Deployment Solution

Hello everyone,

Can anyone provide me with instructions on creating Rinstall packages and documentation? We are currently running Altiris DS 6.9. any help would be greatly be appreciated.

Thank you,

Junior Valdez

If you have WISE, I would create MSI's. If you can install from an MSI, do that instead of the RIP. You can use ORCA (Free MSI Table editing software) to edit vendor MSI's on a basic level.

1. Create two stable Virtual Machines that best reflects the current configuration of a new computer in your environment. Basically you want it to be like your base image without any software installed on it. I call this my Clean Packaging VM. Be sure to create snapshots so you can wipe the system back to the "clean" state to create another package.

2. Run RapidInstall.exe and select "Create RIP"

3. Select "Set Baseline Before Creating RIP" This is your first "snapshot" of the host machine, that is before the software you are trying to package is installed on it.

4. Name the Baseline, i usually name it something like "pre" since it is before i install anything on it.

5. RInstall will now scan the system or VM to see where it is at, Reg Keys, Files, etc.

6. Now you need to install the software and make any system changes needed to make the software work (this varies GREATLY and is a bit more then i can explain here) BE CARFULL, changes you make, things you delete, move and alter will be remembered, so use caution so you will end up with a clean package.

7. After the software is installed and any changes have been made you are ready to scan the computer/VM for the changes you just made. I name that "post" since it is after and will be compared to the "pre" baseline to create the RIP from.

8. Now you can edit the package as there are always files that it captures that are not needed for the software to properly function (again varies from RIP to RIP)

9. When you think you are done and it looks good you test it out on your other Clean VM machine and try and use the software as your users would. Then you test it on actual production systems.

This does not cover all of what it takes but i hope it will give you bases to get you started!

Good luck and Happy Packaging

-WISEGUY
 

I love rapidinstall, but it doesn't work under windows 7.  :(  I think because of the loops the junctions create?

For example,
%UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Application Data\
points to
%UserProfile%\AppData\Local\

RapidInstall™ 3.0 User Guide

RapidInstall 3.1 Release Notes
http://www.altiris.com/upload/rapidinstallrelnote_002.pdf

Hope this helps!

-WISEGUY

Using procmon I made some progress with rapidinstall in windows 7:

Disallow traversing these junctions that point to their parent directories in windows 7:

c:\programdata\application data
%userprofile%\appdata\local\application data

I did
mkdir ..\fakedir
mv 'application data' ..\fakedir  
(cygwin mv)

Filter these 2 directories to save time.  winsxs has a ton of hard links, and $recycle.bin never seems to get cleaned up:
ignore c:\windows\winsxs
ignore c:\$Recycle.Bin

Re: Tamahome and Windows 7

I have just upgraded to Deployement Console 6.9 SP4 (from SP2) to gain the Windows 7 support.

I was hoping to use RapidDeploy to convert some of my 100's of RIPS, or create new ones.

I guess I'm going to have to take a closer look at WISE.

Has this been confirmed by Symantec (the Windows 7 issue), it would be nice to get an official notification that RapidDeploy has been withdrawn.


Frustrating!

I just figured out a really nasty twist with Rapidinstall and 64 bit windows 7.  Win7-64 redirects 32bit program access to the registry at hklm\software\wow6432node\ instead of hklm\software\, and hkcu\software\wow6432node\ instead of hkcu\software.