We are trying to install software from a network folder using BigFix. I have read threads that are similar to what we are trying to do, but nothing that completely answers the question. Apologies if this is a topic that has been addressed elsewhere.
We basically took this structure from existing fixlets. The server itself is not serving HTTP (that I know of).
Can files be deployed this way, with the BigFix server fetching from a local server like it would any other source, or do we have to manually cache the installation files on the server? Can we use a standard network path? (ex. \localserver\folder\subfolder\filename.exe)
If the file has to be manually cached, is there a way to cache files permanently? In the past, we have found that our manually cached files get pushed from the cache over time.
The “download” command is only for HTTP (and sometimes FTP) sites.
You can run a file from a share as long as the agent has access to the share (but remember that the agent runs as the SYSTEM account so it won’t normally have access to the share unless you use null session shares (http://support.bigfix.com/bes/misc/null_session_share.html) or unless you assign privileges to computers instead of users).
Running files from shares doesn’t use any BigFix caching, it just executes the files as if you ran them from the commandline.
If the file is already cached on the server (either by moving it manually or using the Deployment Wizard), what command would be used instead of “download”? Or would it be a “download” command, only pointing to the sha1 on the BES server instead of the network folder location?
Then the server will first check to see if the file is in the local cache and if not it will re-download it from the source. If you use the software deployment wizard, it should upload the file to the server and create the url for you to use (it is a url in the uploads folder so that if the server ends up kicking the file from the sha1 cache, it will be re-downloaded and put back in the sha1 cache)…
I revisited this project this morning to check the above, and the fixlet worked. I didn’t change anything, though. Does it take awhile for files manually added to the sha1 folder to propagate to other relays? I’m baffled as to why it worked today, but not last week.