Action for Patches Question

[johngib]

The question would be true for action but specifically if the action has a 4 hour window for start of patching to stop and the action is now at the end of action and is still installing a patch at that window and continues to install patch to complete. Now the action end , will the post action step of restart still complete?

[Jared]

If the action is already in process, then it will finish, even if the action has expired. You should think of that time as the last time the action will start not the end of the window.

[ageorgiev]

As Jared pointed out the Start/End time only pertain to the action definitions - when are the clients allow to start the execution BUT if the action is started it is not going to be restricted by any means and will continue to run post-end time. In fact we had a lot of issues with certain jobs getting hung on certain problematic machines and preventing further actions from running. The two workarounds you can think about are:

• Consider when to use run/runhidden vs wait/waithidden - in some cases the former make sense in others the latter.
• Implement wait/waithidden disposition parameters - this can physically kill ANY job that has run for configured amount of time (documentation here). Just be careful because this is setting that applies to ALL actions, not just certain jobs and if you configure it very low it may actually be killing jobs that are expected to run for longer.

[ageorgiev]

I stand corrected. @JasonWalker mentioned in a different forum entry that disposition settings can actually be configured per-action too: documentation.