Ok, this is a bit of a premature announcement, but since it came up...
My team is working on an open source alternative to SUS. That is, an open source client/server package that will automatically download Windows updates from Microsoft and allow clients to pull those updates from the server.
I should note that this effort shares certain philosophical points with Unattended and I believe it will complement Unattended very well. However, it is not being created as a plugin or extension to Unattended. Specifically, we are looking for a controlled and open-source solution to distribute critical updates to our Win boxes without using IIS (which is required by SUS) or, in general, a Win server to host those updates. And so we need something that will work beyond install-time for Windows. It will be very possible to couple this or perhaps include it in Unattended (that's not a request, just a musing), but it is being created as a stand-alone project.
There are already some other free (as in beer) alternatives to SUS available but I haven't found one yet that suits our needs. If anyone has any solutions or works-in-progress you think we should take into account, I welcome the feedback. Also, I don't intend for this project to derail or replace any ongoing efforts to potentially improve Windows update mechanisms with Unattended, I just thought it was relevant enough that I should mention it.
You can expect an alpha announcement within a month.
Thanks, Matt Disney IT Administrator Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Tennessee
Steven Piercy wrote:
OK - the sus server sounds cool; that is, if you have another 700mhz win2k box w/ 6gigs of diskspace floating around. I dont - so I have to ask the next logical question.
Why not just use wget or another web puller to grab the updates (if needed) on the fly with each unattended run?
I figure since the url and patch path is in each script, and we are using perl (cpan updates d/l with wget), and all the update urls are usually updated in each patch/app bat file (dang - even use wget to pull the newest cvs script too!) - so is there a reason this hasn't been done?
Ok, don't expect a patch from me... only ideas (besides, you wouldn't want to see my perl code anyway!).
---start pseudo *wannabe coder* code---
#all this code would run fully integrated with the current linux boot process - (may have to run the wget stuff before jumping into memdisk)
add the wget perl stuff like cpan uses - or run it standalone (must be auto'd)
-now parse the urls from whatever bat file ur about to work with
--check if <patch path>/patch or <app path>/app.exe exsists --- if so move on
--if not, pull it with wget and drop it in its place (this will require write permissions of the unattend user to the //install/share tree - i dunno if that is wise or if its already that way?)
--else if - unable to get app/patch - skip it or cry and complain - maybe move to next bat? w/o adding to todo.pl
-add it to todo.pl
-end loop for app/patch in question - move to next app/patch
(remember to keep app paths and patch paths aligned) --sorry, that should be 'packages' and 'updates'
---end my looser goofed up psesorta code---
So my implementation is ugly, thats why im not goin to put in a patch. And like I said, i'm not sure if you want to pull the updates before the dosemu or not? I guess that would be if a wget perl mod could work from in dosemu, you could just check each update when working on that bat file. But this would basicly add sus functionality to unattended - just make sure your unattended box has plenty of room for updates. All the while saving your precious bandwidth
I think this would be great for free apps too, like 7-zip and Adobe Reader, because I'm sick of d/l'in all of them by hand. (there is a possiblility that I'm just stupid and haven't noticed an easier way)
Please let me know, anyone, if you can whip up some quick code that would do this clean. I must sound like a dog chasing his tail. Did I catch it?
Thx,
-Steven
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