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We use a deployment tool when we image new systems and up to now we have always downloaded the latest versions of Firefox, Flash, Acrobat, etc, saved them on a server and then pointed to them during the imaging. The problem with this is that those applications get out of date fairly quickly which means that after we image a brand new system it's running out of date software.

What I'd rather do is use a batch file in the imaging process which downloads the latest versions of these apps and installs those instead.

It should be simple enough to create the batch file, but I'm having some trouble finding a link to the latest versions of these apps that will always work.

For instance, for Firefox I found: http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/latest/win32/en-US/

I assume that link will always have the latest stable version of FF available for download, but the problem is that the version number is part of the installer filename, so I don't have a simple way to create a batch file to download the installer because it will have a different filename for each version.

I have to assume I'm not the first person to try doing this but I haven't been able to find much in the way of resources for what I'm trying to do. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

vrtigo1
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  • Relevant: http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-software-update-monitor.htm – Chris S Jan 31 '14 at 14:58
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    Why not host the latest versions somewhere locally? You really can't count on third-parties to keep their URL schemes the same for years. – ceejayoz Jan 31 '14 at 15:05

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In my experience, companies are generally of two minds on software updates. The first is, "MUST HAVE LATEST AND GREATEST!" and the second is, "But! If we update, what will stop working? MUST USE IE6 FOREVER!" You appear to be the former. :)

You might be able to scriptomatically "scrape" that link, download, and install.

You might also want to consider installing a reasonable version of your frequently updated software packages and then immediately running the updater that comes with the software (via commandline). For example, C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Java\Java Update\jucheck.exe -auto for Java.

Firefox also apparently supports updating from the command line, but it involves downloading the update, not really telling it to check. There's also a page about Deploying Firefox en masse from Mozilla. Also, this link might help you reverse engineer what Firefox's updater actually does so you can do that yourself.

Surprisingly (or not), many software companies don't expect you to mass install their software. Very few of them make it easy for you. I've spent a lot of time throwing command line switches at an undocumented executable to see what works.

Good luck!

Katherine Villyard
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Unfortunately, links on the internet change all the time. Even if the link stays stable for awhile, eventually the vendors will reorganize their site and mess up all your scripts and shortcuts.

The best way to handle this is to keep a file share with the latest (tested) version of the software you want, and tell your script to install from there. You'll need to update these once in awhile, but it ensures you'll always have a version available, even after they change the links. Sounds like this is what you are doing now.

But that doesn't mean you can't still automate it - setup a script that updates the file share with the latest version, for programs you can find stable URLs to download.

This ensures that if the URL changes, newly deployed computers will still get the latest version you were able to download, instead of nothing. It also means when there is a new version that breaks things horribly, you can disable the server's update script and keep the old version until it's resolved. It also means every computer you deploy doesn't have to hit the internet to get all these downloads, which could save a lot of time and bandwidth if you deploy a new batch of computers.

I don't know about Firefox, but you can see my solution for checking for chrome updates here: Controlling updates for Google Chrome enterprise deployment

For the ones that have no stable URL, make it someone's job to check for new releases every week/month/whatever and update them.

Community
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Grant
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You may have luck with something like Ninite on the image launched at start up, although it doesn't look like they have Adobe products on the free version.

Firefox and acrobat autoupdate though so you might not really need to worry about those.

Philosophene
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