[Lias] Windows Update Server

[Ian Ralph]

Hi All,

Apologies for the cross posting and for the length of this post.

***My Questions: 

Does anyone know of OSS software that will emulate Microsoft's Software Update Services (SUS) on a Linux box and which fools desktop clients into thinking it has connected to a Windows Update server. 

SUS URL http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/windowsupdate/sus/susdeployment.asp

If OSS to do this does not exist I think it would be a good project. I'd be interested in participating - by sharing costs or contributing hardware, a test site or in some other way.

***The background

I would imagine that my situation is familiar. We use Linux at the backend for lots of things and Windows as the desktop OS. At present we have hundreds of desktops and we are going crazy trying to keep the desktop OSs patched so that we are not Blasted or Sobigged to death.

Yes; we do have good firewalls but staff and students have laptops that are used at home (where we have no control) and at school. I know we should be running Linux on the Desktop, but we aren't - yet.

At the moment there appears to be few options for keeping desktop systems patched with the latest MS patches; we could re-image every time a new patch appears (ie every 20 minutes), we could use Novell's Snappshot tool(the building of the snappshot cannot be automated), or we could do lots of walking around installing patches manually. As many of the patches are huge we would soon blow our Internet connection budget if we took the last option.

The only MS option appears to be to build a Windows 200x server and install Software Update Services. This automagically gets the OS patches from the Windows update site, then distributes them to your desktops according to a schedule. I would like to investigate all options before building a Windows 2000 server.

Regards

Ian Ralph
IT Manager SCEGGS Darlinghurst