Silent Installation Instructions

cbroichcbroich Posts: 6
edited July 18, 2006 9:28AM in SQL Compare Previous Versions
I recently purchased SQL Compare 5 and would like to install it using my deployment software (Altiris - which would be comparable to SMS). Do you have any documentation on how to set up a silent installation of this product (which includes the serial number)?
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  • Brian DonahueBrian Donahue Posts: 6,590 Bronze 1
    Hello,

    Not really, no. You can get to the MSI by running the installation on your reference machine and finding it in %systemroot%\Downloaded Installations\{GUID}\Red Gate SQL Bundle 5.msi. A lot of deployment programs require the MSI and that's where you can find it after running the self-extracting installer.

    There isn't currently a command-line tool to silently activate the product, though. After the install runs, you can make it easier on your users by deploying the serial number by adding it to the registry so that when they're prompted to activate the product, the serial number will already be filled in and they won't need to ask you for it. The registry key is

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Red Gate\Licensing\<product name>\Serial Number (it's a string value)

    Product name can be one of:

    SQL Compare
    SQL Data Compare
    SQL Packager
    SQL Toolkit

    GUID, for version 5.2, is F0ED3222-6DC5-41F9-B9CE-BB65A18C1B4A
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  • cbroichcbroich Posts: 6
    Thanks for your quick reply. I was able to find the MSI and will work with that and the registry key setting to get the silent installation to work.

    Now, I have one more problem. I am install this on a Windows XP, SP 2 system that has MDAC 2.8 SP1 installed (I verified this by using the Comcheck utility).

    Despite that, when I run the SQL Compare installation, I get the following error: "MDAC 2.8 needs to be installed for this installation to continue."

    Won't SQL Compare install on MDAC 2.8 SP1 systems? Any way to work around this issue? I can't remove SP1 from my system.

    Thanks in advance!
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  • Brian DonahueBrian Donahue Posts: 6,590 Bronze 1
    Version 5.0 and 5.1 of SQL Bundle had a rather aggressive requirement for MDAC (2.80.1022.3), but that was lowered to 2.8* for version 5.2. If you're installing SQL Bundle version 5.2 and you still have this problem, please check the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\DataAccess\FullInstallVer and make sure the value in the key is greater than 2.80.
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  • cbroichcbroich Posts: 6
    I checked my MDAC version and it is 2.81.1117.0.

    I am using the "Red Gate SQL Bundle 5.msi" that you told me to extract during the installation.

    So, I need to get this MSI to work on MDAC 2.81.1117.0. Any chance of that happening?
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  • Brian DonahueBrian Donahue Posts: 6,590 Bronze 1
    Is the SQL Bundle installation version 5.2? Then it should definitely work.
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  • cbroichcbroich Posts: 6
    When I look at the properties of the MSI, it doesn't tell me if it is version 5.2 or not. Since I can't get it to install, I don't know if there is a way to check it after installation.

    The MSI was extracted during the installation of the SQLBUNDLESETUP.exe which came from a zip file I downloaded after purchase. The name of the zip file is SQLBUNDLE520.zip so I'm assuming I have version 5.2.

    BUT, it still doesn't work and I'm at an impasse.
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  • david connelldavid connell Posts: 172 Silver 1
    Hi there,
    You are right we donot ship MDAC with our products. This installation is easily available from the Microsoft Web site.

    I pressume that you doing something like
    msiexec /i "Red Gate SQL Bundle 5.msi" /qb

    I think if you run the following command line it may work... (nb the property being set at the end of the command line).
    msiexec /i "Red Gate SQL Bundle 5.msi" /qb MDAC_OK=TRUE

    However this will not verify that the MDAC version is correct, and I suspect only works with SQL Bundle 5.2 installer.

    Hope that helps.
    David
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  • Brian DonahueBrian Donahue Posts: 6,590 Bronze 1
    I'd love to know if this works!

    I'd assume that the custom action that checks the MDAC version would overwrite the MDAC_OK attribute. I could be wrong there.
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  • cbroichcbroich Posts: 6
    I finally got it to work, but had to use "/quiet" instead of /qb because there was a final "OK" box on the installation. So the final command was:

    Red Gate SQL Bundle 5.msi /quiet MDAC_OK=TRUE

    Then, I had to add the Serial Number Registry key.

    Thanks for your help!
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