I've been tasked with packaging the new version of Silverlight (5.1.40416) and deploying it out through SCCM and thought I would share my experience so far and ask the community for their thoughts/ideas.
Our environment and general points:
- We have multiple versions existing on client machines 2.0, 3.0. 4.0.x, 5.1.x
- We only have 5.1.10411 packaged already in SCCM but someone else but it hasn't been used
- We don't have Update rollups or Feature Packs enabled in our SUP
- All previous versions of Silverlight have the same Product Code
- the /noupdate switch doesn't apply to the .msi file so this will have to be managed by SCCM baselines or Group Policy
Possible Deployment scenarios:
- Package Silverlight 5.1.40416 as an Application with detection method of Product Code AND file=version 5.1.40412 then use one of the following methods to uninstall the previous versions
- Create Applications for all previous Silverlight versions (using Product code and file version as the detection method) and add to the Supersedence tab of 5.1.404.16 with 'uninstalled' ticked
- Edit the 5.1.10411 Application and add to detection methods file = version for 5.1.10411 as well as all previous versions (To save creating an Application for all old Silverlight versions) then add to the Supersedence tab of 5.1.404.16 with 'uninstalled' ticked. If you don't add the fil = version then the application will get stuck in a loop, installing and uninstalling
- Create a CleanSilverlight.cmd file which removes all Silverlight directories and registry entries (from Microsoft). Add this as an Application with a detection method of a registry entry it creates after it has run. Then add this as a dependency for 5.1.40416
- Don't package Silverlight and just enable Feature Packs and Update Rollups and let Software updates handle this
- I have read this doesn't work correctly, versions 3.0 and below don't update and error?
- Also, it will add risk to our environment in case one of the engineers adds an IE rollup to a deployment by mistake
- Create it as a Package rather than an Application which should allow Silverlight to update already existing versions.
- Create an Application TS to uninstall the old versions and then install the new version
Application packaging:
- I will packaged Silverlight as an Application using an msi file. First I ran msiexec /a silverlight.msi /p silverlight.msp /q which produced the PFiles folder. I copied the msi, msp and pfiles folder to SCCM source directory and then deployed with the following command:
- msiexec /i silverlight.msi /q /LiV c:\temp\Silverlight5.1.40416.log
- I may well remove the /LiV option, which creates a log file, after testing has finished
Questions
- Does the SUP Software updates actually work when upgrading and installing Silverlight?
- Is there another, better way to do this?
- Can you run an msp command line in an application?
I used the following links when working on this:
- http://www.itninja.com/software/microsoft/silverlight/5-2022
- http://www.markcorsillo.com/?p=130
- http://sccm2012notes.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/controlling-silverlight-auto-updates.html
- http://www.oldapps.com/silverlight.php