WSUS

[Charger440]

Does anyone use WSUS offline updater?

If so, what do you think about it?

[wmmiller]

I don't but there is no real reason that I don't.

[Charger440]

Bill your NAS would be perfect place for it. Lots of room and centrally accessible.

[wmmiller]

I’m going to try it Jim.

[Charger440]

Let us know how you like it Bill

[steve2189]

I use it and it works well.
I download files to my workshop PC, then sync the files to a USB stick which I take to onsite jobs.

[Brink]

I use it. It doesn't do all updates, but it does suffice in the absence of a freakin service pack 2 for windows 7. What kind of lame crap is that Microsoft?

[Charger440]

I agree there should a SP2 for 7 but my main use for WSUS is updates get done a lot faster from a local NAS than downloaded. You have a much higher bandwidth on your local network than you have on your internet connection. Some of us are lucky enough to have very fast internet connections like 60 - 100 meg a sec. Some of us back woods people are still stuck at a measly 18 meg

[Brink]

I got 10. So be happy with your 18.

[Charger440]

See!

That's exactly what I was talking about LOL

[wmmiller]

I stuck WSUS files on a hard drive to try it out. It seems to work ok. I think I will stick it on my 1TB NAS that I haven’t found yet since the move because when I put it on one of my running NAS drives it wanted me to map a drive letter to it. I’m not sure of this but didn’t crypto locker attack map drives where it didn’t unmapped drives? It been so long I’m not even sure where I got that in my head from.

Bill

Talk about being in the woods. Right after we moved here the local ISP (Paul Bunyan Communications) buried fiber optic cable right to the outside wall of the houses. I’m using their lowest speed available (20Mb UPLOAD/Download) but if I had the extra money I could speed thing s up a bunch by upgrading to their “GigaZone - Gigabit Fiber Network”. http://www.paulbunyan.net/gigazone/index.html. I wish I could afford it along with the TV package. I guess we are really lucky in this neck of the woods.

[Charger440]

Of those of you who have tried it (Prolly Brink), have you gotten the updater to run from a network location mapped or not mapped? I am going to try running the updater from local drive and see if I can point to the mapped drive and see if that works.

According to the error message it will work from a mapped drive but it still says it can't run from a UNC path and I should map the location. I guess it does not know it's mapped....

[Brink]

Sorry Jim. I use thumb drives. I use the create ISO feature in the WSUS. I open the ISO from the thumbdrive on the target machine using virtual clone drive (win7) or built in ISO support (win8) and copy all files out of it to a folder on the local C: drive. Then run it from there. If you run it direct from the ISO it will fail after reboot to continue, because it don't auto remount the ISO so copy it to a folder and run it from the folder.

I find that by creating the ISOs, transfer size to the target machine is only between a .5 and 2.5 gigs depending on the type of OS being updated.

You can probably do that from the Network storage instead of a thumbdrive and less than 3gigs is not that large to transfer like the whole 60gigs would be. You just have to learn that w60 is for vista and w61 is for 7 etc.

Although it was not asked, I will offer this advice on failed update of the WSUS master files:(update generator)
When network failure or other problems prevent generator from completing and you have to try again but the "Same Day Rule" prevents the generator from completing, Delete all files inside \client\md and retry. Then you don't have to wait till the next day to retry.

I probably do it the hard way like everything else. Good luck getting it to run from NAS.

[Charger440]

Brink
I got it to work from the NAS. You have to create a Mapped drive as admin and then in that same explorer instance just run the Updater. Don't pick run as admin. That will will make it fail also.

I know what the version numbers are for windows so I'm comfortable with 6.0, 6.1 etc so on.

I imagine Thumb drives and ISO might be helpful but since I hardly ever need to do that many from anywhere but the office I just like to run off the NAS.

[Brink]

Yes, I read in some other post where you like to work from the easy chair in the livingroom while the beasts are chained to the workbench in the basement. lol Or was that Bill who said that. Thanks for the tips on NAS usage.

[Charger440]

Brink

That was actually BIll..... He's the lazy one!! LOL I'm kidding, It sounds nice to sit on the couch and control your computers your working on

[Xander]

Late to the party but I've been running WSUSOffline from my NAS for a couple of years. Worst thing is that I've got one folder with the downloaded updates and one folder with the same ones for installation. There's probably a way to merge them but I've never gotten around to looking and they're not /that/ big on 2TB NAS.

This has got me wondering about how to work this into the SR part of UVK ... since WSUSOffline no longer supports XP, would there be any way to have the SR code detect if the OS is XP and, if it isn't, run the program?

[Charger440]

Running it from UVK would be easy but considering WSUS takes quite a bit of time, usually runs more than once and wont' survice reboot from a NAS would it really be a benefit?

[Xander]

Not so much but I am still curious about how one would handle the "doesn't support XP" factor.

[Charger440]

Well... I don't support XP anymore. To much head ache and usually running on a slow machine. I can deliver a Windows 7 box with 4 GB ram and Windows 2010 for $200. That software, legally obtained, will cost you about $240 so your buying 7 Pro and office 2010 and getting a free computer to run it on. No need to even consider XP