WebPi Command Line

Recommended: Copy just WebpiCmdline.exe to the directory where you have installed Web Platform Installer (Typically %program files%\Microsoft\Web Platform Installer\) and run it from here. Do not copy the rest of the dll’s. This will ensure you are always running WebpiCmdline with the latest WebPi dll’s.

Usage Overview

It is recommended to run WebpiCmdline from a Command Prompt which is opened as Administrator. (Otherwise, WebpiCmdline will elevate itself and launch a new window which will close as soon as it is done.) To open a command prompt as “Administrator” on Windows Vista or Windows 7, type “cmd” in the start menu, Press Shift and then Right click the cmd.exe, select “Run as Administrator”. Accept UAC if necessary. Change directory at the cmd prompt to the folder where you have installed WebpiCmdline.

WebpiCmdline usage can be broadly categorized into two modes

Install Mode:

/Products:<ProductIds> Install a Product using WebpiCmdline

Will install MVC 3 and Silverlight4Toolkit Products

/Applications: <Appid> Install a Web Application using WebpiCmdline

Will install Wordpress Web App Application

List Mode:

/List:<All | Available | Installed > List the products hosted on the Web Platform Feeds

/List:Feeds List the Web Platform Feeds being used

/List:Languages List the list of available languages for WebpiCmdline

Will list all the available products and applications for the current platform on which it was run.

Will list all the master feeds being consumed by WebpiCmdline

Arguments

Let us look at the list of arguments which WebpiCmdline exposes.

Here is an msdn page explaining the most common command line arguments of WebpiCmdline

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg433092.aspx

The arguments which are not covered in this article are described below

Common Usage Scenarios

Let’s cover the most common User Scenarios for WebpiCmdline, and how to run them.

Installing a product hosted on Web Platform Feeds.

For these walkthroughs, let’s assume that the user is trying to install Web deploy

Find whether the Product you want to install is actually hosted on WebPi Feeds

Verify that the product MVC 3 is actually listed in the output of this command and is listed under “Available”. (if the product is listed under ‘Previously Installed Products’, you already have the product installed)

Install the product using the ID listed above

Accept Eula when prompted

Done.

Automating the above Installation

Above installation is not scriptable, as it expects users to accept the EULA before installation.

In order to automate the above installation, append /AcceptEula to the above install command

Installing multiple products

In order to install multiple products, pass the product IDs as a comma separated list to the /Products: argument.

Avoid Automatic Reboot

By default, WebpiCmdline will reboot the machine if any of the products it has installed requests a reboot. When the machine comes back, WebpiCmdline will continue installing.

Sometimes this might not be the most desirable way. In order to suppress reboot, pass the /suppressreboot argument. This will make WebpiCmdline quit as soon as it is requested for a reboot by any product. Once the user reboots the machine later, WebpiCmdline will come back to life and complete installation.

Provide your own Log Name

By default, WebpiCmdline logs to a text file in the working directory, named as “Current date time”.txt. Example : 1.25.2011 1.44.08 PM.txt

If you wish to rename this file, pass the /log: argument

Provide database Admin Passwords during installation

When WebpiCmdline installs SQL or MySQL database, it prompts the users to enter the root/admin/sa password to be used for the database. To Automate this use case , use the /Sqlpassword & /Mysqlpassword arguments

Install a product from a different language

Some products, for example VWD, are available in multiple languages. By default, if no language is provided, WebpiCmdline will always install the English version of the Product. To specify your desired language, use the /Language Argument

To get the list of languages, use the /list:Language argument explained above.

Install a product from a different Master feed

By default, WebpiCmdline fetches master feeds from the Microsoft.com/Gallery website. To view this info, use the /List:Feeds option explained above.

To force WebpiCmdline to fetch master feeds from a different location, use the /XML Argument

Install a product from a different Custom feed

By default, WebpiCmdline does not load any custom feeds. It only works with the Master feeds. By providing a custom feed, you can add another feed to the existing list of Master feeds. Refer this blog post for more info on this : http://blogs.iis.net/kateroh/archive/2010/02/11/webpi-apis-install-a-product-from-a-custom-feed.aspx

Install a Web Application

WebpiCmdline can install Web Applications too. Web Applications are always installed to a Webserver. The Web Server can be either IIS or IISExpress. By default, WebpiCmdline always installs Web Applications to IIS.

To install to IISExpress, use the /IISExpress Argument

After accepting EULA, WebpiCmdline will prompt the user to enter the Application Parameters which will be used to configure the Application Installation. This is the manual mode of installing Web Applications.

To use the default value for the parameter, just press enter. Or enter the value manually.

Some parameters don’t have default value, and the user is expected to enter the value manually.

Finish installation.

Automating Web Application Installs

As you might have noticed above, Web Application installs are not very silent. They prompt for user inputs to configure the web application.

To automate web application installs, the user is expected to provide a ‘.app’ file along with the appid.

The .app file is generated when you run an app install in Manual Mode (See the last line of the above example :

Parameters written to WordPress0.app

This ‘.app’ file is the application parameter-value file which is used to configure the application parameters. Contents of WordpressParams.app file :

AppPath[@]Default Web Site/wordpress

DbServer[@]localhost

DbName[@]wordpress

DbUsername[@]wordpressuser

DbPassword[@]mysecretpassword

DbAdminUsername[@]root

DbAdminPassword[@]mysecretrootpassword

Key1[@]put your unique phrase here

Key2[@]put your unique phrase here

Key3[@]put your unique phrase here

Key4[@]put your unique phrase here

To re-use this file, run

This will run Wordpress installation in silent mode, i.e., the user is not prompted for Parameter values.

You can tweak the app file values by opening the .app file in notepad and editing it before re-using.

Known Limitations

When installing a Web Application which supports 2 databases, WebpiCmdline always defaults to the first database listed in the application manifest. WebPi UI however, does provide support where the user can chose between the databases.

WebpiCmdline and Windows Azure

Webpicmdline is also built as ‘Any Cpu’ binary for startup steps of Windows Azure. You can download webpicmdline_anycpu.zip from :

However, there are scenarios where Webpicmdline is run as a system startup task, like Windows Azure startup tasks. Webpicmdline_x86 runs into errors when it is run as 32 bit process under system account on a 64 bit machine. Therefore you would need to use the _anycpu binary.

It is important to figure out which suits your purpose before downloading. As a rule of thumb

- if you are not running webpicmdline under system account, you should download Webpicmdline_x86.zip from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=209681 (even if you are on a 64 bit machine).

- if you will be running webpicmdline under system account, you should download Webpicmdline_anycpu.zip from http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9752821. The only limitation would be that Webpicmdline will not be able to install Web Applications to IISExpress.

Acknowledgement

Big thanks to Anpalm, Kateroh, andrewbi, crystalh, csfanos for their effort and nitashav who drove the original vision.