Program to push out Patches

[JoshFink]

Will all these microsoft patches lately, I'm getting really tired of rolling out patches manually.

I'm looking for something to help me automate to process somewhat.

Our network is mainly comprised of Windows XP, 2000 and 98 machines running under Novell (unfortunately).

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Josh

 

[NcCorduan]

Microsoft has a system that lets you set up a server to manage this. It's a little complicated to implement and won't help the '98 machines, but it could make a world of difference for the rest of them. You can check out the release notes and information here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/windowsupdate/sus/sp1relnotes.asp

Don't know it will work with Novell, but it might be worth your looking!

 

[Guilo]

I believe you have to have windows server 2000 or 2003 as well. That leaves us out. Still on NT server and the state govt has no cash to upgrade.

 

[JoshFink]

I actually went ahead last week and installed SUS server on one of my 2000 servers.. Seems to be working great. I've gone on a limited rollout right now because it requires a registry patch if you're not using a Domain. We'll have to see but so far so good.

Thanks for the help

Josh

 

[softrends]

Hi,

Visit

http://www.managesoft.com

they have a patch management solution.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Softrends

 

[philbeardmore]

Hi Joshfink. I've also installed SUS server on a 2000 server, but I have one or two questions with regards to the updates. Once they are approved, and the cliens are setup to download from that server (via the adm file), do the PC's need to be logged in, or does this happen automatically, and if so, is there any user interaction required at all?? The reason I ask is I am planning on deploying updates this way, but at 12:00 midnight when no-one including myself is around.

Any help is appreciated.
Cheers
Phil

 

[JoshFink]

Phil, I'm not sure how much help I can be, but I will try. I'm not sure what the adm file is, but I'll tell you what I did.

I set up the SUS server on my 2000 server box. I then proceeded to download all the updates there. That works well. Then, since I'm not on a domain, I went to a machine and made the required registry changes to one machine and then exported that registry file. Once I confirmed it was working then I took that registry file and loaded it on all my XP machines. My XP machines then "call out" to the sus server box and update themselves. One thing I'm not sure of is whether they need to have admin rights to get the files to install. My gut feeling is that they do. I would recommend that you have your users leave the computers on at night and do your updates at 3am or so. I believe you should have no problems.

Try this site for questions as well.

http://www.susserver.com/

Hope that helps

Josh

 

[Zelandakh]

no one needs to be logged in on the machine. if its off you can set it to run when they next start it. if they are non admin, it can either restart or prompt for restart.

Would be grateful for the text in the .reg file as the other option is a GPO and they always seem so much like hard work

 

[WhiteWiz]

if you have sus also look at this client log add-on.

http://www.midthought.com/viewtopic.asp?forumid=28&id=386&page=1#RE19

 

[ITsmyfault]

Sorry you don't like Novell.. IMHO you should consider yourself lucky. (how often does your server hang, crash or need security patches?!) If you had budget for it, you could run Zenworks. For about $35 per user it will pay for itself in under a year in most cases. (Here the ROI was about 2-1/2 months!) On most planets that will get you promoted. If you're on NW5.x you may already have a subset of Zen 2 (ancient version) which would allow you to run the Snappshot utility and push out the patches as application objects. Check your install media. 4.11 *may* have shipped with that as well but it's been a while!

If you can swing 1 Win2k server, SUS works very nicely and is easier to set up, although it only does patches. You can purch the server lic for <$1000 if you shop around and it will pay for itself in nothing flat. Someone in finance should be able to understand that.

Last, if you have any newer IBM xseries servers they come with a nice chuck of Tivoli software which will do this as well. (although not free)

hope something there helped!