Author: Ashwin S
Designation: Senior Software Engineer
Department: ISM, Novell

Table of Contents

Introduction

Unattended Uninstallation of eDirectory

     Response Files

     remove.rsp File Sections and Keys

     Add Features to the Automated Uninstallation

     Remove Configuration File Changes

     Unattended Uninstallation of eDirectory using Response File

Acknowledgemen

Introduction

eDirectory is an infrastructure component being used in many of the Novell products. eDirectory supports the use of predefined text files that facilitate an unattended uninstallation, With some minor pre-uninstallation time spent editing this file you can silently uninstall eDirectory.

This paper discusses the features and the configuration necessary to perform an unattended Uninstallation of eDirectory in Windows. This feature is supported in the eDirectory 8.8 SP3 release and onwards.

Unattended Uninstallation of eDirectory

On Windows, the unattended uninstallation of eDirectory uses predefined text files that facilitate the unattended uninstallation.The following sections discuss various features of unattended eDirectory uninstallation:

Response Files

Uninstalling eDirectory on Windows operating system can be made silent and more flexible by using a response file (remove.rsp) to complete the following tasks:

• Complete unattended uninstallation with all required user inputs

• De-Configuration of components

• Bypass all prompts during the installation

A response file is a text file containing sections and keys, similar to a Windows .ini file. You can create and edit a response file using any ASCII text editor. The eDirectory reads the uninstallation parameters directly from the response file and replaces the default uninstallation values with response file values. The uninstallation program accepts the values from the response file and continues to uninstall without prompts.

remove.rsp File Sections and Keys

The eDirectory uninstallation requires changes to the sections in the response file to add information about the tree name, administrator context, administrator credentials (including user name and passwords), etc. A full list of the keys and their default values is available in the sample remove.rsp file that is delivered with the eDirectory installation.

Add Features to the Automated Uninstallation

Most details for configuring the eDirectory Uninstaller have default setting for the manual uninstallation. However, during unattended uninstallation, each configuration parameter must be explicitly configured. This section discusses the basic settings to be unconfigured.

eDirectory Server Details

The details of the server being uninstalled must be provided to the Uninstaller. Most of this information is configured in three tags, [Novell:NDSforNT:1.0.0],
[Initialization], and [Selected Nodes].

Take all the values mentioned in [Initialization] and [Selected Nodes] in remove.rsp as it is in response file.
[Novell:NDSforNT:1.0.0]

Tree Name: The name of the tree from which the server will be uninstalled.

Admin Login Name: The name (RDN) of the Administrator object in the tree that has full rights, at least to the context to which this server is added. All operations in the tree will be performed as this user.

Admin Context: Any user added to a tree has a user object that contains all the user-specific details. This parameter is the container object in the tree to which the Administrator object is added.

Admin Password: The password for the Administrator object created in the previous parameters.
Prompt: The type of the uninstallation mode should be mentioned in this variable. It will be set by default to 'silent' for unattended uninstallation. If any value other than 'silent' is set then it will do normal uninstallation.

The following is a sample of text in the response file for all the basic parameters described above:

[Novell:NDSforNT:1.0.0]
Tree Name=SILENTCORP-TREE
Admin Context=Novell
Admin Login Name=Admin
Admin Password=novell
prompt=silent

Remove Configuration File Changes

In remove.cfg file residing in <Windows Install Drive>\Program Files\Common Files\novell\ni\bin,change

[PARAMETERS]0/OUTPUT_TO_FILE

to

[PARAMETERS]0/OUTPUT_TO_FILE /SILENT

Unattended Uninstallation of eDirectory using Response File

Copy the above edited file remove.rsp into <Windows Install Drive>\Program
Files\Common Files\novell\ni\data.

The install.exe installed in the eDirectory is invoked in the command line with a few
additional parameters, the command is:

<Windows Install Drive>\Program Files\Common Files\novell\ni\bin>install.exe -remove ..\data\ip.db
..\data\remove.rsp Novell:NDSforNT:1.0.0 0 NDSonNT

This performs an unattended uninstallation of eDirectory on the Windows server.
Delete the following folders after uninstalling eDirectory:

C:\Novell\NDS
C:\Program Files\Novell\ni
<Windows Installed Drive>:\Program Files\Novell\ni
<Windows Installed Drive>:\Windows\system32\NDScpa.cpl

Acknowledgement

Reviewer: K Vinayagmoorthy – Software Consultant, Novell, Inc.