ClearFoundation

Has anyone tried to use the proxy to cache Windows Updates?

My seem like something simple but its not, yet its something that can help alot of people here (I'm in Brazil) where the connections are not always the greatest.

In the past i'ved used IPcop with the download accelerator plugin and it worked great, but now i'm wanting/whishing to get ClearOS as the main system for small setups give all the features that it has. In the IPcop case the regular proxy files and windows updates cache were stored in different paths, not that this is a requirement, but seems like a good idea.

In an environment that only has ClearOS, we wont be able to use WSUS to cache windows updates, so a proxy is a good choice, and if COS cant do it, then we would have to setup another server on the network just for that.

Perhaps this could be a feature on the next release.

Hi Rodrigo,

provided you have set your proxy cache size to something big (and have the disk space!), and have increased the max file size setting you should find that the windows updates begin to be stored on the proxy server.

due to the way they come in, my client PC's will sit for ages on the 'downloading progress bar' and it will then suddenly shoot across to 100%.

David

It's not as straight forward as you might think because of the way they are pulled from M$ - This might be of interest
wiki.squid-cache.org/SquidFaq/WindowsUpdate

@David

Hi David, that behavior on the progress bar seems like a common "theme" for update cache. On IPcop that seemed to happend quite a bit, but sometimes I just went by fast at least with XP, I dont recall how it went with Windows 7 and others.

As far as disk space goes, I used an extra disk for the updates. and just for the windows XP updates we had about 45 to 60 gigs of data... for instance the XP SP3 file on the updates page seems like a 75ish MB download... but we had a file that was over 700MB on the server for that download. I think this is what Tim is talking about on his reply.

@Tim

Hi Tim, as I replied to David, I understand that the updates are pulled differently from the site and that this is not an easy task, but its doable, thats why I referenced the IPCop experience.

I have looked into that that link before, many times actually, but never really got anything setup (at least I had no luck with my previous custom attempts) that was as good as the download accelerator plugin for ipcop. I will try to set this up at some point (if I manage to find time between college and work) this year still.

I was also going to ask about caching updates for linux boxes, mostly ubuntu, fedora, centos. but I think I should open a different topic just to keep things organized. Should I? Your input is appreciated.

Thank you.

Rodrigo:

Seems like no solution available yet, why don't you try Wsusoffline program for a while?

download.wsusoffline.net/

It is free and allows you to download (in theory) all MS Windows and MS Office versions and flavors updates, it creates .iso files for each product version.

Not a complete solution but believe me that really works for me.

hey rodrigo,

i had a similar situation. now i use the tool wuinstall to cache windows updates on a shared directory. therefore it saves bandwith because all machines search first in the shared directory in local network for their updates. only if the specific update doesnt exist there, they donwload it from Windows Update.
maybe it is a solution for you.