[Casper] Software Update - laptop labs, progress indicator

[Jeff Strauss]

 1.  Will bandwidth throttling via your own SUS carry through if Casper policies are applying updates?
 2.  I'm dealing with the same issue as Clinton; I have more than 500 laptops strewn throughout campus in carts, and they're all using 54Mbps wireless, so updating (and general connectivity) can sometimes be a pain. I was thinking of deploying Self Service to all the machines and adding it as an allowed application via WGM only to computer groups that I want to have updated, so at least updates can be scattered and somewhat managed on a computer group to computer group  basis. I'd add a loginwindow message letting students know there are updates available and to run Self Service when they log in. I don't know if that's the best solution; I'm still wrestling with it in my brain.

Otherwise, you could set updates to run at startup or via the "any" trigger, but my experience with that has been mixed. I've tried to run updates at startup and users will get upset that it takes forever to log on, and I've tried it at "any," which seemed to work better, but can still impact performance and the user will get weary if they don't know they're receiving an update. I think my experience also has to do with the fact that all the machines are wireless, and connectivity becomes heavily impacted when there are more than a few dozen machines pulling down large files from the server simultaneously.

- Jeff


On 4/2/09 9:33 AM, "Clinton Blackmore" <clinton.blackmore at westwind.ab.ca> wrote:

In that case, how do you throttle it on the server side?  We are using internet SUSes (although we really want to get a cascading SUS setup, so we can set on one server which updates need to go out, and which ones should be avoided.)

I don't suppose anyone has a way to multicast software updates?

Why the sudden interest in software updates?  Well, we normally go with the policy that computers that are on our network will be updated when they are imaged each year, and beyond that, few things are critical enough to warrant it.  Unfortunately, we believe that upgrading all of our clients will resolve some issues we've been having, and, so, we are updating.  [BTW, has anyone seen a good writeup on the AFP bug that 10.5.6 is supposed to address?]

Clinton


On 2-Apr-09, at 10:25 AM, Miles Leacy wrote:

On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 12:19 PM, Clinton Blackmore <clinton.blackmore at westwind.ab.ca> wrote:

Wait a second--Is it possible for a laptop, closed and in a cart, to run scripts and such?  If so, will it go back to sleep when it is done, and is heat an issue?  (The carts are ventilated, mind you.)


I haven't done this in a while, so I don't recall.  It's definitely something worth testing.



Also, is it possible to throttle software update?  If I wanted my clients to download the updates while the computers are in use (and not hammer the network too hard), is there any way to do that (preferably on the client side)?


I don't know and, in fact, I think you can't throttle from the client side.  You can throttle from the server side if you're running your own internal SUS.  I recommend an internal SUS to anyone who manages Macs.  It's relatively simple to set up, and it lets you control if and when updates get applied, which is important because Apple updates can sometimes break customizations and/or software that doesn't follow Apple's development rules (such as Microsoft and Adobe titles).






Jeffrey A. Strauss
Department of Educational Technology
Systems Administrator
Loyola High School of Los Angeles
1901 Venice Blvd.
Los Angeles, Ca 90006
(213) 381-5121 x265

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