Automated installation of drivers

[JoeSavage]

Hi all,

I'd like to be able to use the nipkg.exe command-line tool to be able to install a whole slew of drivers all at once to a PC.  This will be done for a bunch of PCs, thus the desire to script the process.

The problem I'm having is that it seems that you have to know what "feeds" to add in order to use the tool.

For example if I just run 

nipkg install ni-488.2-runtime

it won't know what I'm talking about unless I add the "https://download.ni.com/support/nipkg/products/ni-4/ni-488.2/18.5/released" feed.

I figured this out by pretending to install ni-488.2 from the GUI and then running nipkg feed-list before doing the installation.

I figure there's got to be an easier way.  Is there a meta-feed that the GUI uses in order to determine which products are available and which feeds need to be added for each?   What am I missing?

I see potential for this to be a really powerful tool but the documentation is a little sparse for the CLI.

Thanks in advance,

Joe

[NikitaProrekhin]

Hi Joe,

I did the same in order to get the list of the feeds. It is confusing and strange, but it seems to be the only way to accomplish this (at the moment). There are two alternatives:

1. Download all necessary packages and their dependencies and create a local feed inside your organization on a shared folder. Then you can only add this local feed and install everything.

2. Or use Package Installer. Currently it is only available with NXG, but will be also supported in LabVIEW 2019 very soon.

Please check (and kudo) this idea - https://forums.ni.com/t5/Additional-NI-Software-Idea/Automatically-install-NI-dependencies-from-NI-P...

Nikita.

[JoeSavage]

OK, glad to know I'm not the only one having this problem.  I opted for option #1 using the commands discussed here: http://www.ni.com/tutorial/53918/en/

1) Go to the package manager GUI and pretend to install a driver package.

2) Go to the command prompt and download that package and all dependencies to a local/network location:
e.g. nipkg download --all-deps --destination-dir=<network path> ni-daqmx

3) Repeat for all packages of interest
4) On the target PC add the network path as a custom feed and then go to town installing everything you need.

I'm looking forward to NI making this easier but this will work for the time being.  I thought I was going to have to reverse-engineer how the GUI was getting the master feed list.  

Thanks for the help!

Joe

[MRC-CBU]

Having the same trouble, and for that very package.

I have to say, this is a horrible step backwards.  It may be more granular, but they seem to have gone out of their way to make this more awkward, and the documentation often lacks.