[There's a reason that Yoda is the unofficial mascot of SBS. Size indeed matters not.] Brilliant idea regarding patching - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"
Wed, May 30 2007 23:19 bradley

Brilliant idea regarding patching

So you get this idea that you will install.. say ISA 2004 sp3 remotely... and you get to the end and don't realize that it breaks the network connection and you are stuck as it wants a reboot to finish..what do you do?

Do what trick I learned from a SBSer at Jeff's ITpro conference this weekend.... schedule a reboot for an hour after you begin your Service pack install.  That way if you get the machine stuck, in a hour it should force a reboot, get the box back into workable state and you can continue on with what you needed to do.

Kewl idea, huh!

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# re: Brilliant idea regarding patching

Thursday, May 31, 2007 7:07 AM by Corey

Susan, How do you schedule a reboot in SBS?

# re: Brilliant idea regarding patching

Thursday, May 31, 2007 8:36 AM by Larry Seltzer

I would do this: shutdown -r -t 5 -d p:99:88 -r reboots -t 5 sets the timeout to 5. arbitrary, but the default is something like 30 seconds -d puts the code in the logs. I'm picking planned with 99 as major and 88 as minor, but I think it's all arbitrary. Would -f (forces running applications to close without warning) be a good choice here?

# re: Brilliant idea regarding patching

Thursday, May 31, 2007 10:14 AM by Indy

Terrible idea. What if a dialog box is open prompting you for something else? What if something causes the install to take longer than an hour? What if you lose connectivity before you can verify any of this? Solution? Make sure you can get to a KVM with IP or other assured connectivity to that box for crit SP installs. Or use a service like Lights Out on HP servers.

# re: Brilliant idea regarding patching

Thursday, May 31, 2007 10:18 AM by Craig

Excellent idea. Will defintely keep this in mind in the future.

# re: Brilliant idea regarding patching

Thursday, May 31, 2007 11:33 AM by Philip Elder

Pingback: http://blog.mpecsinc.ca/2007/05/sbs-2k3-all-versions-scheduling-reboot.html Blog post includes instructions on scheduling the reboot. Absolutely awesome tip Susan. We truly appreciate it! Philip E. MPECS Inc.

# re: Brilliant idea regarding patching

Thursday, May 31, 2007 12:07 PM by Philip Elder

Indy, In response to your dialogue box ... I believe that most of us test our patching on either a lab or virtual setup, or even our own in-office setups before heading out to clients. This gives us a heads-up on how the patches behave. Think GDI, WGA,or IE7 on XP as examples of dialogue boxes. The experience of running the patches before hand gives us a good idea of how they run based on the speed of our systems versus the speed of our client's systems. Some are faster, some would run slower. That would be something to keep in mind. Larry, -f is mandatory in my opinion as some services may refuse to release. Philip E.