# 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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