Thunderbird MSI Installer Package for Active Directory

active-directorymsithunderbird

I am in need of a thunderbird msi (Microsoft Installer) package which can be deployed via group policies using Microsoft ActiveDirectory.

I am very pleased with the Firefox packaged provided by FrontMotion but unfortunately they do not have packages for Thunderbird. sob sob

I guess, I could try to do the packaging myself, or do all of the installations by hand 🙁

I did some searches and found very outdated packages by ZettaServe, but no current releases, yet.. Anyone using .msi packaged Thunderbird installations? If you have msi packages, where did you get them from?

regards,
Comradin

Best Answer

I'm not aware of a .msi for Thunderbird, but rather than installing by hand, you could roll out WPKG via AD, then use it to roll out Thunderbird.

Related Solutions

Windows Scripting – How to Find GUID of MSI Package

UPDATE: Try this stackoverflow.com answer instead: How can I find the product GUID of an installed MSI setup? or even this one: Find GUID From MSI File .

The Windows SDK tool Orca will allow you to open and view all tables in an MSI file. Once you have the MSI open, you can either navigate to the Property table and look for the "product code" entry, or you can select "View => Summary Information..." and look for the "package code" entry. Either the package or the product guid can be used for uninstall.

See an Orca screenshot of how to find the product code in the MSI: WiX - Doing a major upgrade on a multi instance install

There are also other ways to find the GUID:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

It still appears you have to download the MSI SDK to obtain Orca. If you don't have access to Orca and can't be bothered downloading the SDK, any viewer capable of reading a MSSQL database file (com stuctured storage file), should be able to open the MSI file and view the contents. Make a copy of the MSI before opening it in a viewer and open the copy. Just to be sure. Once open you navigate to the Property table and look for the product GUID.

UPDATE: A list of free MSI viewers (towards bottom).

Also check these posts on stackoverflow.com with information on how to uninstall via Powershell:

Custom (preconfigured) installer for Firefox and Thunderbird

Taking into account that:

Firefox and Thunderbird doesn't install anything to system folders other than Program files *.
All of the configuration is stored in the profile folder (they don't use the Windows Registry for user settings).
You can copy a profile from one computer to another, even with different versions of Windows, and it works fine (we just did that a couple of days ago when a coworker changed from XP to Windows 7).

You could try this:

Make a fresh install of Firefox and Thunderbird and configure then as you need.
Using NSIS (or any other free installer) create an installer with all the contents of the Firefox/Thunderbird Program Files folder and the corresponding profile folders inside Application Data (AppData in Vista/7).

Use the official installer for installing the application
Create an installer for the profiles and install it just after installing the application.

The core of the NSIS script for Firefox for the first option would be something like this:

!define LOCAL_INSTALLATION "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox"  ; change this to point to the folder in which you installed Firefox
!define LOCAL_APP_DATA "C:\Documents and Settings\YourUser\Application Data\Mozilla"  ; change this to your app data folder
Name "Mozilla custom install"
OutFile "MozillaCustom_Setup.exe"
InstallDir "$PROGRAMFILES\Mozilla Firefox"

Section "Mozilla Firefox" main

  SetOutPath "$INSTDIR"  ; Set output path to the installation directory.
  File /r "${LOCAL_INSTALLATION}\*.*"  ; getting all files from you local installation

  RMDir /r "$APPDATA\Mozilla"  ; deleting any existing profiles (you need to clean all the profiles or the "migration" won't work
  SetOutPath "$APPDATA\Mozilla"  ; Set output path to the data folder.
  File /r "${LOCAL_APP_DATA}\*.*"  ; getting all files from your profile

  CreateDirectory "$SMPROGRAMS\Firefox"
  CreateShortCut "$SMPROGRAMS\Firefox\Firefox.lnk" "$INSTDIR\Firefox.exe"

  ; Write the uninstall keys for Windows
  WriteUninstaller "${UNINSTALLER}"
  WriteRegStr HKLM "${UNINSTALL_KEY}" "DisplayName" "Firefox"
  WriteRegStr HKLM "${UNINSTALL_KEY}" "UninstallString" "$INSTDIR\Uninstall.exe"
SectionEnd

(*) The exception is the MAPI handler DLL for Thunderbird, but this is done when you set it as the default mail application, not an install time

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows Scripting – How to Find GUID of MSI Package

Custom (preconfigured) installer for Firefox and Thunderbird

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