Chris Cason <del### [at] deletethistoopovrayorg> wrote:
> The main impetus for the /install switch was requests from lab techs
> using POV in a educational setting. In those cases the software is
> usually available on the network or in some other pre-mapped location.

I'm in an educational setting! :-)

We stopped putting (Windows) executables on the network many years ago because
the bandwidth utilization was too high and desktop hard drives are so big.  I
have not seen any discussion of doing that on a national lab manager listserv
for many years either.  Are you sure that is still regularly/widely done?

We currently (and many others) create generic, monolithic images with many
software packages already installed and roll those out to standardize all the
systems in a lab or even across many labs.  The up-and-coming standard is to use
WDS and SCCM to push a base image with little-to-no software installed, and then
push packages specific to the lab needs.  This makes for much more flexibility,
but it still has the software installed locally.

I think much more common than software on the network is user profiles on the
network, but that too has enough costs and myriad problems that I get the
feeling it is still not the most common method.  We offer file storage, but not
roaming profiles.  Our users get either a fresh, local profile at every logon
(when the machine has DeepFreeze) or their former, local profile which lasts
only until we re-image the machine again (typically every semester).

> I think what I need to do now is actually implement the default file
> install on first launch like you and others have suggested. I need to
> do it in such a way that it works even if the exe is on the network,
> so it can't depend on the files being installed locally; probably to
> do this I'll create a separate user-files installer that lives with
> the main exe.

Does the current creation of the empty Documents folder not work if the .exe is
on the network?  I got the impression that while the "Home" directory may be
tied to the network if the /install flag isn't used (and the .exe is on the
network), but that the user-editable files are sought in (and set to) the
%userprofile% location if the registry entries aren't found.  In that case it
doesn't seem like a major change -- more like change a create dir tree to a copy
dir tree (and files).  Non-standard locations have the option already.

Thanks,
Erich

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