Reboots should be suppressed so that a restart doesn’t happen in the middle of a baseline.
It can happen that a baseline completes but not all patches were applied because either they aren’t relevant until the patches that have just been applied are actually fully installed after a reboot, then after the reboot, the baseline becomes relevant again, applies more patches, and then another reboot.
This could also happen because of the order that the patches are placed in the baseline. If one patch requires a previous patch to be applicable, then if it is first in the order in the baseline, it will get skipped, while the later patch will be applied. Baseline components always execute in order, so this will mean that the baseline will have to apply again in order for all the patches to be applied.
I don’t recommend restarting using baselines, and instead tag the machines as needing a restart and use a separate process to actually do the reboots.
You have to set the baseline to restart the system when completed, or you need a separate process to cause it to reboot. All patching fixlets and tasks and the default behavior of baselines is not to restart the system at all so that can be handled specifically if needed or separately.
You should definitely file a PMR with IBM about this.
Don’t reboot as a part of the baselines, do that differently. Also have different baselines for patches that don’t require reboots (applications) than baselines for patches that do require reboots (OS).
Only require reboots once after everything has applied.
I don’t use that wizard, particularly because many patches are shared between OSes. We typically create 1 baseline for windows desktops containing all relevant Critical & Important patches.
I have some proof of concept code to automatically generate baselines for patching using the REST API on BigFix.Me
Probably. You should file a PMR with IBM on this.
You can do this with the REST API.
If you do it with the REST API, you can prevent this with the logic that generates the baseline.
Just because it isn’t available in the title of the baseline component doesn’t mean it isn’t available. It should be available through session relevance / REST API / WebReports.
Use the REST API to dump out the baseline contents to a CSV file. WebReports might also work for this.
Session Relevance through WebReports or the REST API or similar.
Probably not. The audio conference bridge they use is pretty bad and they are calling into it with Cell or Land Line phones, which are pretty much the worst case in quality.
I’d love to see a VoIP only audio option that would be much higher quality with some decent quality headsets. This should be possible, but they always use that damn audio conference bridge and it is awful.