I hope someone can clear things up for me. My remit for this task is to detect a new file (it happens to be a CRL but that’s not important) and get it downloaded to a heap of member servers.
My original thinking was thus:
Run a Fixlet with an “if exists” relevance against the location on the machine that will receive the file and run an archive now function to upload the file when detected
… that’s working fine.
I could not think of a way in which I could determine whether the file had changed on the Bigfix server so simply decided to run a periodic Fixlet to download the file, compare it locally and copy it over the existing one if it was newer
… then I got thinking about the Action Regenerator that I think used to be used in the Bigfix AV, but I couldn’t really work out how to put all the pieces together to get this looking at the local file I’d uploaded to the Bigfix server etc. the documentation I stumbled across was pretty vague … or I am being pretty stupid ;o) so if anyone could advise where I should look for instruction, or can tell me how I should configure things, that’d be great.
I ought to just point out specifically where my understanding is going awry. I have the uploaded file in the normal location, but that isn’t part of the Bigfix Server’s website, thus in my initial Fixlet (before I create the autogenerated version) how do I address where the file should be? Can I just run the Software Download Wizard which will then create the relevant SHA1 named file on the webserver? But if I do that, when my file updates in the Upload location will the auto generator detect that, or would the file have to be uploaded to the same location?
I am a bit confused… Are you trying to upload the file that changes on the agent to the BigFix Server OR trying to download a new file to the agent when it changes on the BigFix Server?
Sorry to confuse you Ben. I did try to make it make sense, but can well understand if it does not. Here it is in two lines (I think)
The scenario is, the system publishes a file to a location on Server A which has a Bigfix client
The file published needs to be replicated to a whole host of machines
So, so far I have achieved the first part by writing a relevance for a Task which looks for the presence of the file and when it detects it, runs archive now to upload the file to the Bigfix server.
Originally for part two I was simply planning to set another fixlet for the machines wanting to receive the file and set it to run every 10 minutes with the first action being to compare the size and SHA1 and if the same do nothing. However of course, that still uses up bandwidth because the hash checking happens at the client, so the file has to get there first.
I then had a vague recollection about the Action Rengerator and wondered if I could get that to work in this instance, but couldn’t quite figure out how (or indeed if!) What I didn’t really know is how the Action Regenerator compares the file it is to upload (if required), does it simply parse the content of the Fixlet’s download command and use that as the location? Or does the file have to be compressed and renamed, as the Software Distribution Wizard would do?
First check if the modification time on the file if its different from some registry key, if it is, write the current modification time of the file to the registry
and “archive now”, next time it runs it wont run unless the file has changed
i basically your keeping track of each file in its own registry
Thanks Mark, but that part is working ok, because having detected the file and uploaded it, the fixlet moves it to another location, thus the relevance evaluates to false.
