Using Silent Non-interactive Installation on Windows* OS Systems

Legal Information

Silent (batch mode) installation allows you to install, repair, remove, or modify the product without requiring your input during the installation process. Options you type on a command line let you activate the product using a license file or serial number, customize the installation location, modify or remove an installed product, and perform other functions. This article explains how to use this command line interface on Microsoft Windows* OS systems.

Contents:

Overview
Unpacking the Compressed Self-extracting Executable File
Using the Install Action
Using the Remove, Repair, Modify and Toc Options
Using the Interactive Setup Wizard
Example Script File and Sample Commands
After Installation: Set Up Your Command Line Environment
Advanced Topics (license server use, INTEL_LICENSE_FILE environment variable, requesting a log file)

Overview

Whether installing interactively or non-interactively (silently), you need:

• The installation package file(s) - either the compressed self-extracting file you might have just downloaded, or the equivalent set of its uncompressed files.
•  A license file, serial number, or existing activate license for the product being installed. A special type of license file can be created to configure use of a license server. Alternatively, you can temporarily use an evaluation license to activate the product.

Both the compressed file productA_setup.exe and the uncompressed  setup.exe support a basic command line interface.

When executing the compressed file productA_setup.exe, you can optionally specify options for the setup.exe file after it is uncompressed (see the --a option and examples below).

To view the available command line options, type the file name and the --help option:

productA_setup.exe --help

Viewing Errors and Progress

Certain errors related to command-line use may appear immediately in your command line window. For example, an error appears if you mistype an option name. Other warnings or errors appear in the output log file specified by the --output option. View this file to see the progress of the requested action and any warnings or errors encountered.

Names of Installation Files Used in this Document

In this document:

• The compressed self-extracting executable is shown below as productA_setup.exe. On your system, productA is replaced by the actual compressed installation package name, and n is replaced by digit (0-9). For example:  
• VTune_XE_201n_Updaten_setup.exe
• Composer_XE_201n_xxx_setup.exe
• parallel_studio_xe_201n_updaten_setup.exe

• The uncompressed executable is named setup.exe. You specified the directory to contain the compressed executable’s contents when they were extracted from the compressed executable.

Default Directories

These directories often contain installation files (some systems may omit the (x86)):

• Web download directory for the compressed files, usually:   C:\Users\username\Download
• Default location for uncompressed files, usually:  C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\Download\productA
• Standard license directory:    C:\Program files (x86)\Common files\Intel\Licenses  

Unpacking the Compressed Executable File

In certain cases, you may want to unpack the contents of the compressed executable productA_setup.exe before you start the installation. For example:

• For a large suite package that contains multiple products, you might want to unpack and later re-use the uncompressed set of files.

• For one small product’s package, you might not need to keep the uncompressed set of files. You can simply uncompress the compressed file as needed.

To unpack the compressed file, you can double-click it and interactively specify the directory, or use this command applied to the compressed file productA_setup.exe:

 C:\Users\user\Download> productA_setup.exe --s --x --r no --f E:\Users\Intel_software\productA

This command requests non-interactive installation (--s), does not start installation automatically (--x), does not remove the uncompressed set of files (--r no), and specifies a non-default location to contain the extracted the files (--f). To allow interactive modification of where the set of files are uncompressed, omit the --s (silent) option.

You can execute the actions (install, remove, modify, repair, toc) by typing options after the --a option.

The options available after you type the compressed file productA_setup.exe:

Using the Install Action

To install this Intel product in silent mode, type the following command when using the compressed file productA_setup:

 C:\Users\user\Download> productA_setup.exe -s -a install --eula=accept [{--license=<path-to-license-file> | --sn=<serial number>}] --output=<report-file>

With this command, the compressed productA_setup.exe file is silently extracted to C:\Program files (x86)\Intel\Download\productA_setup (the default extract location on most Windows systems) and executes setup.exe, passing the action (install) and its related options that follow the option -a. In turn, the application setup.exe installs the product into a default directory using the specified license file or serial number for activation.

Alternatively, if you retained the uncompressed set of files, you can use a similar command applied to the uncompressed setup.exe:

 C:\Users\user\Download\prod> setup.exe install --eula=accept [{--license=<path-to-license-file> | --sn=<serial number>}] --output=<report-file>

The following options are required for the --a install action shown above or the uncompressed setup.exe:

• The --eula=accept indicates that you accept all terms and conditions of the End User License Agreement (EULA).
• The --sn, --license, or --eval option. If you have a serial number, choose the --sn option. Or, if you have a license file, choose the --license option. If you omit both of these options, the install will look for an existing license and attempt to use it. A license file has a file suffix of .lic.  To temporarily use an evaluation license, type the --eval option.
• The --output option writes information reported during the installation to the file specified. View this file to check for errors and installation progress.

To specify a customized (non-default) installation directory, type the --installdir option.

The Intel product integrates with all supported versions of Microsoft Visual Studio* that are installed at the time of installation. If you install a new version of Visual Studio after installing the Intel product, consider executing a modify command.

For example, both commands below execute the compressed productA_setup.exe file, where the first command specifies a serial number and the second the license file location. Replace x’s with actual serial number characters and the word productA with the actual downloaded product name and version:

 C:\Users\name\Downloads>productA_setup.exe --a install --output=C:\Users\name\downloads\product_inst_log.txt --eula=accept --sn=

xxxx-xxxxxxxx

 C:\Users\user\Downloads> product_setup.exe --s  --a install --output=C:\Users\name\Downloads\product_inst_log.txt --eula=accept --license="C:\Program files (x86)\Common files\Intel\Licenses\xxxxx.lic"

To find out whether installation has completed, read the log file specified by the --output option.

In addition to the options listed above (--a, --eula, --eval, --sn, --license, --installdir, --output, --help), other options for the install action include:

Please see the built-in help (--help) for details about each option.

Using the Remove, Repair, Modify and Toc Actions

In addition to the install action (see above), you can remove, repair, modify, or view the status (toc) of an existing installation. You can only specify one action per command. These actions use the existing license activation, so you do not need to specify the license on the  command line with the remove, repair, modify, or toc actions.

For example, to uninstall (remove) the version of this product associated with the uncompressed setup.exe:

  C:\Users\user\Download\prod> setup.exe remove --output=<report-file>

The following command uses the compressed file. It requests that all versions of this product be removed silently (uses both --remove and --force-remove):

  C:\Users\user\Download> productA_setup.exe --s --a remove --output=remove.log --force-remove

To view the installation status of this product, use the --toc action. For example, this lets you  view which components have been installed for the product version associated with the file setup.exe:

  C:\Users\user\Download> productA_setup.exe --s --a toc

To modify the installation for this product, use the modify action. For example, if you installed a new version of Visual Studio after you installed this product, use the modify action to integrate this product with the new Visual Studio version:

  C:\Users\user\Download> productA_setup.exe --s --a modify --output=modify.log

If you encounter unexpected errors using this product or have been asked by Intel support to repair the installation for this product, use the --repair action:

 C:\Users\user\Download> productA_setup.exe --s --a repair --output=repair.log

To get more help on self-extracting options, use the following commands on the downloaded compressed file or the uncompressed setup.exe file:

  C:\Users\user\Download> productA_setup.exe --help

  C:\Users\user\Download\prod> setup.exe --help

Using the Interactive Setup Wizard

If you omit the action on a command, a dialog appears asking you to choose whether you want to:

• Modify, Repair, or Remove an existing installation.
• Begin installation and select options for a new installation.

The supported options are:

• --sn to specify the serial number if there is no active license.
• --installdir to specify the installation directory.

For example:

 C:\Users\user\Download> productA_setup.exe --a --sn=xxxx-xxxxxxx --installdir=”E:\Program files (x86)\Intel\product”

Example Script File and Example  Commands

The following .bat file provides several example command lines for the Intel® Advisor XE 2013 product whose compressed executable file is named Advisor_XE_2013_update4_setup.exe:

@echo off
rem Default silent installation with evaluation license activation
Advisor_XE_2013_update4_setup.exe --s --a install --output=install.log --eval --eula=accept
rem Silent remove of the product associated with this file
Advisor_XE_2013_update4_setup.exe --s --a remove --output=remove.log
rem Default silent installation with license file activation
Advisor_XE_2013_update4_setup.exe --s --a install --output=install.log --license=d:\advixe.lic --eula=accept
del /f /s /q "%programfiles(x86)%\Intel\Advisor XE 2013\bin32"
del /f /s /q "%programfiles(x86)%\Intel\Advisor XE 2013\bin64"
rem Silent repair, leaving the extracted files
Advisor_XE_2013_update4_setup.exe --s --r no --l wi_log.log --a repair --output=repair.log
rem
rem Silently force removal of all versions of this product
Advisor_XE_2013_update4_setup.exe --s --a remove --output=remove.log --force-remove

After Installation: Set Up Your Command Line Environment

After installation, execute the appropriate product-vars.bat script file(s) to set up your command line environment of each installed Intel software product. The product-specific product-vars.bat file is located in the respective Intel product's installation directory tree, such as below C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\. 

To set up the command line for all Intel products in the product suite, execute the file:

 C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Intel\Parallel Studio XE 2013\ipsxe-vars.cmd

Advanced Topics

Advanced topics include:

• Indicating that this product installation will use a license server.
• Using the license directory environment variable.
• Requesting a detailed (verbose) install log file.

Installation Using a License Server

To indicate that this product’s license is on a license server, create a special license file with the following two lines:

SERVER host ANY port
USE_SERVER

In this file:

• Replace host with the license server name.
• Replace port with the port number used by the license server.

 For example, if the license server host is named srvr01H-xyz. Most license servers use port 28518:

SERVER srvr01H-xyz ANY 28518
USE_SERVER

Copy this file to the standard license file location (described below) and give it a unique name. Specify this custom license file in the usual way by typing the --license option with the install action.

Viewing and Setting the Environment Variable INTEL_LICENSE_FILE

The standard location on Windows 64-bit OS systems is the path set by the environment variable INTEL_LICENSE_FILE during installation:

 C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Intel\Licenses

You can define INTEL_LICENSE_FILE to provide a place for the installer to look for licenses in addition to the standard location shown above. For example, to use the E drive:

 C:\Users\user\Download> SET INTEL_LICENSE_FILE=”E:\SoftwareProduct_CommonFiles\Intel\Licenses"

Requesting a Detailed Install Log File

An Intel support representative may request detailed information about an installation-related  problem for debugging purposes. In this case, add the --log option when reproducing the problem and upload the generated log or txt file to Intel. Using the --log  option writes detailed (verbose) debugging information to its log file. For example:

productA_setup.exe --s --a install --output=install.log --log=debug_log.txt --eval --eula=accept

As shown above, you can use the --log option with the --output option to create separate output files.