Deploy with Group Policy

Avast Business USA Education Products
1

Is it possible to deploy via Group Policy through either an MSI or command line options with the stand alone exe? I am not catching all of machines when running the install task on the AEA.

Anyone else have suggestions?

2

No, the stand alone policies can only be changed within the client itself as there is no connection between the client and the console. Make sure that when deploying all the ports are open and the Admin Shares are enabled.

3

Che, I don’t think you understood his question. I believe he’s asking if the installer itself can be deployed through an Active Directory GPO, not whether client policy can be deployed via GPO.

Brian

4

No, the stand alone can not be deployed remotely, you can try deploy it via remote desktop but it won’t deploy in a remote deployment setting as the managed clients. If your unable to deploy to the machine remotely, then try to add the computer manually then deploy the client to the machine.

Let me know if that works, if not please let me know.

5

I created a stand-alone installer that contains all the policies and points to the server. I then ran it manually on several boxes. It installed fine and reports in fine. Converting that to a GPO install is trivial. It has an added bonus that it’s a silent install by default.

6

We now have a group policy that does the following:

  1. Checks for the existence of McAfee VirusScan
  2. Uninstalls it if it exists
  3. Checks for the existence of Avast
  4. Installs it if it doesn’t exist (using the StandAlone installer I created)
  5. Reboots the machine after prompting the user if either condition was met (VirusScan was uninstalled and/or Avast was installed)

We’re getting ready to roll out to some OUs for test purposes. Assuming everything goes as expected, we’ll roll out to the campus in the next few months.

7

Best of luck… :smiley:

8

I have created an installer and have been deploying through SCCM with good luck as well.

9

Is the installer packages you created MSI? I ask because I just started playing with avast for the district. We normally like to push things out through a gp with an MSI.

I tried creating an MSI but keep getting many errors when trying.

Second if we can push it out will the console be able to recognize that they are different computers?

Sorry just started playing with this and still got a lot of reading to do!

Thanks,

David Smth

10

Hi David,
I just started playing with this too. You can create groups of computers, use dynamic groups that are already created and use AD to pull in your OU structures. I see you posed this some time ago without a response so maybe you have already worked this out.

John

11

It’s 2 years later, so I’d hope so ;D

12

Hello friends,

I just started using the new Avast for Business free product and need to address deployment via Active Directory Group Policy. So bottom line, was anybody able to accomplish this successfully? Thanks for you time.

-Travis

13

I know there was some difficulty getting an MSI format installer. But we just added the following into our logon script that maps drives for all AD users:


:AVAST
::Check to see if it is already installed
IF EXIST "C:\Program Files\AVAST Software" GOTO DONE
::Install Avast if it does not exist
CALL \\networkpath\AvastInstall.exe

:done

CALL \networkpath\AvastInstall.exe = the network path to the installer.exe you create from within the Avast AEA

This has helped get Avast installed on the handful of random machines that will not accept installations remotely from the AEA