These types of programs may even run without you initiating the installation process. While silent installations are used for many good reasons, some programs, such as spyware and adware use silent installers to run without your knowledge. Even though silent installers run without any user interaction, legitimate programs typically require you to manually initiate the installation process. For example, a network administrator may prefer to distribute a software program via a silent installer to ensure all users within the network have the same installation settings. They are also helpful for installing software on several machines at once. Silent installs are useful for simple programs that have limited installation options. In a silent install, these items are selected automatically and the installer runs from start to finish without requiring any user input. In a non-silent or "attended installation," the user is prompted to select or confirm these options during the installation process. Examples include where the program should be installed, if a shortcut should be placed on desktop, and if additional components should be installed. Silent installs are performed by many legitimate software programs, but they are also used by malware and PUPs to hide the installation process from the user.Ī typical installer has several parameters that instruct the installer how to run. It is a convenient way to streamline the installation process of a desktop application. For such packages, I suggest asking the vendor to fix their installer.A silent install is the installation of a software program that requires no user interaction. Many packages have “custom dialogs” which are not supported by setup.iss, which means the dialogs will always appear no matter what you do. The /r and /s switches only work if the release engineer is competent. WARNING : Be careful what characters you use in these file names, because InstallShield silently strips certain non-alphanumerics (like hyphens). Once again, there must be no space between the switch and the file name. The /f2filename switch specifies a log file. This switch works both with /r to create the file and with /s to read it. Note that there must be no space between the /f1 switch and the file name. The /f1filename switch allows you to specify a fully-qualified alternate name for the setup.iss file. Hence, for an InstallShield application, you want to provide both the /s and the /sms switches. Luckily, there is another switch, /sms, which will cause the installer to pause until the installation completes. This makes it useless for scripting purposes. Unfortunately, the installer will fork a separate process and exit, meaning it will return immediately even if you run it under start /wait. This will perform an unattended installation. Once you have a setup.iss file, run the installer with the /s (“silent”) option. Simply copy setup.iss to the same directory as the installer executable. This file will include all of your responses to the InstallShield dialogs, allowing you to perform unattended installations as if you were giving the same answers again. This will create a setup.iss file and place it in the C:\WINDOWS directory (yes, really). Proceed through the dialogs and complete the installation. Run the installer with the /r (“record”) switch. Some applications ship with such a file, but if yours does not, you can use the graphical installer itself to create one. To perform a silent installation, you need an InstallShield “answer file”, customarily named setup.iss. The installer itself is invariably named setup.exe. Installers created by InstallShield recognize the /r, /s, /sms, /f1, and /f2 switches. InstallShield is one of the oldest and most widely used application packaging systems.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |