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Command Line Reference
The command-line tool is managedbootstrapinstall.exe, installed to
C:\Program Files\BootstrapMate and added to the system PATH. This page lists every
switch it implements, what the process returns, and the invocations you are likely to need.
The executable's manifest requests requireAdministrator, and it re-checks its token at
startup. If it is not elevated it prints an error and offers to relaunch itself under UAC;
with --silent it refuses to raise a UAC prompt and returns 1. Every run also takes a
Global\BootstrapMate.SingleInstance mutex and waits up to 30 minutes for a concurrent run
to finish.
Argument parsing happens in two passes. --silent, --verbose and -v are scanned across
the whole argument list before anything else; --version and -V are handled only in
position 0; everything else is matched in a lowercased switch over the remaining
arguments. There is no default: arm, so an argument the tool does not recognise is
silently discarded.
| Switch | Argument | Required | Default | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
--url |
URL | No | configured manifest URL | Manifest to download and execute |
--help, -h
|
— | No | — | Print help and exit |
--version, -V
|
— | No | — | Print version and exit; first argument only |
--status |
— | No | — | Print installation status and exit |
--clear-status |
— | No | — | Clear status data and exit |
--clear-cache |
— | No | — | Clear all caches and exit |
--reset-chocolatey |
— | No | — | Full Chocolatey reset; prompts on stdin |
--force |
— | No | off | Deprecated; clears all caches aggressively |
--verbose, -v
|
— | No | off | Debug lines on the console |
--silent |
— | No | off | No console output at all |
--no-dialog |
— | No | off | Disable the progress dialog |
--blur-screen |
— | No | off | Run the progress dialog fullscreen |
--dialog-title |
text | No | Setting Up Your Device |
Progress dialog title |
--dialog-message |
text | No | Please wait while we install required software... |
Progress dialog message |
--pipe |
name | No | none | Mirror log lines to a named pipe |
--save-settings |
— | No | — | Persist the remaining switches to HKCU
|
--save-settings-file |
path | No | — | Persist a JSON config file to HKCU
|
- Type: String (URL)
- Default: the configured manifest URL, or the built-in default
- Required: No
The manifest to download and execute. It bypasses ConfigManager entirely and is assigned
directly, so it overrides every registry and policy source. Given without a following
value, the tool prints ERROR: --url requires a URL parameter and returns 1.
Omit it and the effective URL comes from the precedence chain in Preferences.
- Required: No
Prints the help block and returns 0 immediately, without processing any manifest. -h is
matched after lowercasing, so -H also works.
- Required: No
Prints the build version and returns 0.
This is handled before elevation, logging and the single-instance mutex, and only when it
is the first argument. --version is matched case-insensitively; -V is matched with an
ordinal comparison, so case matters. Anywhere other than position 0, -V is lowercased by
the main parsing loop, falls into the -v case, and is treated as the verbose switch
instead — it prints nothing and the run proceeds. Put it first:
managedbootstrapinstall.exe --version
- Required: No
Prints the recorded stage, architecture, start and completion times, exit code, last error, run id and manifest URL for each phase, then a completion block, then a set of path hints.
The completion block and the path hints read HKLM\SOFTWARE\BootstrapMate, which is not
where status is written — StatusManager writes to
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Cimian\BootstrapMate. The LastRunVersion this switch reports is the one
the MSI writes at install time, not evidence of a completed run. Query the real keys
directly instead; see Troubleshooting and Gotchas.
- Required: No
Deletes HKLM\SOFTWARE\BootstrapMate\Status\{phase} and
C:\ProgramData\BootstrapMate\status.json. Neither is what the tool writes, so this switch
clears nothing real. The live status lives under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Cimian\BootstrapMate\Status
and in C:\ProgramData\ManagedBootstrap\status.json.
- Required: No
Clears the BootstrapMate package cache and the Chocolatey caches, then exits. Note that a normal run already empties the package cache at startup, and a cached file only survives a run when the install that used it failed.
- Required: No
Performs a full Chocolatey reset. It asks for y/N confirmation on stdin, so it blocks
indefinitely under a scheduled task or any other non-interactive host. Cancelling returns
0.
- Default: off
- Required: No
The help text describes it as deprecated, because downloads are always fresh and the cache
exists only for inspection. It still has an effect: it triggers the aggressive cache clear,
which deletes the BootstrapMate cache directory and the Chocolatey temp, lib-bad,
.chocolatey and logs directories and runs choco cache clear. The self-heal scheduled
task the MSI registers passes --force on every daily run.
--save-settings explicitly does not persist this switch.
- Default: off
- Required: No
Sends Debug lines to the console. --verbose is matched case-insensitively; -v is matched
with an ordinal comparison in the pre-scan, so lowercase is required there. The log file
receives Debug lines regardless. Some output is only visible with this switch — notably
sbin-installer's stdout and stderr, and the "dialog binary not found" message.
- Default: off
- Required: No
Suppresses all console output. It does not suppress the log file. An unelevated run with
--silent returns 1 without doing anything, because the elevation helper refuses to raise
a UAC prompt in silent mode.
- Default: off
- Required: No
Disables the progress dialog. This is the only switch routed into ConfigManager.
- Default: off
- Required: No
Passes --fullscreen to the dialog binary so it covers the screen behind it. This switch is
implemented but is not listed in the tool's own help or usage output.
- Type: String
-
Default:
Setting Up Your Device - Required: No
Sets the dialog window title for this run. Given without a following value it is ignored and the default stands.
- Type: String
-
Default:
Please wait while we install required software... - Required: No
Sets the dialog message for this run. Given without a following value it is ignored.
- Type: String
- Default: none
- Required: No
Connects to an existing named pipe on the local machine, with a five-second connect timeout, and mirrors every log line to it. A failed connect logs a warning and the run continues; a broken pipe silently stops further pipe writes. The GUI does not use this path — it tails the log file instead.
- Required: No
Parses the remaining arguments into a configuration object and writes it to
HKCU\SOFTWARE\BootstrapMate\Settings, then returns 0 or 1. No manifest is processed.
It accepts --url, --no-dialog, --dialog-title, --dialog-message, --dialog-icon,
--silent, and --verbose/-v. Any value already set under the policy key is skipped.
--dialog-icon is accepted here and nowhere else: there is no --dialog-icon switch on a
normal run, and the saved DialogIcon value is never used. See Preferences.
- Type: String (file path)
- Required: No
Reads a JSON BootstrapMateConfig from the given path, writes it to
HKCU\SOFTWARE\BootstrapMate\Settings, and deletes the file, then returns 0 or 1.
Given without a path it prints ERROR: --save-settings-file requires a file path and
returns 1.
The GUI builds its run arguments from the same configuration object as everything else and
emits four switches the CLI has no case for. Because the parsing loop has no default: arm,
they are discarded without a message:
-
--headers <value>— theAuthorizationHeadervalue. Configure it in the registry instead. --follow-redirects--dry-run--reboot
The last three correspond to settings that are inert anyway. A GUI run with Dry run ticked installs packages for real.
| Code | Meaning |
|---|---|
0 |
The manifest was processed without an unhandled exception |
0 |
--version, --help, or the usage block was printed |
0 |
Elevation relaunch succeeded, or --reset-chocolatey was cancelled |
1 |
Not elevated and the user declined, or elevation failed |
1 |
Timed out after 30 minutes waiting for another instance |
1 |
--url or --save-settings-file given without its value |
1 |
No manifest URL could be resolved |
1 |
An unhandled exception while processing the manifest — a download or parse failure |
1 |
A --save-settings, --status, --clear-status, --clear-cache or --reset-chocolatey failure |
A zero exit does not mean every item installed. Each item is installed inside a
try/catch and a failure is logged, the cached file kept for inspection, and the loop
continues to the next item. A run in which every single package failed still returns 0. Do
not build a detection rule or a monitoring check on the exit code alone.
Such a run does report its failures everywhere else: the phase Stage becomes Failed with
the failed names in LastError, LastRunVersion is not written, and the run summary POST
carries success: false. To judge a run, count Failed to install package lines in the log,
check that C:\ProgramData\ManagedBootstrap\cache is empty, and read Stage under
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Cimian\BootstrapMate\Status\SetupAssistant and ...\Userland. See
Logging and Reporting.
Run a manifest once, interactively, with full console detail:
managedbootstrapinstall.exe --url https://example.com/bootstrap/bootstrapmate.json --verbose
Run unattended from a scheduled task or a deployment tool, with no console output and no dialog:
managedbootstrapinstall.exe --url https://example.com/bootstrap/bootstrapmate.json --silent --no-dialog
Run against the manifest URL already set by policy or by the MSI, taking no arguments at all:
managedbootstrapinstall.exe
Show the version. It must be the first argument:
managedbootstrapinstall.exe --version
Show what the last run recorded, remembering the caveat above about which registry root this reads:
managedbootstrapinstall.exe --status
Persist a manifest URL and a custom dialog title to the current user's settings without running anything:
managedbootstrapinstall.exe --save-settings --url https://example.com/bootstrap/bootstrapmate.json --dialog-title "Preparing your device"