Admin Image questions 1

[kbieber]

New administrator trying to understand the nuances of admin images. I've read the threads here and put together what I think I need to do at our site.

We are trying to install SP2005 sp2 from admin image. We have 3 stand-alone and 2 network seats. Created an admin image using the command prompt method per the Solidworks website on serverA and have the SNL on serverB. I was able to install a SNL client from the admin image which included the PDMWorks client and E-Drawings. The stand-alone client install only gave me SW, no PDMWorks or E-Drawings. According to the threads, this is normal and I must install PDMWorks and E-Drawings from the CD for the stand-alone clients.

It would seem though, that I can manually add commands in order to create a full install (SW, PDMWorks, E-Drawings) from the admin image for the stand-alone clients. If this is true, can I also create a script to install service packs for the stand-alone clients from the admin image?

Thanks for your help.

 

[engAlright]

Haven't used the PDMWorks windows installer thing yet, but I would guess it works the same as solidworks...

If you installed from an Admin image, the local installation can be updated using

swspmanager /p [name of the .msp file containing the service pack]

This will work as long as the installation has access to see the original Admin image as well as the .msp file.

E-drawings SP's are usually done with a full re-install...

 

[ctopher]

thread559-120784

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP2.0 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site
FAQ371-376
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-1091
FAQ559-716

 

[PDMAdmin]

You must create a separate admin image for every product you want to install for your user base. However, you will be unable to create one for eDrawings; that functionality is not supported. Anyone who needs the eDrawings publisher will need to have it done manually; the viewer is included with PDMWorks or it can be downloaded from the SW website.

 

[MElam]

I used the admin director which creates a .htm and .ini file.
The .ini file contains the line:
AFTERCMD=\\admin image location\update_Install.bat
The update_Install.bat file contains the line:
msiexec /i "admin image location\eDrawingsProEnglish\eDrawings.msi" LOGPERFORMANCE=0 ADDLOCAL=All /qb

This will automatically install eDrawings silently immediately after the SWx install.

Although, I do not remember exactly how I got the "admin image location\eDrawingsProEnglish\" folder. I think I downloaded the eDrawings file from the website and either unziped or installed it to the admin image folder.

 

[PDMAdmin]

The eDrawings Pro installation file is an EXE, which cannot be used for creating an admin image. I tried going to the MSI file on the CD, but I was unable to successfully create an admin image from that.

 

[jmongan]

PDMWADmin, use winzip on the e-drawings.exe and unzip it's contents to a directory. That will leave you with the .msi file in that directory.

 

[PDMAdmin]

Hadn't thought of doing that... I'll give it a try. Thanks.

 

[MElam]

That's what I did jmongan! Thanks for the memory jog.

It works.

But if you can do the same thing with PDM, please note that Windows Installer will not wait for one to finish before starting the next. The second one will error out because it is already running.