03-09-2009 08:52 AM - edited 03-09-2009 08:52 AM
We run Volume License Manager 2.1.1 to supply installers and licenses for LabVIEW 8.6.1. There are a few things in the behaviour of VLM that seems strange:
1. Installers made with VLM will still ask the users to register their application with NI. This step will fail, however the installers then continue with the expected behaviour of registering it with the local volume license server...Why this unnecessary and non-functioning step?
2. By default the installers created in VLM does not have the licensed toolkits selected for installation, only LabVIEW. The normal behaviour should be to have all the toolkits that the installer has a license for selected for installation, and leave just the evaluation toolkits unselected. Now we have to manually select the toolkits each time we run the installer...
3. This is not necessarily related to VLM, however - if you try to build an installer with LabVIEW it never has the necessary componants stored locally. If e.g. you include the VISA RunTime it starts to ask for the location of it, even though you chose to install everything back when you installed LabVIEW. If the location you installed the drivers from is no longer available you get lots of trouble. Once you actually get to the point where it accepts a source of the components you can select it to cache it and the problem goes away...however, why is it not cached in the first place...much easier and a better default.
4. Creating an installer with VLM requires quite a few steps so it would be nice if it was possible to edit the installers after they have been created. For now I have done this by editing the xml-files directly, however that's always a bit risky and not very intuitive...
Are any of these things just an oversight from yours truly, or is this the current status of the product? Any tips on how to bypass any of these issues?
03-10-2009 06:38 AM
Welcome to my world! OK, it's not that bad, here is what I learned:
re: #2 After you create an installer for a particular serial number, you can customize the options you want to install by running the megasuite setup.exe with a command line modifier; '/generatespecfile'. In this case, the name you provide is not a file, but a FOLDER that will be created in the _SourceFiles folder. I used the VLI names from the install (I created VLIs for each of my serial numbers; one called DevSuite and the other called DebugLic).
You should see a panel indicating that no software will be installed, and that your options will be saved to a configuration file. I ran this twice; 'setup /generatespecfile DevSuite' and 'setup /generatespecfile DebugLic'
After you are done, copy the file(s) in _SourceFiles/<name> (in my case _SourceFiles/DevSuite and _SourceFiles/DebugLic) into the appropriate CLIENT subfolder under your VLI name ( in my case _SourceFiles/DevSuite/Client and _SourceFiles/DebugLic/Client)
When your end users run setup, your custom selections will be preset from the XML file created using the /generatespecfile option.
Re:#4 By using the /generatespecfile option, you should be able to modify the settings as many times as you like. You shouldn't have to resort to the VLM to create the installer again; only if you have new or changed serial numbers. You should also be able to copy an existing folder such as my 'DebugLic' example to say 'ATE', then create a new setup file for it that contains the NI modules you need. Just remember that the serial number and licensing used in this new ATE will be the same ones used by DebugLic.
I wondered about the activation scren too; I have installation instructions that tell the user to NOT activate and continue. I suspect it has something to do with the 'megasuite' installer simply calling the LV installer and the activation screen comes from the LV installer.
03-10-2009 12:09 PM
By the way, NI has created a forum just for Volume License Manager and Automated Software Installation.