Silent installations - NSIS Forums

e-novative
21st May 2003 15:28 UTC

Silent installations
When I run an NSIS installer as silent, how is the behaviour when the installer opens dialog boxes and/or asks the user to select options?

Can I/must I influence this behaviour when coding the script?

Thanks for any help!

Steve

Joost Verburg
21st May 2003 18:50 UTC

The normal wizard pages won't be displayed, but your own message boxes will appear.

e-novative
22nd May 2003 09:14 UTC

So how can I provide answers to a slient installer? Can I do something similar to creating an .iss answer file with Install Shield?

For the background: I have created a fully automated test environment with VMWare which starts a VM, remotely installs some application (or installs one, then upgrades it to another version) and performs various pre- and postcondition tests. That way I can have a coffee while my computer checks what I broke when updating my installer.

This is perfect as long as I can run a silent install of a script that does not offer any options. But when the script requires the user to select options, I don't know how to do this silently.

Steve

Sunjammer
22nd May 2003 09:26 UTC

Write the answers into a file that your installer reads using file read commands. Then base your actions on what you've read. Crappy but NSIS doesn't support silent automation via an .iss type file (yet).

e-novative
22nd May 2003 15:12 UTC

Thanks Joost and Sunjammer.

Is there a timeline for incuding iss-like automation? I am not sure how many people out there use automated installation tests, but when you have to test an app on different os'es (possibly in different language, with different service packs), you start thinking about scripting the tests.

Regards,

Steve

kichik
22nd May 2003 17:08 UTC

No, there isn't.

Joost Verburg
22nd May 2003 18:16 UTC

It won't be anytime soon. There are already a lot of things on the TODO list for NSIS 2 final.

catfish81
18th June 2003 12:13 UTC

d'oh. so i guess this means unless the NSIS exe file has been designed to handle silent installations, there is no way of installing the package silently?

I just want to do an end-user silent installation from NSIS packages, not actually create the NSIS itself with silent settings.

Is there anyway to do this?

Actually, I just did installfilename.exe /S which does a silent install, but how can I specify where to install to? And any other options that are avilable at install time? Is there a --help switch or something i can use?

n0On3
18th June 2003 15:29 UTC

Actually, I just did installfilename.exe /S which does a silent install, but how can I specify where to install to? And any other options that are avilable at install time? Is there a --help switch or something i can use? [/B]

You can use the GetParameters plugin to know the command line, and parse it.

Another way (lot easier), is read from an ini file the variables to install.

for example:
ReadINIStr $3 "$EXEDIR\Settings.ini" "Settings" "Folder"

kichik
18th June 2003 16:30 UTC

To set the installation directory for silent installation use:

installer.exe /S /D=C:\Program Files\Whatever instsallation\Directory\You\Want

tuxp3
28th April 2004 20:04 UTC

besides custom install folder..
Im making a slient(-able) installer and want to know how i can get custom input for example a password from the command-line. so i could do


installer.exe /S /D="C:\Program Files\Directory" /Pass="encypted pass here" /other_var="more data"

and have it save (to the registry) the Pass and any other info i want..
or am i limited to reading that information from a file?

Andrew

zimsms
29th April 2004 14:03 UTC

See my page in the NSIS Archive.

http://nsis.sourceforge.net/archive/...59&instances=0