How to create an MST for silent install using Orca?

Question

I'm trying to deploy 7zip via GPO; I assigned the original MSI, but the package installation simply doesn't take place. What I've gathered is that I need to create an MST. In the spirit of trying to learn as much as possible about it, I've opted to use Orca rather than a third-party automagic tool, but I'm at a loss as to which fields to edit. So far the only change that I've made is to give the license accepted checkbox a value of "1" instead of pointing to another key that, still, just gave it a value of "1."

So, to give this some structure,

• How does (Or what criteria should I consider) creating a MST make the install noninteractive/silent? Do you have to manually reconfigure the MSI to simply not perform the GUI aspects? Or do I have to execute the program in silent mode after defining the variables the the installer requests? (Though, of course, it seems that would defeat the purpose of the MST)
• How do I determine which fields I need to edit? I've loaded the installer and it takes three inputs: License acceptance, feature set and installation location. I want all of the default values: I'm just trying to deploy it at all, not customize the installation. I BELIEVE that I should be messing with some values in the Registry table, but I really don't know.

If I'm not asking the right questions, can someone point me to a THOROUGH resource or documentation for this process? I've already gone over the technet articles on basic Orca use and deployment, but I couldn't really find anything on creating MST that didn't involve a third party program in which one runs a 'dummy' installer to get the before and after snapshots.

Thank you very much,

Cameron

UPDATE:

After spending the day troubleshooting, I finally got my server to send out 7zip, but not until I had also assigned firefox. Not sure why it didn't want to send out 7zip by itself, but I also had some domain naming problems. Thanks for the input (GPResult helped enormously.)

Solution

You shouldn't need an MST for silent installs using GPO deployment. Can you confirm via gpresult that the user you expect to recieve the policy is actually recieving it?

(Edited to remove incorrect info about MSI being x64 only).

Comments

[jscott]

@mh, There are MSI installers for both 32bit and 64bit: 7-zip.org/download.html

[Maximus Minimus]

So there are - I guess the info at 7-zip.org/index.html needs to be updated.