NSClient++ WIndows Installer

The NSClient++ installer for windows is a standard MSI installer which means it can be installed using pretty much all deployment techniques available on the windows platform. This means that there is no built-in deploy and configuration mechanism in NSClient++ instead it fully relies on standard tools provided for the Windows plattform.

MSI files can be tweaked in several ways.

Configuration options

There are several options for deploying configuration and copying textfile is probably the worst of them. You can use group policies to push the configuration files but there are several other ways to do the same.

MSI Options

The MSI file can be customized during the installer. The following keys are available:

Keyword	Description
INSTALLLOCATION	Folder where NSCLient++ is installed.
CONF_CAN_CHANGE	Has to be set for all configuration changes to be applied.
ADD_DEFAULTS	Add default values to the configuration file.
ALLOWED_HOSTS	Set allowed hosts value
CONFIGURATION_TYPE	Configuration context to use
CONF_CHECKS	Enable default check plugins
CONF_NRPE	Enable NRPE server
CONF_NSCA	Enable NSCA Collection /OU probably need scheduler as well)
CONF_NSCLIENT	Enable NSCLient Server (check_nt)
CONF_SCHEDULER	Enable Scheduler (required by NSCA)
CONF_WEB	ENabled WEB Server
NRPEMODE	NRPE Mode (LEGACY = default old insecure SSL, SAFE = new secure SSL)
NSCLIENT_PWD	Password to use for check_nt (and web server)

Features

NSClient++ consists of the following features most which can be disable when doing silent installs.

Feature Name	Title	Description
CheckPlugins	Check Plugins	Various plugins to check your system. (Includes all check plugins)
Documentation	Documentation (pdf)	Documentation for NSClient++ and how to use it from Nagios
DotNetPluginSupport	.net plugin support	Support for loading modules written in .dot net (Requires installing .net framework)
ExtraClientPlugin	Various client plugins	Plugins to connect to various sytems such as syslog, graphite and smtp
FirewallConfig	Firewall Exception	A firewall exception to allow NSClient++ to open ports
LuaScript	Lua Scripting	Allows running INTERNAL scripts written in Lua
NRPEPlugins	NRPE Support	NRPE Server Plugin. Support for the more vercitile NRPE protocol (check_nrpe)
NSCAPlugin	NSCA plugin	Plugin to submit passive results to an NSCA server
NSCPlugins	check_nt support	NSClient Server Plugin. Support for the old NSClient protocol (check_nt)
PythonScript	Python Scripting	Allows running INTERNAL scripts written in Python
SampleConfig	Sample config	Sample config file (with all options)
SampleScripts	Scripts	Scripts for checking and testing various aspects of your computer and NSClient++
Shortcuts	Shortcuts	Main Service shortcuts
WEBPlugins	WEB Server	NSClient WEB Server. Use this to administrate or check NSCLient via a browser or REST API

Silent install

Now we can put all this together using the normal silent installer which is again part of the standard windows install toolkit. So if you already have a framework for managing installs use that instead of this command line. The gist of it is:

msiexec /quiet /i <MSI FILE> PROPERTY=PropertyValue ...

For instance Installing (with log) nsclient++ into c:foobar using registry as configuration and not installing the Python script binaries.

msiexec /qn /l* log.txt /i NSCP-0.4.3.50-x64.msi INSTALLLOCATION=c:\FooBar CONFIGURATION_TYPE=registry://HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/software/NSClient++ ADDDEFAULT=ALL REMOVE=PythonScript

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