PowerShell - How to automate installing Firefox
Hey welcome to MIT videos and today we're going to be automating Firefox install without actually getting on a web browser and downloading it when we would do it all through PowerShell. So, as you can see here, I already have the script kind of set up to show. You guys two different ways of doing it. One way is going to be actually downloading the Firefox exe and running it interactively, so you can click through each one of the sections of the Installer and do it yourself and the other way is completely automated. Where you'll download an MSI package provided my front motion and and then have msi exec completely install the package without having to restart or anything and output it into a log file for you.
So the first thing is is: is the interactive installer, so you see here. I have two variables URI, which is the actual download link. If you want to paste this into a browser, it would sort of download the file for you so and then the output we need to have an output, because this command here invoke web request is really just going to read the bit streams right. It'S going to read the download and not really do anything with it, so we need to output it to a file and that's what we're doing here with this variable, it's the Firefox, installer Exe. I just named it that to be. You know very literal about it.
So the actual command we're going to use is invoke web requests. Now you need to have powershell 3.0 to use this. If you are still on 2.0 gift options, you can upgrade to 3.0, which is really just adding ASP, 3.5 and above or use the dotnet assembly. For that, that's it that'll be another video. I can do for you. If you would like to see that and then the last portion of this is using the call command and then actually running this firefox installer, so let's go ahead and do that really quick, so we'll run the selection and as you can see, that's reading the stream. It'S it's actually downloading the file from the internet and this'll take just a less than a minute to do, and then once it's done reading all of that now it's now it's actually outputting the file.
So now it's converting everything in red into a file and it's going to launch it now. That'S this part of the command right here so, as you can see, it's launching it extracting it and now we'll be able to click through and install Firefox. I'M not going to do because I want to show you how to do this completely automated without even seeing this, so you can actually do this on remote machines too. So let's go ahead and do that let's cancel out of here all right so now here you see, I have the same thing same setup, basically URI, let's go into a different URL and then it's going to actually output to an MSI file.
So we can use this a little bit later, so we'll do the same thing invoke web request and then we'll use start process so that we can use the MSI exec and then we'll pass some arguments to it. So this is going to allow us to write here. This is going to allow us to install now the file that we're going to want to install with. We want to use this MSI file. So that's where we are here quiet so that we don't have any output on the screen, no pop-up boxes. None of that stuff, that's going to come up and then no restart is going to allow us to completely finish the installation without having to reboot.
Now this doesn't mean the Installer will never require our reboot. It just means it's not going to automatically reboot once the installation is done. So if you have to do that, just keep in mind that if a reboot is required, you'll have to go in and intentionally reboot it afterwards. But this is just going to allow you to install the application without forcefully rebooting the machine. So if you're doing this to a server out somewhere else and doing it remotely you're not just going to reboot the server without without planning it, and then this /l is going to output everything we have to a log file all right, so we'll go ahead and Start this one: okay and we'll run this selection.
This is basically going to do the same thing here now, while this is doing, let me show you where it's actually downloading this to write it. So this is the first installer. This is the exe and as soon as this one's done, installing or downloading this will it'll pop up here with the MSI you'll see this come up here in a second there you go there, you have it so now it's downloaded and the acai package is, is Running in the background now we don't see this here and, as you can see, it's done completely. We have new apps that have been installed. You can click on here and see what's been installed or you can just take a quick look at the log here.
So if anything were to fail, you'd see it here in the log. Also. That'S also why it's nice to have this little output here, but you can see here at the very end, install a reconfigured product product name and then error status is zero, which means it completed successfully. So that's pretty much it it's a very simple, a very cool process to do with PowerShell and very useful if you're going to, if you're going to deploy this out to the two servers out, yonder or or your your pcs that you were managing or even if You just want to have it on your local PC for one reason or another, so you don't have to run internet explorer to download Firefox. So once again, thanks for watching, if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, just uh leave them down below. Thanks have a good one: