Support for silent GUI-less installs is a built-in feature of every customized Setup program created using the SafeHouse Deployment Wizard.
All that is needed is to include the /silent command line option when running the Setup program.
C:\> SETUP.EXE /silent
See the SETUP.EXE and /SILENT reference material for more information.
If you require both visual and non-visual SafeHouse Setup programs to be used to facilitate your deployment, we encourage you to consider creating a separate custom installer for each of these methods. Although many of the customizations you might require would be virtually identical between the two installers, there are some subtle differences in how users create their first SafeHouse volumes which are best handled by using separate installers which are each tuned for their given task.
At some point during the installation process, SafeHouse requires that Windows be restarted in order to load its device driver into memory. When the Setup program is run using the normal GUI mode, users are given the choice of either allowing the Setup program to restart Windows as its final act, or to let users do this themselves when they are good and ready. In silent mode, you'll need to take care of some of these things in your scripts or batch files, and it's important that you fully understand what pieces of code have to be operational at what points in time.
By knowing some of these details, you'll be in a better position to prepare your scripts and other ancillary installer logic.
The first requirement is to get SafeHouse's core files installed. Running the installer with the /silent option fully satisfies this requirement.
In theory, once the core files are installed, it is perfectly okay to restart Windows from your scripts. However, in practice, most administrators find it desirable to create users' first SafeHouse volume before restarting Windows.
The good news here is that the Create Volume wizard does not need the SafeHouse device driver to be loaded up into memory in order to run. This wizard is fully operational the moment SafeHouse's core files are installed.
Your scripts should typically follow this basic flow:
Install core files
Create first volume
Restart Windows
If you follow this flow, there generally isn't any need to run additional scripts after restarting Windows. SafeHouse will be fully operational and ready for action the moment Windows restarts. Users can immediately click the system tray padlock icon to open their first volume.
The bottom line is that you can create volume files prior to restarting Windows, but you cannot open them until after you restart Windows.
Opening a SafeHouse volume file requires that the device driver be loaded into memory. You won't be able to access volumes after installing SafeHouse until Windows has been restarted.
One of the bigger decisions you'll need to make when preparing for a silent deployment is deciding how users' first volumes will come into being. With the GUI installer, this is not anything you'll need to think about since the Create Volume wizard is launched automatically near the tail end of the installation process. However, with silent installs, this wizard is not launched unless you've included the /create option on the command line. But then, Setup is only partially silent.
There are, of course, a multitude of solutions available for getting this first volume created. Which is why we've left that discussion for a separate topic. What's important here is that you at least realize that there are some things related to volume creation which need to be thought through as you plan out your overall deployment strategy.
See Creating Users' First Volumes.