Creating a Patching Job
This topic describes how to create a Patching Job. A Patching Job identifies missing patches on your servers.
It includes the following sections:
Contents of the Patching Job
A Patching Job includes the following:
- Analysis — The Patching Job checks the configuration of target servers and determines which patches are needed.
- (Optional) Creation of remediation artifacts — The Patching Job performs the following actions:
- (Microsoft Windows, Solaris only) Downloads the required payload.
- Packages the payload as a BLPackage.
Creates a Deploy Job.
Before you begin
- You need to enable the required permissions for anyone responsible for creating and executing the patching job, see Role-based-permissions-for-creating-and-running-a-patching-job for the list of permissions. In addition, ensure that anyone who can view results of the Patching Job, has the DepotObject.Read permission enabled for the patch catalog that is used for the analysis.
- Make sure that the libnsl.so.1 package is installed on the RHEL and CentOS targets.
(Solaris Only) For an agent, running on a target server in single-user mode, to mount a source location using the NFS transmission protocol, the following must be done prior to deployment:
- Enable NFS client services on the target server.
- Change the server property setting, DEPLOY_ALLOW_NFS_DURING_SUM, to true.
For more information, see Using NFS to mount a location while running single-user mode.
To create a Patching Job
- In the Jobs folder, navigate to the folder where you want to create a Patching Job.
- Do one of the following actions:
- Right-click and select New > Patching Job >platformNamePatching Job. For example, Microsoft Windows Patching Job, Solaris Patching Job.
- Right-click a specific server and select Patch Analysis.
- Right-click a catalog and select Analyze Using This Catalog.
Provide information for the Patching Job as described in the following topics.
Panel
Description
Patching Job - General
On the General tab, you can enter following basic information about a Patching Job:
Name
Enter the name of the Patching Job.
NEW IN 21.02(For Windows Patching jobs) When you create an Analysis job with the auto remediate option enabled, name of the created remediation job is appended with the date and timestamp values. If the characters in the name exceed 260, the Remediation job fails. To avoid this issue, the remediation job name after 30 characters is truncated.
Description
Enter some information about the Patching Job.
Save in
Select a folder where you would want the job to be stored.
Specify a Catalog
Browse to and select a patch catalog.
Unlimited
Select this to have the job to run in parallel on as many target servers as possible.
Limited
Select this to have the job to run in parallel on a specific number of target servers.
Set Execution Override
Select when the Patching Job always execute as the user, BLAdmin, and the role, BLAdmins.
Clear Execution Override
Select when the Patching Job always execute using the user and role that scheduled the job.
Patching Job - Analysis Options
Complete one of the following panels, based on patch platform.
Patching Job - Analysis Options for Microsoft Windows
A Patching Job checks the configuration of patches on specific servers according to the filters defined as part of the job definition.
You can select List and create an Include/Exclude list for specific patches through the Include-or-Exclude-Selection dialog box. You can specify the patches that you want to include or exclude, or you can specify a .txt file that contains a list of QNumbers for these patches.
We recommend adding only those patches that you want to test against the target to the include list because adding additional patches might increase the time taken to analyze the target.
If you want to use the Include and Exclude patch lists in combination for superseded patches, use the Filter Exclude List Before Analysis check box:
- If you select this check box, the patches in the Exclude list are removed from the patches in the Include list. This revised patch list is used for patch analysis.
- If you do not select this check box, the patches from the Include list are used for analysis and the patches specified in the Exclude list are filtered from the analysis results.
If you do not select List, you can choose from one of the following analysis options:
Patching Job - Analysis Options for Solaris
You can select List and create an Include/Exclude list for specific patches through the Include-or-Exclude-Selection dialog box, or choose from one of the following options:
Patching Job - Analysis options for AIX
A Patch Analysis Job on AIX does not show any fileset or BFF file dependency issues in the analysis log files and the Deploy Job might fail. You must ensure that all the required filesets and BFF files are installed on the target computer. You can create an Include/Exclude List for specific patch containers (PTFs or APARs) through the Include-or-Exclude-Selection dialog box, or choose from one of the following options:
Patching Job — Analysis Options for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle Linux Public Repo or SUSE Linux Enterprise
Patching Job - Analysis Options for Ubuntu
Patching Job - Analysis Options for Debian
NEW IN 20.02.01Patch Job - Analysis options for CentOS
Patching Job - Remediation Options
If the Patching Job autoremediates after completion of analysis, enter the following information:
Create remediation artifacts
Select to remediate on completion of analysis. All other options are available only if Create remediation artifacts is selected.
Package name prefix
Enter text that the Patching Job automatically adds to the name of all BLPackages and Deploy Jobs created. The name of the Patching Job appears as the default.
Save package(s) in:
Enter a depot location where the remediation package is stored. By default, the location is the same one used to store the Patching Job.
Save batch/deploy job(s) in:
Enter the folder where the Remediation and Deploy Jobs created by the Patching Job are stored. By default, the location is the same one used to store the Patching Job.
ACL Policy for Package(s)/Deploy Job(s):
Browse to and select the ACL policy to assign to each BLPackage, Deploy Job, and Batch Job created by the Patching Job.
Deploy Job Options
Select to open Deploy Job Options. The options defined here are the same ones defined for any Deploy Job.
Deploy Job Properties
Select to open a list of Deploy Job properties. The properties defined here are the same ones defined for any Deploy Job.
Patching Job - Targets
Use the Targets panel to choose the servers where this job runs. When first defining and saving a job, you do not have to specify target servers. You can specify target servers at a later time.
Field definitions
Field
Description
Available Servers
Specify the operating system of the servers you want to select. To display servers running any operating system, select All.
By Group, By Name
Select servers from a tree or sortable list and click the right arrow to move your selections to the right panel
To select servers:- Click the By Group tab at the bottom of the window. The left panel displays servers in a hierarchical list arranged by server group. Choose servers by selecting a server group or selecting one or more individual servers. If you select a server group, the job runs against the servers assigned to that group at the time of execution. The servers assigned to smart groups can change dynamically based on their server properties. You can modify static server groups manually by adding or removing servers.
- Click the By Name tab at the bottom of the window. The left panel lists servers by name in a Group Explorer view. Sort servers in ascending or descending order by clicking on any column header. Select one or more servers.
Patching Job - Output
The Output panel lets you capture job completion status for the current job and use it to populate a predefined property that you created in the Property Dictionary, within the built-in property class for the job targets — the Server, Component, or Device property class.
The list of properties for selection includes all complex properties of the JobRunStatusEnumeration type. It does not include intrinsic and deprecated properties.
Using the property that you specify here, you can create smart groups based on the completion status of the current job at the various targets. For example, you can create a smart group that includes all servers at which this job has not yet run or a smart group for all servers at which this job has completed successfully.
Such smart groups can serve as the targets either in the current job or in other jobs. When used in a separate job, the smart group targets link the execution of one job with the outcome of a previous job. In fact, you can optionally join both jobs together within a Batch Job.
Patching Job - Default Notifications
The Default Notifications panel provides options for defining default notifications that are generated when a job completes. If you have set up notifications for a particular scheduled job, those notifications are generated instead of default notifications.
Default notifications can take the form of emails or SNMP traps. When a job completes, an SNMP trap is sent to a specified server, where it can be read using software that receives and interprets SNMP traps. Default notifications are sent when you run a job immediately (that is, you do not schedule the job) or a scheduled job completes but you have not set up email or SNMP notifications for that scheduled occurrence.
Patching Job Run Notifications
Field
Description
Send email to
Lists email addresses of the accounts to notify when a job completes with the status that you specify. Separate multiple email addresses with semicolons, such as [email protected];[email protected]. After entering email address information, select the statuses that cause an email to be generated.
Append patch analysis results to email
Indicates emailed notifications should include detailed patch analysis results.
Note: This option is relevant only for Patching Jobs and not for Patching Remediation Jobs. You cannot send attachments for Patching Remediation Jobs, or for the child Deploy Jobs of Patching Analysis and Patching Remediation Jobs
Limit email body size
Limits the size of email that is generated by appending patch analysis results. Enter the maximum size, in kilobytes, in the text box. The default value is 1000 KB.
Send SNMP trap to
Provides name or IP address of the server to notify when the job completes. After entering server information, select the statuses that should cause an SNMP trap to be generated.
TrueSight Server Automation provides a management information base (MIB) that describes its SNMP trap structure. You can use this MIB to create scripts that integrate traps into your trap collection system. The MIB is located at installDirectory/Share/BladeLogic.mib.
List failed servers in email notification
Indicates email notifications should list all servers on which a job has failed.
Create incident on job failure
Creates an incident in BMC Remedy ITSM if the job fails.
This option is available if this job type was selected to support the creation of ITSM incidents and a connection to BMC Remedy ITSM was set up. For more information, see Enabling-Change-Automation-for-TrueSight-Server-Automation-jobs.
Patching Job - Schedules
The Schedules panel lets you schedule a job to execute immediately, schedule a job at a specific time in the future, schedule a job on a recurring basis, and define notifications that are issued when a job runs.
When scheduling a job, you can perform any of the following tasks:
- Scheduling a job that executes immediately — To schedule a job that executes immediately, select Execute job now. If your system has been configured to require approval for this job type, select Execute on Approval and then click Browse to display the Change Request Information dialog box. For more information, see Patching-Job-Execute-on-Approval-and-Change-Request-settings.
- Scheduling a job — The Schedule tab lets you schedule a job so it can run one time, recur hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly, or recur at some arbitrary interval. For more information, see Patching-Job-Scheduling.
- Defining job notifications — The Job Notifications tab lets you set up notifications that are generated when a scheduled job runs. For more information, see Patching-Job-Scheduled-Job-Notifications.
- Providing Change Request information — The Change Request information tab lets you provide Change Request information. This tab only appears when your system has been configured to require approval for this job type. For more information, see Patching-Job-Execute-on-Approval-and-Change-Request-settings.
Patching Job - Properties
The Properties panel provides a list of properties automatically assigned to the job being created. In this list, you can modify the value of any properties that are defined as editable.
For any property that has a check in the Editable column, select the property and click in the Value column.
- To set a property value back to its default value, click Reset to Default Value
.
The value of the property is reset to the value it inherits from a built-in property class. The Value Source column shows the property class from which the value is inherited. - Depending on the type of property you are editing, you can take different actions to set a new value, such as entering an alphanumeric string, choosing from an enumerated list, or selecting a date.
To insert a parameter into the value, enter the value, bracketed with double question mark delimiters (for example, ??MYPARAMETER??) or click Select Property.
The following table provides a list of editable properties:
Property name
Property type
Description
AUTO_GENERATED
Boolean
Specifies whether the object was auto generated.
DEBUG_MODE_ENABLED
Boolean
Specifies whether the Debug Mode has been enabled for the patching job.
If this property is set to TRUE, the logs that are created while performing a patch analysis job on the targets are saved on the Application Server.
JOB_PART_TIMEOUT
Integer
Specifies the number of minutes the job part or work item should run before it is automatically canceled.
JOB_TIMEOUT
Integer
Specifies the number of minutes the job should run before it is automatically canceled.
MAX_PARALLEL_PER_VM_HOST
Integer
Specifies the maximum number of parallel work items processed per Vitrual Machine host.
PRIORITY
JobPriorityEnumeration
Specifies the priority of the Patching Job
RESULTS_RETENTION_TIME
Integer
Specifies the number of days to retain old job runs and job results for the job.
Patching Job - Permissions
Using the Permissions panel, you can add individual permissions to an object. You can also set permissions by adding ACL templates or ACL policies. The Permissions list is an access control list (ACL) granting roles access to any objects created in the system, such as depot objects. ACLs control access to all objects, including the sharing of objects between roles. For more information, see the following table:
Task
Description
Adding an authorization
An authorization grants permission to a role to perform a certain type of action on this object.
To add authorization to this object, click Add Entry
in the Access Control List area. Then use the Add New Entry dialog box to specify the role and authorization you want to add.
Adding an ACL template
An ACL template is a group of predefined authorizations granted to roles. Using an ACL template, you can add a group of authorizations to the object.
To add an ACL template to the object, click Use ACL Template
in the Access Control List area. Then use the Select ACL Template dialog box to specify an ACL template that you want to add to this object.
To set the contents of the selected ACL templates so that they replace all entries in the access control list, select Replace ACL with selected templates. If you do not select this option, the contents of the selected ACL templates are appended to existing entries in the access control list.
Adding an ACL policy
An ACL policy is a group of authorizations that can be applied to this object but can be managed from one location.
To add an ACL policy to this object, click Use ACL Policy
in the ACL Policies area. Then use the Select ACL Policy dialog box to specify an ACL policy that you want to add to the object.
To set the contents of the selected ACL policies so they replace all entries in the access control list, select Replace ACL with selected policies. If you do not select this option, the contents of the selected ACL policies are appended to existing entries in the access control list.
- After completing the last step of the wizard, click Finish.
A Patching Job is stored in the appropriate Jobs folder. You can open the job and edit it.
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