Chapter 7. MSI Deployment Guide

Table of Contents

7.1. Introduction

7.1.1 Requirements
7.1.2 Authoring a Transform

7.2. Configuration Options

7.2.1 Configurable Properties
7.2.2 Existing Registry Entries
7.2.3 Replacing Configuration Files
7.2.4 Adding Domain Specific Registry Keys
7.2.5 Adding Site Specific Freelance Registry Keys

7.3 Additional Resources

7.4. Upgrades

7.1. Introduction

A MSI installer option is available for those who wish to use Windows Installer for installing OpenAFS and for organizations that wish to deploy OpenAFS through Group Policy. The first version of OpenAFS for Windows available as an MSI was 1.3.65.

This document provides a guide for authoring transforms used to customize the MSI package for a particular organization. Although many settings can be deployed via transforms, in an Active Directory environment it is advisable to deploy registry settings and configuration files through group policy and/or startup scripts so that machines where OpenAFS for Windows is already installed will pick up these customizations.

7.1.1 Requirements

The information in this document applies to MSI packages distributed with OpenAFS for Windows releases from 1.3.65 and onwards or MSI packages built from corresponding source releases. Not all releases support all the configuration options documented here.

Authoring a "Windows Installer" transform requires additional software for editing the MSI database tables and generating the transform from the modified MSI package. ORCA.EXE and MSITRAN.EXE which are included in the Windows Platform SDK ("Windows Installer" SDK) can be used for this purpose.

For reference, the schema for the MSI package is based on SCHEMA.MSI distributed with the Platform SDK.

For general information about "Windows Installer", refer to:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/msi/setup/windows_installer_start_page.asp

For general information about authoring MSI transforms, refer to:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/msi/setup/transforms.asp

The remainder of this document assumes some familiarity with authoring transforms. While the MSDN documentation for Windows Installer is a bit dense, the guide on MSI transforms found at the second link above is recommended reading. MSDN also includes a step-by-step example for creating a transform at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/msi/setup/a_customization_transform_example.asp

7.1.2 Authoring a Transform

Transforms describe a set of modifications to be performed on an existing MSI for the purpose of customizing it. This is ordinarily done by making a copy of the MSI to be customized, modifying the copy and then using the old and the new MSI to generate a transform. For example:

copy openafs.msi openafs-modified.msi
(edit the openafs-modified.msi to include the necessary changes)
msitran -g openafs.msi openafs-modified.msi openafs-transform.mst
(generates openafs-transform.mst, which is the transform)

Transforms have an extension of .mst. 'msitran' is a tool distributed as part of the "Windows Installer" SDK (part of the Windows Platform SDK).

You can test a transform by:

copy openafs.msi openafs-test.msi
msitran -a openafs-transform.mst openafs-test.msi

and then checking the resulting openafs-test.msi to see if all changes you have made above to openafs-modified.msi is present in openafs-test.msi. 'msitran' will complain if some modification in the transform can not be successfully applied.

As mentioned above, you can use a tool like ORCA.EXE to edit the MSI databases directly when editing openafs-modified.msi. More details are given below.


6.4. OpenAFS for Windows Mailing Lists		7.2. Configuration Options