Re: CA/400 Silent Install -- MIDRANGE-L

I recently had to do the same exact thing, and I got a great deal of
help from a CA developer who shall remain nameless.

Yes, you DO have to upgrade the PC you are using to create the silent
install image. That's the downside, since you have to allocate a PC to
be the guinea pig. The upside is that there is a technique that allows
you to apply the service pack du jour to that image so that the users
don't have to deal with it.

Once I got the image made, I was able to create a .bat file that
automatically launches via the .inf file. The DOS window (I'm not a PC
programmer) pops up and tells the user what is about to happen, and
asks them if they want to proceed. If they type N, the DOS window
closes and nothing happens. If they type Y, the process runs, including
the reboot of the PC. After I proved to the IS manager that the routine
works, he made copies of the CD and sent them out to the remote branch
managers with instructions to have somebody walk around a plug in the
CD, answer the question and come back in 5 to 8 minutes.

One caveat, if you've got CA versions older that 3.2, you'll have to
uninstall and run the setup.exe that sits on the CD.

> I'm trying to create a CA/400 Silent Install response file (file.iss)
so I
> can automate the installation of the CA/400 ODBC & OLE driver on our
users
> PC's...
>
> I immediately ran into a problem when I executed this command from the
> AS/400 folder containing the CA/400 install image:
>
>       setup -r -fld:C:\temp\ca400.iss
>
> I got an error 703 indicating a problem reading something or other....
>
> Anyway, I called SupportLine and couldn't believe what they told me!
>
> The SupportLine representative told me that I could NOT create a
silent
> install file unless I did it as part of an actual INSTALLATION of
CA/400 on
> my PC. I said "What? .. You mean that I can't create an response file
> without actually installing the product?" He insisted that this is
true.
>
> I continue to be amazed at some of the hoops IBM makes us jump
through to do
> something that should be so simple.
>
> Has anyone installed CA/400 using silent install? If so, how would you
> recommend that I create and distribute these files to 100's of PC's?
>
> Kenneth
>
> ****************************************
> Kenneth E. Graap
> IBM Certified Specialist
> AS/400e Professional System Administrator
> NW Natural (Gas Services)
> keg@nwnatural.com
> Phone: 503-226-4211 x5537
> FAX:    603-849-0591
> ****************************************
>
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--
Paul Nelson
630-327-8665