Posts Tagged ‘Altiris DS’

Script software deployment in PowerShell

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

This is an example in PowerShell of how you can schedule the installation a software package by Altiris DS.
Instead of using the API, the command-line tool axsched is being called to schedule the software package.

function DeploySoftware
{
    param( [String] $pcname,  [String] $package,  [String] $nexttime,  [String] $folder)
    #Write-Host "Deploy $pcname '$package' /t $nexttime /f '$folder'"
    #\\ALTIRIS\express\axsched.exe "$pcname" "$package" / t "$nexttime" / f "$folder"
         
    $StartInfo = New-Object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
    $StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = $true
    $StartInfo.UseShellExecute = $false
    $StartInfo.FileName = "\\ALTIRIS\express\axsched.exe"
    $StartInfo.WorkingDirectory = "C:\Temp"
    $StartInfo.Arguments = "`"$pcname`" `"$package`" /t `"$nexttime`" /f `"$folder`""
    $p =  [System.Diagnostics.Process] ::Start($StartInfo)
    $p.WaitForExit()
    if ($p.ExitCode -eq 0) { $TRUE } else { $FALSE }
}
#This function adds a number of minutes to the given date time and outputs the addition in the right format for AxSched.
function Get-ScheduleTime
{
    param( [System.DateTime]  $starttime,  [int] $minutes)
    #$minutes = 12
    $tspan = New-Object System.TimeSpan(0, 0, $minutes, 0)
    $addtime =  [System.DateTime] ::op_Addition($starttime, $tspan)
    #"2008-10-20 15:00"
    $y = $addtime.Year
    $mo = $addtime.Month
    $d = $addtime.Day
    $h = $addtime.Hour
    $mi = $addtime.Minute
    $schedtime = "$y"
    $schedtime += "-"
    $schedtime += TwoDecimal("$mo")
    $schedtime += "-"
    $schedtime += TwoDecimal("$d")
    $schedtime += " "
    $schedtime += TwoDecimal("$h")
    $schedtime += ":"
    $schedtime += TwoDecimal("$mi")
    $schedtime
}
#Simple function to convert a single decimal to a two decimal, eg 7 becomes 07
function TwoDecimal
{
    param( [String] $Number)
    while ($number.Length -lt 2) { $number = "0$number" }
    $number
}
$now =  [System.DateTime] ::Now
$pcname = "COMP007"
$jobname = "Install Outlook 2007"
$jobfolder = "Software"
#The installation of the package needs to be started after 5 minutes.
$nexttime = Get-ScheduleTime $now 5
DeploySoftware $pcname $jobname $nexttime $jobfolder