Possible to Trigger Ketarin Actions via Script?

[bzowk]

Good Afternoon - 

First of all, I wanted to say thank you for the tool - it's great!  There's one thing I've been curious about that would be a huge enhancement if possible, though.  I worked heavily with SCCM (Configuration Manager).  It offers numerous features including the ability to package & deploy applications to users/systems or even advertise them to an internal catalog or "Store" for users to browse and install.  One time-sink if having many applications is keeping them and their source files up to date.  There are a few tools & scripts which search and allow you to create new packages of the new versions, but none are automatic and none update existing packages themselves.

With Ketarin plus SCCM's PowerShell cmdlets, this should be possible so am doing some testing in my home lab.  Before doing so, I just wanted to ask a few questions, please.

Questions

1. Is there a way to pass variables identified (especially version) to be used in the "Commands" tab, "Setup" tab, or an external script during an application's Update or Install?  This is currently my biggest roadblock.
2. Long shot #1 - Are there any plans for any SCCM integration in the future?
3. Long shot #2 - Is there an available PowerShell module for Ketarin which would allow triggering of specific actions within Ketarin, itself?  I know there is some PowerShell mention in per-app commands plus a few CLI options, but if something like this existed, it would be fantastic!  If no, any plans for this in the future?
4. Are there any options to have individual apps check local resources / variables instead of web ones to set variables?  (Not needed, but checking so I can best plan for integration scripting)

I think that's really about it.  I had more questions, but found the answers to them in your Wiki.  Thank You!

 

[shawn]

Welcome, @bzowk!

Many of us use Ketarin as our package downloader and push the data to our own app/device management system for installation. While you *could* put Ketarin on all your devices and keep the store local to each device, it's much easier to use Ketarin as the downloading tool and keep everything on the LAN or WAN via Ketarin, with your external package installer. You can script *from* Ketarin to SCCM with PowerShell and effectively distribute/install via SCCM the way it should be done. You have several ways to do this. You could just log things to an external file with Ketarin, then parse that log externally, or you can use the "after updating an application" global script to directly interact with the SCCM library. You could also push the data to a database or do, literally, anything else that can be done in batch, powershell, or c# to get the data from Ketarin to SCCM.

[bzowk]

Good Morning - 

That you for your reply.  It wouldn't be put on multiple clients - just a single server.  Within SCCM, you can package applications for deployment using a variety of methods.  A source path for the app's content is defined and when the package is distributed prior to deployment, it basically copies the content in the source location out remotely.  All of this may be done via PowerShell as well.  What I'm attempting is to add an application into Ketarin that I have packaged in SCCM.  When it updates and installs, I'll have a script in Ketarin which instead of installing the application will update the source path for the SCCM package, update the version # in the package's details, and trigger a redistribution to update content.

I worked on it a bit this morning, but ran into an issue with the setup script for the app in Ketarin.  I can see that there are variables which may be used in these scripts, however; cannot get any of them to work in a PowerShell script.  The main ones I'm needing to use are which I think would be {file} (full path to updated installation file including filename & extension) and {version}.  I have put in simple strings like the one below within the Custom COmmand / PowerShell option to write variables to a file to test them, but so far haven't gotten what the variables represent to appear in the output.

{file},$file,${file},$Regcheck | out-file -filepath d:\dump.txt -append -width 200

The one above creates a file which only has "file" on the top line.  I may try to pass variables from batch to PowerShell, but was hoping there was an easier way.

Any suggestions?  Thank You

[floele]

Hi,

you cannot use these variables directly in PS. Check https://wiki.ketarin.org/index.php/Commands

What you essentially need to use is $app.variables.ReplaceAllInString("{VAR}")