[wpkg-users] Deploy over Internet

[M. Jason Stewart]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 5:57 PM, M. Jason Stewart <mjstewie at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 2:15 PM, Rainer Meier <r.meier at wpkg.org> wrote:
>> Hi Jason,
>>
>> M. Jason Stewart wrote:
>>> More like 200 separate DSL connections. We use Citrix as an
>>> alternative to individual VPNs. If you're not familiar, just think
>>> Teminal Services over HTTPS. Users get their applications via a web
>>> portal, it's like remote desktop for individual applications.  As
>>> such, the client machines are not joined to our domain- they are just
>>> stand alone PCs.
>>> Thanks for the links, looks like I have some more reading and
>>> experimenting to do.
>>
>> The use case you describe is not fully clear to me yet. Citrix is well-known to
>> me as a way to remotely access Windows environments. Personally I am using RDP
>> quite a lot.
>> But when using Citrix/Terminal services, then the software environment is fully
>> located on server side (centralized). This is actually exactly the reason for
>> such services - concentrate all data and environment on a centralized server.
>>
>> But in this case you don't need WPKG on your road-warrior clients but on the
>> central server to install software on a central location. If your clients are
>> using Citrix remote access then the whole software installation is located on
>> the server.
>>
>> Well, you could deploy the Citrix client to your workstations using WPKG but I
>> don't think it's updated very frequently.
>>
>> In any case WPKG is usually run from an SMB/CIFS share. If you don't have a VPN
>> then it's unlikely that your clients will be able to access any share. So what
>> you could do is to install WPKG locally on every client (wpkg.js installed
>> locally). But WPKG by default reads its configuration (hosts, profiles,
>> packages) from the same location where it's executed from. Alternatively you can
>> provide these XML files on an HTTP server (which could be a web-server of your
>> company which is available via internet).
>>
>> After you managed this hurdle you cannot fetch the software from CIFS share as
>> WPKG usually does. However you could use the HTTP-download functionality to
>> fetch the installer files from a public server (might be your company webserver
>> too). But remember that licensing might not allow you to publish the packages on
>> a public internet server (where actually everybody could download it from).
>>
>>
>>
>> If you really want to use WPKG for this kind of deployment have a look at the
>> change notes where it's documented how to use the downloading feature....
>>
>> NEW: Added download extension as initially proposed by Tomasz Chmielewski (with
>>     some changes). A download definition is specified as follows:
>>     <download url="http://server.domain.tld/path/to/file.msi"
>>     target="subdir/file.msi" timeout="7200" />
>>
>>     The 'timeout' attribute is entirely optional. It defaults to the value of
>>     'downloadTimeout' as specified within config.xml (7200 if not omitted).
>>     The value is specified in seconds.
>>
>>     The 'target' attribute specifies a path relative to the 'downloadDir' as
>>     specified within config.xml (defaults to '%TEMP%' if omitted).
>>     NOTE: You need to specify the full file path, including the file name, not
>>     just a directory name!
>>
>>     So to install the package above could be installed by the following
>>     install command definition:
>>     <install cmd="msiexec /qn /i %TEMP%\subdir\file.msi">
>>
>> and
>>
>> MOD: Download XML nodes are now allowed as sub-nodes of any command (install/
>>     upgrade/downgrade/remove). This allows you to specify a download which is
>>     only downloaded for a specific command. This was implemented since it
>>     usually makes no sense to download the installation package again right
>>     before the remove commands are executed (which usually runs a local
>>     uninstall command which does not need the original installer).
>>     Specifying a download XML node on the global package level (not below a
>>     specific command definition) is still allowed. Such downloads will be
>>     executed regardless of the command to be executed. So you can specify some
>>     global downloads which are executed in any case.
>>     Note: If multiple install (or upgrade/downgrade/remove) commands are
>>     specified WPKG will download the the files of all command nodes of the
>>     same kind before starting to execute the commands in sequence.
>>     Example:
>>     <package...>
>>     <donwoad url="http://example.org/package.exe" target="package.exe" />
>>     <install cmd="%TEMP%\file.exe some arguments" ...>
>>       <donwoad url="http://example.org/file.exe" target="file.exe" />
>>     </install>
>>     <install cmd="%TEMP%\file2.exe some arguments" ...>
>>       <donwoad url="http://example.org/file2.exe" target="file2.exe" />
>>     </install>
>>     <upgrade cmd="%TEMP%\update.exe arguments" ...>
>>       <donwoad url="http://example.org/update.exe" target="update.exe" />
>>     </upgrade>
>>     </package>
>>     This definition will simply download "package.exe" (global). "file.exe"
>>     and "file2.exe" right before the install commands are executed in
>>     seuence.
>>     In case of upgrade it will download "package.exe" (global) and
>>     "update.exe" before executing the upgrade command(s).
>>
>>
>>
>> However I am not sure that you need it in case you really use Citrix
>> remote-desktop solution.
>>
>>
>> Please also remember that the downloading feature is quite uncommon and not very
>> widely used, so testing and fixing would probably require some time.
>>
>>
>> br,
>> Rainer
>>
>
>
> Rainer,
> Thank you for the info. You are correct about our apps being centrally
> managed through Citrix, I was just illustrating why we don't/won't use
> VPNs.  I'm looking at WPKG as a method to deploy applications that are
> local to the client machines. Examples: Windows Defender, Antivirus
> software, custom registry changes, Asset management client, etc.
>


All,
Thank you again for the help. I have WPKG configured to work over an
internet connection. I installed wpkg.js to C:\Program Files\wpkg and
put the hosts, profiles, and packages XML files on my web server. I
set wpkg_base to the address of my server, and added the <download
url> tag to my packages.xml with the same info.  I was able to do a
proof-of-concept deployment of DIA and it worked perfectly. Great
tool!  The only issue I have so far is the WPKG client doe not seem to
be synchronizing at startup- I had to manually run the script. How
often does the WPKG Service check for updates, is it only on startup?