Download Mirror Request timeouts

Hi,
I have policy action which is waiting for contents to be mirrored.Since its airgapped it needs manual caching.
Applicable nodes are waiting until contents are available on relay.

So even node is expected to perform action on day 1 performs the action on day when contents are available. Mostly outside of maintenance window.

Is there any way node should not wait indefinitely for contents , they should timeouts ?

You’d need to set the action expirations and “run between” to match your maintenance windows

Its policy action targeted based on specific relevance.

Ok, then it’s not going to respect maintenance window times.

Is there any timeout/restriction on keep polling downloads available ? Simply fail it after timeout

So…you want to leave the Action open but make it stop checking for downloads? I’m not sure I understand a use case for that.

Policy Action i m using it for patching servers based on computer property [month name]. I have added clause to check last update time of property. It should not be more than 3 hours.

If everything is available , it works well.

This month one patch from baseline missed a SHA1 on root server.
The nodes were waiting for SHA1 for 2 days and patched themselves as soon as we restored the SHA1.
It caused unexpected reboot after 2 days.

Is there any way to avoid it ?

Yes, you’d use Maintenance Windows.
It can be as simple as using the Action Settings page for “Run only on…Saturday” and “Run only between … Midnight and 2 am” and “Expire action after 1 week”.

Getting a little bit more complex, you can use the Maintenance Window Wizard to define specific Maintenance Windows for groups of machines. You can use a Constraint on your patch actions to only run when the Maintenance Window is open, or you can be stricter by using the Wizard to enforce unlocking and then relocking your endpoints so they only run any actions during their maintenance windows.

Going further you can use a Custom Constraint when taking your actions, using a Global Property. This would look like “Run only when … MyCustomMaintenanceWindow … equals … true”. You can create the Property and then set its value any number of ways; I’ve written at length in the forum about a customization I used in my previous workplace, where I used an Action to open the maintenance window at a deadline, and also sent an Offer so any system owners who wished could “Opt-In” for their patch windows earlier. That allowed the system owners to control their own outages, to test early, and to manage their service among multiple redundant servers.

At the far extreme, you could use the API and custom integrations to manage your maintenance windows from your CMDB (such as ServiceNow or SAP). Developing and integrating this is one of the services my current team offers.