Hello Altiris community,

I'm in the process of implementing a strategy to patch my linux servers.

I thought it would be handy to have commands to run before and after patches have been installed.
Is there any possibility to set this up? 

Also I have not yet found the place to see whether a linux system needs a reboot after the patchprocess.

Any suggestions and/or answers are welcome.

Regards,
Hannes

Hello,

Check this articles help you.

Altiris™ Patch Management Solution for Linux 7.1 from Symantec™ User Guide

Hello James,

thanks for the fast answer. I already read that guide, but surely I will read it another time. Hence it does not give me any hints about how to operate in "real life". 

What I am looking for are some tips about how to use the tool.
Do you distribute each patch separately in a policy?
How do you detect whether a client needs a reboot after the patch(es) have been installed?
Can you run commands just/exactly before and after the patch process on the client has started/finished? (In opposite to timed commands I could schedule on beginning and end of the maintenance window)

Regards,

Hannes

Hello,

Some answers to your questions below:

1) You can distribute patches separately in a policy or you can include multiple updates in one policy. It's up to you. Also we have dependency resolving feature that will resolve RPM dependencies and include all required packages.

2) Currently reboot is not supported in Patch Linux solutions. In most cases you do not require reboot during Patch installation on Linux, except scenario when you are updating kernel, in that case you have to reboot your machine manually, or use reboot task from the NS console.

3) Currently  pre-patching/post-patching commands are not supported.

Thanks

Alex.