IBM Endpoint Manager for Patch Management for Windows provides content for Microsoft Windows Hotfixes by request. Customers are advised to contact IBM Software Support (http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/Overview/Software/Tivoli/Tivoli_EndpointManager) for critical hotfix requests. The BigFix Patch team will thoroughly assess each request and provide content on a case by case basis.
Hotfix content from IBM are without Default Actions. Hotfixes are meant for specific issues. You must only apply Hotfix patches to endpoints that have symptoms that are described in the Hotfix Knowledge Base article.*
When IBM Endpoint Manager provides content for Microsoft Windows Hotfixes, there might be differences in the file names and sizes between those files that the user downloads and those that the Fixlet actually uses.
Microsoft Windows Hotfixes do not require manual caching when their download links are publicly available in the Microsoft Update Catalog or in the Microsoft Download Center at the time that IBM Endpoint Manager released the content. Otherwise, IBM Endpoint Manager content for Hotfixes requires manual caching. The files that you download for manual caching differ from the ones that the Fixlet uses.
Let’s take for example, Fixlet 289614611, which is the content for KB2896146.
When you download the file, you get something like the following.
Downloaded file name: 469429_intl_x64_zip.exe
Downloaded file size: 2.36 MB
In the Fixlet action script, IBM Endpoint Manager uses the following:
Patch file name: Windows6.1-KB2896146-x64.msu
Patch file size: 2.25 MB
As you can see, there are differences in the file name and size of the download zip file and the .msu file. The .exe extension of the download file might cause confusion. It is actually a zip file which contains the .msu file that the IBM Endpoint Manager content uses. You must extract, then manually cache the .msu file. In this example, unzip 469429_intl_x64_zip.exe (2.36MB file size) to extract Windows6.1-KB2896146-x64.msu (2.25MB file size). You then manually cache Windows6.1-KB2896146-x64.msu.
Addendum: Added statement regarding requests for hotfixes.