[wpkg-users] wpkg client: server settings, using http

[Rainer Meier]

Hi mcduck

mcduck wrote:
> Shouldn't it be possible to use a webserver for sharing the settings,
> profiles and so forth, as compared to a file server?
> 
> I am not using any domain, and would like to use wpkg over the internet.
> According til feature nbr. 8 on http://wpkg.org/WPKG_overview it should be
> possible.

WPKG requires an SMB/CIFS share to ber un from - sorry, but windows scripting
host (WSH) does not support running *.js scripts from HTTP. So you will in any
case need a Windows file share.
Item #8 on the page referred says that you do NOT need a domain controller. But
Windows shares do not require a domain controller. You can use a simple NAS
device too.

WPKG itself allows you to store packages.xml, profiles.xml and hosts.xml on an
HTTP server. This was implemented to allow web-based management tools which
generate these files on-the-fly.
In addition WPKG supports downloading of files from HTTP servers (usually to
%TEMP% directory) in order to execute these files after downloading. This
theoretically allows you to provide the installer using HTTP, let it be
downloaded by WPKG and then installed.

However I am not aware that any larger deployment exists which uses this method.
It's not very widely tested and as you require a Windows share anyway it's not
very common to use HTTP for package fetching.

So consequently you need to have a windows file share to put WPKG on.

Theoretically you could write a script which downloads an archive from the
(HTTP-) server, extracts it and then runs wpkg.js (contained in the archive
downloaded). Everything else (packages.xml, hosts.xml, profiles.xml) can be
fetched from HTTP directly by WPKG but of course you could include it in the
archive mentioned above.

Using such technique you could provide a pure internet-based deployment:
1. script/rsync fetches WPKG from server (wpkg.xml, config.xml, packages.xml,
profiles.xml and hosts.xml)
2. script executes wpkg.js
3. wpkg downloads files specified in <download /> nodes
4. wpkg installs packages as specified
5. wpkg cleans up the system

Starting from item 3 everything is done exactly like any normal WPKG execution
(just using the download feature in WPKG).

Item 1 and 2 would have to be implemented in custom scripts.


Please note that many software licenses do not allow you to re-distribute the
packages in any way. So if you plan to offer such a service to the "public" you
might violate some license agreements.

br,
Rainer