Re: Software Update - Distribution Status; How is this reported back to SMS?
- From: "KCSteele" <k.c.steele@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 14 Aug 2006 06:25:42 -0700
Well I reinstalled Office2003 on one of the bad machines (using my own
transform file) and then it successfully reported back to the stie
database as having Office2003 SP2.
As I initially thought, it is simply the inventory scan which reports
back what it and what is not installed in terms of security/office
patches. However even though these problematic machines (the ones which
were not reporting office2003 sp2 as being installed, even though it
was) were reporting back that they had successfully run the
advertisement for the inventory scanning programs, there was no
indication by looking at the advertisement status that they had not run
COMPLETELY.
This seems to be a recurring problem within SMS wrt reporting - clients
will often report back that they have run a program "successfully" when
in fact it is just the advertisement that successfully triggers the
program to run, and not necessarily that the program did what it
specifically needed to do. For example many times when attempting to
push out security patches, I've noticed that the client will report
back "The program was run sucessfully" but only when accompanied by the
message "The software updates installation evaluation returned the
following results: x Authorized, x attempted, 0 failed.", is it an
indication that the patches actually installed. When this accompanying
message fails to be generated, the patches have not installed. However,
SMS doesnt' correctly interpret this as a failure.
This is kind of what happened in this case - the problematic machines
were reporting back that they "successfully" ran the advertisment for
the Office patch, when in fact they had not installed the patch,
because they had not reported back that they had Office2003 sp2
installed, and the patch was specific to Office2003 SP2. As for why
they didn't report back that they had Office2003 SP2 installed, I still
don't know, must have had something to do with how the person who
deployed them installed office. Because a simple reinstall fixed the
problem...
KCSteele wrote:
For all new machines that are added to the network, they have
office2003 sp2 pre-installed with SP2 before the advanced client is
installed via Client Push Installation. The compliance reports indicate
all new machines as having office2003 sp2 "Installed", while a handful
of machines still report back "Missing".
The interesting thing is that each of the machines that aren't
correctly reporting back were all imaged and deployed by the same
person. So I'm thinking that maybe the transform file they used when
they created the image for these machines has something do do w/ it?
The SMS client was pushed out to the "bad" machines no differently than
the "good" machines.
2d wrote:
pacthing status is recorded in the win32_patchstatus class in WMI and has a
corresponding data table in the sms database. It could be that these
computers already had sp2 installed prior to running your patching process.
since these computers have sp2 installed the patching process doesn't really
run on it and therefore may not create a .mif file.
what does you compliance reports indicate for these computers? Distribution
status results are exactly that, the results of a distribution status and
compliance reports are indicative of what vulnerabilites are found in your
environment.
2d
"KCSteele" <k.c.steele@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1155233147.620808.48220@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
We have a situation in which we installed Office2003 SP2 to all
machines. We did not use SMS2003 to do this however, it was done using
a login script w/ the maintenance wizard.
When going to the "Software Update - Distribution" page of the SMS
Reports, then "Software update distribution status by software update
ID", entering "Office 2003 Service Pack 2 (English version) " in the
Update Identifier, and selecting the appropriate collection, I see that
most machines have reported back that SP2 is indeed installed, but
there are a number of machines that are reporting that it is not
installed; under "Last status message name" they show "No messages have
been received". Of course the machines that show it as being installed
have under "Last status message name" the statement "Status has changed
to installed".
What is the mechanism that reports back to the site database whether or
not this program is installed (in this case, Office2003 SP2)?
What's strange is that someone these machines do indeed have Office2003
SP2 installed, but when pushing out an update, say, for Powerpoint2003
SP2, these machines do not pull down the update, because even though
they have Office2003 SP2, it hasn't been reported back to the SMS site
as being installed.
How can I ensure that these machines report back to the database that
they do indeed have Office2003 SP2 installed so that they can then pull
down the appropriate update for Powerpoint2003 SP2?
Since it was not distributed via a package & advertisement, I'm not
sure where to look for these messages, and I'm not sure what it is that
the advanced client uses to report back and generate the "Status has
changed to installed" information as seen in the report. Is it the
software inventory agent that generates messages back to the site
database about whether a particular machine has (in this case)
Office2003 SP2 installed?
.
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