look out for:
If you’ve got some Designer and/or Admin clients out there you MUST use the installer for “Designer Clients” (*vna.exe). Deploying the installer for normal clients (*una.exe) to those clients seems to actually REMOVE their design and admin features.
The installer for “Designer” clients will also work on “normal” clients. (So you can use that one on all your clients to be safe; see above.)
When creating a kit, use “Release 6.0” as the source version entry. Just “6.0” or “*” won’t work.
(BTW: Thanks for not saying so in the help database.)
If you’ve got the choice, always upgrade from a network drive as that’s usually MUCH faster than upgrading directly from the database.
Now, here’s the thing I wasn’t able to solve until now:
How can you use the “Optional arguments” feature to do a silent install? It seems this entry is totally ignored on the client side! You can in fact specify anything you like here, from “/S /v/qn+” to “Mickey Mouse”, it simply has no effect at all.
Any hints on that one?
(EDIT: Also tried /s /v"/qb+" from the release notes. No dice.)
UPDATE:
Smart upgrade from Release 6.0 and earlier RCs contains a bug. The “optional arguments” are only used if the filename of the executeable is “SETUP:EXE”.
Simply renaming the file and updating the upgrade kit document solved the issue.
Subject: RE: Argh!! Smart Upgrade and “Optional arguments”
I ran the incremental installer with the /A switch to unpack the files and create an .msi file. The path to the installer was therefore \server\share\notes601\Lotus Notes 6.msi instead of \server\share\notes601\c491unu.exe.
UPDATE running the incremental installer with the /A switch creates an ‘Administrative’ install package. If you point to the .msi in the Smart Upgrade doc to upgrade a local install it will convert it to what used to be called a ‘node’ or ‘file share’ install where the program will be run from the network share rather than locally. Best avoided unless this is what you already have. SEE MARTIN’S RESPONSE TO THIS POST FOR THE SOLUTION.
In the optional arguments field I added " /qn+" without the quotes (or to put it another way, /qn+) to run the installer silently and prompt for success or failure at the end ( /qn for silent, /qn+ for silent plus success/failure prompt).
This seemed to work OK.
I’ve not tried /qn+ with the original executable yet - this would be preferable as less data would be copied across the network (the all clients install unpacks to over 300 MB!)
Subject: SOLVED Argh!! Smart Upgrade and “Optional arguments”
Martin…I’ve been trying to get this to work all day. Luckily I’ve been able to find most of the posts here in LDD, but the documentation has been really ugly and I would have never gotten it to work from that alone. But I do have one question…I want the silent install to work. I have renamed c491vna.exe to setup.exe. I’ve tried putting in the /qn+ and it doesn’t work for me. I’ve tried using the /S/v/qn+ and that at least works, but then you don’t get any screens, hourglass or anything and twice I’ve stopped it not even knowing it was running. I’d like to see the initial screens saying it is loading and then have a progress bar and then finally the finished. Is there a way to do this??
I’ve also tried creating a setup.ini file in the same directory as the .exe and putting in Ted’s suggestion of CmdLine=/qn+. That didn’t work either. Since users really don’t need to change any of their install options, I’d very much like them to just get a progress bar and then a Finished at the end. Can you clarify and help me out a bit more. I’m sure it is a simple thing, but could use help.
Also, I’ve noticed that when I close my Notes client and go back in, it isn’t automatically kicking off when I authenticate. I actually have to go to File, Tools, SmartUpdate…I thought it was suppose to kick off automatically? Have you been able to do that?
Subject: substitute /qb(+) or /qr for basic/reduced MSI interface if /qn(+) is too silent
The suggestion to customize setup.ini applies only to the full kit, not the upgrade kit (c491vna.exe), since that extracts its own setup.ini with the rest of the package to a new (more-or-less randomly named) directory created under %TEMP%
Subject: RE: substitute /qb(+) or /qr for basic/reduced MSI interface if /qn(+) is too silent
Ok…I’ve tried both of these and it doesn’t appear that they operate any differently than /qn does. First…the whole preparing to install screens go away from the Microsoft installer and you don’t get an hourglass or anything. Most users (including myself the first couple of times) would think that nothing was happening and go on doing something else, including restarting Notes. We’d have too many problems with that. Secondly, those seem to be the only screens that are taken away…it still prompts me for everything else including licensing, directory path, components, etc. I have extensively done the silent installs with the *.iss files in R5 and the full CD client so I am familiar with how that works. However, running the R5 incremental installs never prompted you before now to go through all this information. It simply checked the version you were running and then upgraded you if it was accurate. Now it seems like it is doing an entire new install type of upgrade instead of incremental. This is frustrating if we’d like to be able to use the Smart Upgrade feature in Notes, which is kind of slick in how it shuts down Notes and starts the upgrade, etc.
Ok…lots of words, but this is what we want…The user gets the pop-up box to upgrade, they choose to Upgrade Now…they get a box that says processing and show thems the status bar moving across as it works, and lastly, that box changes to say “we’re done” and they click the Finish button. This is how a “SMART” upgrade should work…or am I just too hopeful?? .
Subject: one more thought: drop the /s from optional switches
the long delay between the time the Smart Upgrade dialog box tells you it’s waiting for Notes to shut down and the time you see the progress bar is the time it takes the Windows Installer to set itself up. there’s no getting around that because the kit has to be unpacked, but by eliminating the /s switch, you can let your users see the progress of the MSI setup while it’s happening. It’s an extra dialog, but requires no response from the person whose machine is being upgraded, and shows unambiguously that something is happening.
Subject: RE: one more thought: drop the /s from optional switches
Ok, I tried that, just using the /v/qn+ switches. First, the MSI screens appear, and that’s much better, but as soon as they are done, it removes all dialog boxes and goes to your desktop screen and no hour glass. Again, unless you watch the hard drive, you don’t get any indication that it is working on the upgrade. If the splash screen would just remain on the screen and show a progress bar of some sort, that would help so very very much. But having nothing there, the user will surely think the machine is done and relaunch Notes or reboot, causing us major issues. This facility would be wonderful, if it would actually work as it should. Can we expect any change? improvement in this process?
These are all part of a continuum that let you control the Windows Installer’s interaction with the end user: /q, /qn, and /qn+ (for “no UI”) suppress all dialog boxes during the install, perhaps making it too silent for your tastes. /qb and /qb+ (for “basic UI”) display a minimal progress bar to let you know that installation is progressing, and /qr (“reduced UI”) shows the normal product install dialog with the (in this case) Lotus mosaic logo. No part of an automated installation has to be silent, you can make it as verbose as you like by substituting the switch for your chosen UI level; I like /qr. Please see the MSI documentation included with Installshield Tuner on your Notes 6 CD, or Technical documentation | Microsoft Learn (or its parent docs) for more details on working with the Windows Installer.
Thanks!! It worked. That web site was good too since it gave us alternatives. I too find that I like the /v/qr+, but if we decide that we need to take the cancel button away, we’ll have to use the /v/qb!+ but it isn’t as pretty. I’m very happy with what we have now, so thank you again!!!
Just a note to anyone who is interested…the /v/qr+ is a nice option, but the + does not work and does not provide you with a “finish” box to indicate to your customers that it is done. While /v/qb!+ is not as pretty, it really is more user friendly and functional, supressing the cancel button and giving them a “finish” box at the end.
And thanks Ted…you’ve really helped us to be able to utilize this tool as designed and make it easier for us to push out upgrades automatically to our customers!! I just have one more question for you. Why doesn’t the “restart Notes when finished” work on the upgrade kit? If it did, then maybe using the /qr would be an ok option. Is there something else I need to do to make that work?
Subject: Setup.exe must be in the Root of the shared drive
Greetings, I appreciate all of the good posts on this discussion thread but still was having problems. I did end up making the optional argument, /v/qb!+, work but only after I placed the setup.exe in the root of my shared drive. Initially I had the 6.0.1 and 6.0.1 CF1 incremental installers in their own separate folder on the shared drive. I did rename them to setup.exe but I left them in the folder so that I could store multiple incremental installers (both full and thin clients). I could not get the windows installer to accept any derivation of the optional arguments listed in this discussion thread. I finally moved the one of the setup.exe files into the root of my shared drive and it worked correctly. Because I wanted to be able to include both the 6.0.1 and 6.0.1 CF1 files in the root (and couldn’t name them both setup.exe, for obvious reasons), I ended up renaming the 6.0.1 CF1 installer to 61CF1Setup.exe and the installer worked. I know that early posts insist that you must use setup.exe for the smart upgrade to work properly but this may only be for the first installer, from 6.0 to 6.0.1.
I hope this helps other people who have been having difficulties with smart upgrade.
Subject: NOW… any tricks to getting this to work with installshield?
I installed the installshield tuner and I am on my way, but haven’t tested. I put the silent install parameters in where it was creating the Setup.exe package, will this work or am i forced to run setup.exe with the command line options on the command line (or of course with a .bat file) during the actual install.
My fingers clearly got ahead of my brain in one of my earlier posts: msiexec supports the UI options /q f,r,b, and n (for full, reduced, basic, and none) in increasing order of stealth, but only those that might be considered stealthy to begin with (basic and none) can be further modified to be slightly less stealthy with the addition of the ‘+’ switch. And I’m not familiar with the ‘!’ modifier…if that came from me, either I was channelling the Windows Installer muse or I mistyped
The restart has problems because smart upgrade isn’t monitoring the progress of the actual install in this case, it’s monitoring the progress of the webkit (e.g. c491vna.exe), which terminates long before the upgrade install has finished. If you see the Smart Upgrade dialog close, or _sminstal.exe disappear from the Windows process list before the upgrade completes, Notes will not restart. Like most things though, there is a way, if you don’t mind rolling up your sleeves just a little. You didn’t hear this from me, but the first thing the webkit does is unpack itself to a subdirectory under %temp%. I can’t give you the exact name of the subdirectory because it’s variable, but here are the steps:
download the 6.0.1 incremental installer (I’ll use c491vna.exe here) to your desktop
run %temp% (sic) from the Start menu, or enter %temp% into the address bar of an Explorer window. Switch to the Details view in Explorer, sort the contents of %temp% in descending order by modified date, and minimize the window. You’ll need it in a few minutes.
run c491vna from your desktop, and wait until it pauses for you to click the “Next” button. Don’t click it.
switch back to the Explorer window, and look for the newest folder in the list, one created by the upgrade installer , with a name that’s something like “_IS4A”.
Open the folder. The only file you’re interested in is the 97.3 MB “Lotus Notes 6.MSI”. Unlike the 6.0 version, this one contains the full upgrade kit in a single file, which you’re about to use to your advantage.
copy Lotus Notes 6.MSI off to some other directory for safekeeping, because msiexec will delete this temp folder once you exit the installer in the next step…
exit the Installer.
using the Domino Administrator, update your existing Smart Upgrade kit document to point to the new Lotus Notes 6.MSI (copied in step 7) instead of setup.exe, and remove the /v switch from your optional arguments. By calling the .MSI file directly, you’re bypassing setup.exe in favor of msiexec, so there’s no need for /v; just leave your ‘/qr’ or ‘/qb+’ in there.
When Smart Upgrade invokes msiexec directly, it can monitor it properly, and restart Notes when msiexec finishes the upgrade. On a related note, you’ve likely observed that performance is generally better if you reference the upgrade kit on a remote/CD drive than if you attach it to the upgrade kit doc. Attaching is a double whammy, because the client seems to calculate download time with a silent, simulated download in the foreground before displaying the upgrade dialog box, followed by a nearly identical wait while the client downloads the attachment in the background. Let me know how it works for you!
Wow! That’s a lot of work just to restart Notes. We have to consider if that’s worth the effort or not. Plus we are finding that not everyone in our corporation has access to the same Novell servers so we are having to create multiple groups and multiple upgrade kits across the corporation. It’s going to increase administration, but I think it will be worth it in the long run.
As for the ! parameter, it was part of the Microsoft link document you sent me on an earlier thread. Works pretty cool. Thanks again.
That works! But after the upgrade I still get prompts for My Username, Password etc. It was all in the notes.ini before starting the upgrade? Do we have to modify the upgrade Package with InstallTuner ?
Subject: RE: SOLVED Argh!! Smart Upgrade and “Optional arguments”
“Also, I’ve noticed that when I close my Notes client and go back in, it isn’t automatically kicking off when I authenticate. I actually have to go to File, Tools, SmartUpdate…I thought it was suppose to kick off automatically? Have you been able to do that?”
You need to have a policy set up and associated with the user to start SmartUpgrade on authentication. See the admin help database.
