Remote installation with PSExec

When you need to perform a remote installation, you have multiple options. Such as a domain policy, a logon script or PSExec.

Depending on the way the security is configured on the remote computer, you may run into issues where even an administrator cannot install an application properly. For these cases, you need to run PSExec in the context of the system account.

First of all, you will need to install the Sysinternals tools from Microsoft, because you will need the help of PSExec.exe in the execution of this script. (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062)

Then, download the *.msi or the *.exe of the application you wish to install and save the file on a shared drive that is accessible from the remote computer.

Options exist to copy files remotely, please refer to PSExec documentation for further details.

Settings

Create a Macros/Scripts/Tools entry, use the PSExec type. In the Command line section, add the following (long) line:

C:\Tools\Sysinternals\psexec.exe \\$HOST$ -i -u $TOOL_DOMAIN$\$TOOL_USERNAME$ -p $TOOL_PASSWORD$ cmd /
k "msiexec /i \\SRV-DEPLOY\msi\Setup.RemoteDesktopManager.10.9.0.0.msi /quiet /passive /norestart"

The full path to the *.msi must be entered. A shared network is recommended in this case.

A few notes on that command line:

  1. Replace the path to launch PSExec.
  2. Add the appropriate credentials in the Tools section of your session, if left blank it will use your current Windows session credentials.
  3. Indicate the appropriate server shared to get the *.msi or *.exe.
  4. When you are ready to deploy your application on the remote computer, you just need to select the appropriate session in the Navigation pane and launch the Macros/Scripts/Tools from the Dashboard. The Macros/Scripts/Tools entry can also be launched via the Remote Desktop Manager Agent.

Usage

The Macros/Scripts/Tools type are always run in the context of a session. In fact, they use the information in the session to identify what host to run the tool against, that is why we used the $HOST$ variable.

For this reason, the first step is to select a session, any type of session will do (RDP, SSH, etc). After selecting the session, the dashboard will display the Macros/Scripts/Tools Simply clicking on the tool will therefore launch it against the host linked to the currently selected session. You can select hosts and install in sequence.

Give us Feedback