Creating and deploying an installable image for Windows computers

This procedure describes how to create an installable image on a local computer for local installation on other computers.

Note

You can create the installable images on either Windows or UNIX operating system. However, you cannot create a common installable image for both the operating system. You must create separate images for Windows and UNIX operating systems.

Before you begin

You must be a member of the local Administrator group on the computer on which you are creating the image.
The person performing the installation must be a member of the local Administrator group on the computer on which the image is installed.

To create an installable image of products

Start the installation utility.
On the Welcome page, click Next.
Review the license agreement and select Accept. Click Next.
On the Select Installation Option page, select Create an image to be installed later.
Enter the name of the directory on your computer where you want the image stored after it has been created.
Optionally, select to have the image compressed and saved to a .zip file. Click Next.
Select the target operating systems on which you want to install the image. Click Next.
You can select multiple Windows or UNIX platforms for each image that you create. Alternatively, you can select the Local System option, which lets you create an image that can be installed only on computers with the same platform and configuration as the computer on which you are creating the image. This includes the service pack level.
Note
You cannot create an installable image that can be installed on both Windows and UNIX computers. You must create one image for all Windows operating systems and one image for all UNIX operating systems; however, you can create the images from either a Windows or UNIX computer.
Select the products that you want to include in the image. Click Next.
Proceed through the installation as you would if you were installing products locally, entering all required product configuration information.
On the Review Selections and Create Image page, click Create Image.
When the status indicator reaches 100 percent, click Next on the Export Status page.
Verify that the process was successful, and optionally, view the log file. Click Next.
Review or enter any postinstallation product configuration information.
Click Finish to exit the installation utility.

To specify different configuration variables for different computers

When you create an installable image, the product configuration information that you enter, such as product installation directory, account names, passwords, and so forth, must be the same for all computers on which the image is installed. If you want to specify different product configuration values for different computers, you can perform the following actions:

Create a separate image for each set of values that you want to implement.
Launch the installation utility from a command line and use the -createcontrolfile command line option to create a new control file to use with the image. For more information about , see Command line options.
Use the ctltool to change the variables stored in the image's control file after the image is generated. For more details, see Editing control files for installable images.

To deploy the installable image to a Windows computer

Note

If you created an installable image on a Windows computer to be installed on UNIX computers, you must make sure that the method that you use to transfer the image (for example, tarring the image) maintains execute permissions on the installable image files when you unpack the files on the UNIX computer. If the permissions are not maintained, you might receive an error message similar to the following when you try to install the image: "Error: Executable not found './thorinst.s25'.

To correct the file permissions, before you install the image, perform one of the following tasks depending on where the installable image directory resides:

If you exported the image to a directory that is at the root level, for example, /image, change to the root directory and enter chmod -R 755 /image.
If you exported the image to a directory that is not at the root level, for example, /image/myimage, change to the directory in which the image directory is located (/image), and enter chmod -R 755 /image/myimage.

Use one of the following methods to deploy the installable image to the target Windows computer:

Tar the image, and use ftp or secure ftp to send it to a remote computer.
Use a third-party distribution system such as Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS).
Burn the image to a CD and distribute the CD.
Place the image on a shared network drive.
Select Compress Installable Image in the installation utility to create a .zip file that you can then send to other computers.

Where to go from here

Install an installable image (Windows).