WSUS alternative

I remember reading about a linux install a few years ago that can download and or push out updates to Windows clients. If I remember correctly it involved installing a client application on the Windows machines that would then communicate with the linux server.

Does anyone remember what it was called?

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Comments

GAngel

No but it sounds like a world of pain to maintain as well as not being supported. I'd guess it was some kind of proxy grabbing the updates..

why not use ldap get an 03/08 license and use that to run it

ptilsen

There are a dozen WSUS alternatives. Some are free, some are not. Some are agent-based, some are not. Almost none of them work as well as WSUS, and almost all of them share its flaws or make up for not sharing its flaws by having their own, equally painful flaws.

Honestly, use WSUS unless there is a very good reason you can't. In the time spent trying to implement and maintain another solution, you can generally fix whatever problem WSUS has developed.

onesaint

I've setup and run WSUS on XP, but never heard of it as a service for a *nix distro. I'd be curious to see what it is and if it has the same issues ptilsen mentioned.

Daniel333

Not sure you would gain much value with another product? What are your business requirements?

wSUS is hard to beat. Although I did like Kaseya's patching tool also

snokerpoker

Daniel333 wrote: »

Not sure you would gain much value with another product? What are your business requirements?

wSUS is hard to beat. Although I did like Kaseya's patching tool also

The company I work for just started using Kaseya. So far, I am impressed with it.

qwertyiop

Guys, I found what I was looking for, its called OPSI.

software deployment — opsi

TLeTourneau

qwertyiop wrote: »

Guys, I found what I was looking for, its called OPSI.

software deployment — opsi

Beyond running on linux I see no advantage if the primary goal is installing MS patches. As a matter of fact I'm not sure about this part of opsi (emphasis mine):

Deploy OS Hotfixes (Update subscription is fee required)
Deploy MS-Office Hotfixes (Update subscription is fee required)
Deploy security updates and patches for the opsi standard packets (Update subscription is fee required)

You can run WSUS on an existing Windows server for free. Maybe I'm missing something?

onesaint

Here is some added notes on OPSI from MozillaWiki

https://wiki.mozilla.org/ReleaseEngineering/OPSI