Baselines containing several hotfixes that each require restarts

Usage and Config Patch
1

(imported topic written by Joe.Holder91)

Hi,

We are just starting to use bigfix to deploy MS hotfixes.

Previously we grouped a months worth of relevant hotfixes by hand and wrote spb scripts to deploy them.

We would include restarts between each fix that said it required a restart - not only one at the end of several.

I’m not 100% sure we needed to do it that way but we thought it was better to be safe than sorry.

I am experimenting with creating baselines and have made one containing MS08-002, MS08-007, MS08-008, MS08-020 AND MS08-021. These all require restarts according to MS.

I used the ‘custom settings’ to automate a restart after deploying the baseline.

My question is - how can I insert a restart between each one? I see a task for solaris but not for windows. I am using Windows 2003 SP1 and SP2

Many thanks

Joe

2

(imported comment written by jessewk)

You should be okay with just one restart at the end.

3

(imported comment written by Joe.Holder91)

Ok, but the word ‘should’ is a bit worrying…:wink:

Let me put it another way - I DO want to put restarts into my baselines on W2K3 - how do I do it?

Thanks

Joe

4

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hey Joe,

I know of millions and millions (possibly even billions) of patches that were deployed without a restart between each patch… The “qchain” utility (which is basically built into MS patches these days) was designed to make sure you don’t need to restart between each patch.

But… if you really want to do it… Make a custom Task with the actionscript

restart 60

and add it in between each patch in the baseline.

Ben

5

(imported comment written by Joe.Holder91)

Thanks Ben. Your colleague Doug Coburn is here at present and told me about qchain. I didn’t know about it until now.

So it would seem that BigFix uses qchain so that you can group fixes without intermediate restarts.

Where this would not be the case (e.g. service packs, or perhaps the occaisonal hotfix) this would be indicated clearly.