Today I needed to script the installation of IBM System i Access for Windows (formerly called IBM Client Access).

With older versions of this client (up to 5.4) you could use the -r (record) installer switch to record the install in a setup.iss file but version 6.1 uses an MSI based installer.

IBM offers the client in a 2 DVD download but you probably only need the first dvd (dvd 1 has both the x86 and x64 installers, dvd 2 has the ia64 installer) which is a whopping 3,5 GB download.

Inside the download (a zip) is an iso file of which you will only need the files in the root and the Image32 or Image64a folder.

Inside the image folder are subfolders names MRI29xx where xx is a language identifier:

The following Identifiers are used:

MRI2912 - Croatian MRI2922 - Portuguese MRI2923 - Dutch Netherlands MRI2924 - English MRI2925 - Finnish MRI2926 - Danish MRI2928 - French MRI2929 - German MRI2930 - Japanese MRI2931 - Spanish MRI2932 - Italian MRI2933 - Norwegian MRI2937 - Swedish MRI2938 - English Uppercase DBCS MRI2939 - German Multinational MRI2940 - French Multinational MRI2942 - Italian Multinational MRI2954 - Arabic MRI2956 - Turkish MRI2957 - Greek MRI2961 - Hebrew MRI2962 - Japanese (5026) MRI2963 - Belgian Dutch Multinational MRI2966 - Belgian French Multinational MRI2975 - Czech MRI2976 - Hungarian MRI2978 - Polish MRI2979 - Russian MRI2980 - Brazilian Portuguese MRI2981 - Canadian French Multinational MRI2984 - English DBCS MRI2986 - Korean DBCS (KS) MRI2987 - Traditional Chinese DBCS MRI2989 - Simplified Chinese DBCS (GB) MRI2992 - Romanian MRI2994 - Slovakian MRI2996 - Portuguese Multinational
So if you need to transfer the installer over a slow connection you only need to transfer the language(s) you require.

To set the language you can use the CWBPRIMARYLANG property to set the language eg CWBPRIMARYLANG=Mri2923 and the /v switch can be used to pass MSI Public properties to the installer.

Note that the installer requires a reboot so you may want to add REBOOT=ReallySupress to prevent this.

I use Master Return Codes for this in Altiris.

This the Altiris Job I use:

batch Download
rem Install iSeries Access for Windows V6R1

set JOBFOLDER=%#*"SELECT dbo.GetActiveFullPath(%ID%)"%
if not exist %JOBFOLDER% MD %JOBFOLDER%

set InstallPath=%SRCPATH%\PKG\iSeriesAccessV6R1

rem Jump to the Directory of this Job (you can write logfiles there)
pushd "%JOBFOLDER%"

rem Start Script Here
rem IBM Docs public properties: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v6r1m0/index.jsp?topic=/rzaij/rzaijwhatsnew.htm
"%InstallPath%\setup.exe" /s /v"/Qb- CWBPRIMARYLANG=Mri2923 INSTALLDIR=\"D:\Apps\IBM\Client Access\" REBOOT=ReallySuppress ALLUSERS=2 /liewa \"%JOBFOLDER%\%JOBNAME%-%computername%.log\""

rem Save ErrorLevel
set ret=%errorlevel%

rem Script End
:EXIT

rem Return to Start Directory
popd

rem Exit and return Saved ErrorLevel
pause
exit %ret%

IBM References:

Other references: