MIT DCNS Software Distribution for MS Windows

MIT DCNS Software Distribution for MS Windows Applications

MIT DCNS is in the process of developing a simple and compact method of distributing and installing our internally developed applications. This page will provide you with ftp links which will enable you to download installation programs for these applications.

You will then need to run the installation software on your MS Windows computer. The installation application will then take you through the process of installing the application. The installation applications themseleves do not take up much room on your hard disk. Although they are a self extracting binary they do not include the binaries for the application that you are installing. Instead the installation application will fetch the binaries of the application to be installed over the network using the ftp protocol. You will not need to know how to use ftp yourself.

Q: Why are we creating installation applications that do not include all of the binaries for the application?

A: We expect the installation programs to be distributed via a number of different media and we expect the installation programs to be available on a number of different sites. By seperating the installation application from the application to be installed we expect to be able to distribute the latest version of the application to the greatest number of users.

When we release a patch to an application users will normally only need to re-run the installer that they already have.

We can fit many more installers on a small diskette than we can full applications.

Many users have indicated that they do not want all of the applications that we currently distribute or they do not have the hard disk space to install applications that they do not need. This system should evolve into a system that lets users install exactly the software that they need in a timely and convienient manner.

Common Features of these installers:

The installers are created using the WISE 3.0 installation software. Installation programs created by WISE offer three command line options. These options are:

/M Manual Mode The /M option runs the installation in manual mode. You will be prompted for the locations of your Windows, System, and Temp directories. You can specify any directories, if they do not exist they will be created. Any changes to INI files will be saved into the Windows directory that you specify. With this option you can have the installtion file run without installing any files into your real Windows and System directory. You can then manually copy the files to their proper destination. This option can also be useful for clients that have unique Windows installations.
/X Extract Mode If you run the installation executable with the /X option, list of the files contained will be displayed. You can select some of the files to extract them from the installation. If you place a directory name after the /X option all of the files in the installation will be extracted into the specified directory.
/Z Extract Mode The /Z option performs the same function as the /X option except that Windows is exited after the extraction.

Alpha and Beta installers:

TechNotify version 1.00

Alpha and Beta applications:

kCOMt is a modified version of Performance Design's COMt version 1.04. This version provides Kerberos support so that you can have Kerberized telnet support from Windows. This does not work under Windows NT at this time. This is only available to MIT users at this time.

kCOMt documentation is now available. Please read this before trying to install or use kCOMt.

Released and Supported installers:

Microsoft patch for MSODISUP.386 for WFWG 3.11. This patch is only available to MIT users from this site. If you are outside of the MIT.EDU domain you can obtain the patch from Microsoft. Here are the notes on its applicability to you.

Released and Supported Applications: