SCCM 2012 R2 Application install argument string too long

deploymentsccm-2012-r2

I have a .msi file to install a piece of client software that has a lot of arguments behind it. I discovered that SCCM 2012 R2 has a limit to the length of of how long the "installation program" string can be because, mine is too long. Any suggestions on ways to install this still as an application and not a package?

Best Answer

I would suggest wrapping the MSI into a self extracting archive using WinRAR and in the SFX options under advanced tell the SFX archive to run the msiexec command string after extraction. This will turn your application type from MSI to Script in SCCM but it will basically mean SCCM will only need to run the EXE archive rather than the MSI with all the properties.

The other option is to download something like InstEdit or Orca and create an MST file containing all the custom properties in the property table.

e.g. some common properties are things like this:

msiexec /i file.msi /qn /norestart ALLUSERS=1 ADDLOCAL=all PIDKEY=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX LSHOST=0.0.0.0 LICENSETYPE=Network CUSTOMPROPERTY1=John CUSTOMPROPERTY2=Smith

Now the above command should work as it doesn't seem all that long but you could create LSHOST, PIDKEY, LICENSETYPE, CUSTOMPROPERTY1 and CUSTOMPROPERTY2 as properties in the MST property table and use a shorter command like this:

msiexec /i file.msi /qn /norestart TRANSFORMS=file.mst ALLUSERS=1 ADDLOCAL=all

Both methods should be useful and I suppose to "correct" way to do it is to create the transform file.