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Deploying And Importing SVS Layers by MSI

Tuesday, 22 August 2006 by Michel Roth

Patrick Kaak has written an article on Juice, the Altiris SVS community web site, that describes how you can distribute Altiris SVS layers by utilizing MSI's:

"Most of the time I install software by Group Policies in the Active Directory. But I encountered a few obstacles that forced me to blaze a new trail. Here's how I use WiseScripts to take care of some of my software installation woes."

Issues:

� SVS does not have an interface yet to distribute layers to the workstations in GPOs.
� Wise Package Studio only has an SVS Wrapper for MSIs and not the other way around.

Those are the reasons I tried to make a wrapper myself. This is the first version of it. This is what it does:

� It looks for an Layername, places a VSA on the workstation and imports it into SVS.
� It also can activate the new layer at startup and/or activate the layer after the installation.
� The installation shows up in the Add/Remove program and will delete the layer when you un-install the MSI.

MSIs aren't made to distribute and install SVS Layers. There are no native functions for it. So I use embedded WiseScripts to make the install happen. The WiseScripts communicate with the MSI by MSI Properties.

Read more and download here.