Is there a nice way to deploy SftpDrive via MS SMS to a number of Windows XP workstations, with a licence key, and with a selection of drive mappings pre-configured?

I can only speak for myself in this, but I can give you a complete run down of what I have got and what I am trying to do.

As mentioned previously, I have a number of Windows XP based workstations connecting to a Windows 2003 domain. SMS 2003 is used to deploy software out to these workstations as required. There are a couple of HP-UX boxes running SSH that hold both production data that have previously been logged into via a desktop FTP client to transfer data to, which SftpDrive has proven to be a much better solution to use.

We have purchased 2 * 25 user packs of SftpDrive that the intention was to deploy via SMS, preferably outside of business hours, with the software configured to map the Windows user's home directories on each of the HP-UX boxes (where the Windows login name and password is the same as the HP-UX login name and password), plus another data directory on both, giving a total of 4 drives mapped.

So...

The first part of what is needed is to make the silent install of SftpDrive truly silent when a licence key file is available. At present, a messagebox is still displayed despite the /S option being passed as an argument to the installer when a file named "SftpDriveLicense.txt" is located in the same directory as the installer. This messagebox occurs after all of the files have been installed to %ProgramFiles%\SftpDrive, however not before the licence key information has been written to the HKLM\SOFTWARE\SftpDrive registry key, thus forcibly terminating the installer at this point does not apply the licence information. If this messagebox could be removed, the major obstacle with SMS deployment should disappear.

A smaller issue - and not a showstopper in any means provided that it is documented somewhere - is that, at least in my configuration, the installer does not start at all when it is attempted to be deployed via a UNC path, or when the installation is configured to run using the SMS installation account, or when the installer is called directly from VBScript (it does however work fine when called from a batch file called from VBScript). As an example, the following SMS configuration for the installer works correctly:



however the following, which is pretty much a default SMS installation configuration, does not:



As mentioned, this isn't a showstopper in any way, shape or form provided that you know what is required when setting up an SMS advertisement.

The second part of what is needed is the pre-configuration of common drive mappings. I have been able to fudge this reasonably well through some VBScript in the domain login script, forcing registry keys into the tree at HKCU\Software\SftpDrive\Sessions\Session 00x (where x is between 0 and 3 corresponding to the number of drive sessions).

If you are interested, here is an example of the sort of the thing that the login script is doing, setting up a Y: drive mapping to the logged in user's home directory on the HP-UX server, prompting them for their password upon first connection (and subsequently whenever their password changes):

OPTION EXPLICIT
DIM objShell, objReg
DIM strWindowsUser, strValue
CONST HKEY_CURRENT_USER = &H80000001
ON ERROR RESUME NEXT

SET objReg=GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\.\root\default:StdRegProv")
objReg.GetStringValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER, "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run", "SftpDrive", strValue
IF LEN(strValue) = 0 THEN
SET objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
strWindowsUser = objShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%UserName%")
objReg.CreateKey HKEY_CURRENT_USER, "Software\SftpDrive\Sessions\Session 000"
objReg.SetStringValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER, "Software\SftpDrive\Sessions\Session 000", "Session Name", "Data"
objReg.SetDWORDValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER, "Software\SftpDrive\Sessions\Session 000", "Drive", ASC("Y") - 65
objReg.SetStringValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER, "Software\SftpDrive\Sessions\Session 000", "Directory", "/home/user/" & strWindowsUser
objReg.SetStringValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER, "Software\SftpDrive\Sessions\Session 000", "Hostname", "<servername>"
objReg.SetDWORDValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER, "Software\SftpDrive\Sessions\Session 000", "Port", 22
objReg.SetStringValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER, "Software\SftpDrive\Sessions\Session 000", "Username", strWindowsUser
objReg.SetBinaryValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER,"Software\SftpDrive\Sessions\Session 000", "Password", 0
objReg.SetDWORDValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER, "Software\SftpDrive\Sessions\Session 000", "Authentication", 0
objReg.SetDWORDValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER, "Software\SftpDrive\Sessions\Session 000", "Show Banner", 1
objReg.SetStringValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER, "Software\SftpDrive\Sessions\Session 000", "Icon Path", ""
objReg.SetDWORDValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER, "Software\SftpDrive\Sessions\Session 000", "Icon Index", 0
objReg.SetDWORDValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER, "Software\SftpDrive\Sessions\Session 000", "Reconnect on login", 1
objReg.SetDWORDValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER,"Software\SftpDrive\Sessions\Session 000", "Password State", 0
objReg.SetDWORDValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER,"Software\SftpDrive\Sessions\Session 000", "CreationMask", 0
END IF

While this works (at least in the sense that it generally displays the name associated with the drive, rather than a Disconnected Network Drive), it would be ideal if there was a way to mass deploy a drive mapping configuration at the same time as a regular installation.

Apologies for the length of this reply. Let me know if further information is required.

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