Netburner Virtual Comm Port 2.1 - Silent Setup

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PackageMe
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2018 6:14 am

Netburner Virtual Comm Port 2.1 - Silent Setup

Post by PackageMe »

We’re trying to package the following software: Netburner Virtual Comm Port 2.1

If run in mode 'win32' (attended installation) the software installs fine except for the fact that the vsbsetup.exe has an expired certificate.

Prepopulating that certificate in the ‘Trusted Publishers’ store for the local machines suppresses the ominous warnings during the install, but this is of course not a recommended way of working in a production environment and should be fixed by Netburner as soon as possible.

When deploying this application for enterprise use we need to be able to do an unattended silent setup… This is when the real misery starts…

The installer package uses a Bitrock InstallBuilder package framework. Parameters can be passed to the setup file as explained by the ‘VirtualCommPort-2.1.exe --help’ command.

A pretty straight-forward packaging job, right?

The attended setup has 2 dialog windows with choices:

- Installation folder
Our company policy prohibits us from installing directly on the root drive, so we wish to change this to another location than the default proposed ‘C:\nburn’
- Operating system
Weird that the setup does not know which operating system it is running on, but okay… Let’s roll with it.

Running the below command seems to be what we want:
VirtualCommPort-2.1.exe --unattendedmodeui none --mode unattended --installer-language en --prefix "C:\Program Files (x86)\VirtualCommPort-2.1" --os nt6x64

Warning: case-sensitive parameters!!

The result is that the alternative installation directory is completely ignored and the installation happens anyway in the default C:\nburn folder.
But even worse, the installation only succeeds in half of its actions as can be read in the log file created in the %temp% folder.

By reading the Bitrock InstallBuilder user guide, I believe this is just a poor packaging job by NetBurner as unattended mode installs are possible with the framework.

The only way we could make this work is:
1) Prepopulate the expired certificate in the Trusted Publishers store for the local machine
2) Copy the C:\nburn folder manually (captured from a manual install) before starting the setup
3) Run the unattended setup by executing command:
VirtualCommPort-2.1.exe --unattendedmodeui none --mode unattended

Then the setup runs silently but still installs to the C:\nburn folder instead of our preferred location.

Hope they fix this in a future release... :roll:

Explanation with screenshots attached:
Netburner Virtual Comm Port 2.1 Silent Setup.pdf
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TomNB
Posts: 538
Joined: Tue May 10, 2016 8:22 am

Re: Netburner Virtual Comm Port 2.1 - Silent Setup

Post by TomNB »

Hello PackageMe,

We have corrected the issue with regard to signing the application for the next release. I can't speak to the installation issues though. For further support on that I would recommend contacting support directly. If you do not have a support account you could also try sales. One thing I could not determine from your description is whether or not you intend to deploy this outside your company. It sounds like it is an internal application since you mention company policy. Can you please clarify?

Thank you

Tom
PackageMe
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2018 6:14 am

Re: Netburner Virtual Comm Port 2.1 - Silent Setup

Post by PackageMe »

Hi Tom,

Many thanks for your response. Happy to hear that the certificate issue will be resolved in the next release.
However, the more important issues regarding silent installations remain unanswered. I hope you can relay my feedback to the person/team who creates this setup package, so that I don't need to deal with communicating with your support/sales department. The attached PDF file in my first post should be more than helpful in order to fix the issues.
Finally, I don't understand the relevance of your last question but I don't know the details about the software use anyway.

Kind regards,

PackageMe
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