Passwordstate Unattended Install

[support 162]

Purpose:

This post describes the steps needed to perform an unattended install of Passwordstate.  This procedure is automated via Powershell and requires no GUI interaction to complete.

 

Prerequisites:

• Windows 8.1 + or Windows Server 2012 +
• Powershell 4.0 +
• Preferably Dual-Core 1.6Ghz or higher
• 2 GB RAM (the more RAM better with higher concurrent user access)
• 200 MB of disk space for web install
• Passwordstate Source Files
• SQL Express source files with SQL Management Studio Tools source files (Optional)
   

Installation steps performed via this automated process:

• Installation of IIS Manager role with required settings if not already installed
• Installation of source files in c:\inetpub\Passwordstate
• Creation of Passwordstate Web Site
• Creation of Application Pools
• Creation of Certificate
• Creation of API, Self Destruct and Mobile applications within IIS
• Creation of Firewall rules
• Installation of Passwordstate service
• Installation of SQL Express software (optional)

 

Post Script tasks:

• Once this script has installed Passwordstate, you will need to browse to your new Passwordstate URL and configure the settings for the first time use.  These steps can be found in Section 8 of the Installation Guide.

 

Steps Required to Perform Unattended Install:

 

1. Download the https://www.clickstudios.com.au/downloads/passwordstate_unattended_files.zip and place it in a folder of your choice on the machine you intend to install Passwordstate on

2. Download the https://www.clickstudios.com.au/downloads/passwordstate_unattended_script.zip and extract the contents into the same folder as you downloaded the source files to in Step 1

3. If you would like to automatically install SQL Express 2016 as part of this unattended process, you will need to supply the SQL Source installation files. You will need to download these files as a once off process, and transfer them to the machine you are installing Passwordstate on in the same folder as Step 1.  Below are the instructions on how to obtain the source files in the correct format:

 

    a. Download SQL Express 2016 SP1 from https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=799012 (Or what ever the latest version of SQL Express is on this page)

    b. Run the SQLServer2016-SSEL-Expr.exe

    c. Click ‘Download Media’

    d. Select the Express Core option, and a Folder to download the source files to, and click Download

    e. Browse to the download folder and run SQLEXPR_x64_ENU.exe - Choose a place to extract all the files to.  Copy this entire folder into the same folder that you created in Step 1 and close down the SQL Installer Window if it is still open.
    f. Download SQL Management Studio Tools (SMSS-Setup-ENU.exe) from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssms/download-sql-server-management-studio-ssms.  Place this executable into the same folder as Step 1

       

 

 

**NOTE** Take a copy of these SQL Express Source files, and the Passwordstate Source files, and they can be re-used if deploying Passwordstate to multiple systems - no need to download them multiple times unless you want to get the latest Passwordstate source files**

 

4. Edit lines 9, 10 and 11 in the Powershell script to modify the 3 variables appropriately.

5. Log into your server as an Administrator and run Powershell "As Administrator".  Load the .\Unattended_install.ps1 script and execute

 

Depending on whether or not you chose to install SQL Express, this unattended install may take a few minutes or up to 10 or so minutes to complete.

 

Please feel free to modify the scripts to suit your needs, possibly with some proper logging and any other Powershell commands that you think will help automate this process for you. 

 

Regards,

Click Studios

 

 

[HA4g3n 0]

Hello, 

 

Nice job!

I tried it but edited the following lines to specify the data to a secondary disk: 15, 167, 238.

Looks good.

 

Thanks

[support 162]

Hi HA4g3n,

 

Thanks for testing this out and we hope you get some good, repetitive use out of the script:) 

 

regards,

Support

[tburke 0]

The problem with a script like this is that I will need to modify it every time you update how PasswordState is installed because I won't be using SQL express or default folder setups.  The script is not idempotent either.  Is there any thing in the works that would make the installation process in something like Chef a bit less....maintenance like?   Not being able to pull the latest release normally is going to be a pain as well.   Is that "zip" version produced every time there is a new build?    

 

I see the downloaded zip from the normal download link is an "InstallAware" package and according to their documentation you should be able to do a silent install.  The problem is it kicks back right away so the rest of your automation doesn't wait for it to finish installing.

 

passwordstate.exe /s /l=c:\passwordstate_install.log TARGETDIR=d:\inetpub\Passwordstate

 

[support 162]

Hi tburke,

 

In the top few lines of the script, you can change a few options here, and one of them is the exclude the SQL Server options. Another is the path of where you install it to. And yes, we always update this unattended script zip file with each release.

 

And if needed, you can certainly make your own changes to the script if there's something you need which is not currently in there.

Regards

Click Studios

 

 

[Jonathon Taylor 0]

Thanks for this script, is this available on a public repo where I can create a pull request?

 

I have some recommendations for the IIS build and better logging that I'd like to suggest. I figure you might have the script in source code control some where already and I could throw them up there.

 

... I also reformatted the script so it uses only tabs as it was using spaces & tabs interchangeably and, yeah, it hurt my feelings.

 

 

[support 162]

Hi Jonathon,

 

I'm really sorry we didn't respond to this earlier, we some how missed it.

 

Our script to do the unattended install is internal only, but we are happy to look at any suggestions you want, and add them into the script by default?

 

Regards,

Support