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Patch Schedule Run Custom

I want to install Windows Patches on the 3rd week - friday at 1am.  How can i write this in Unix crontab? 

 


4 Comments   [ + ] Show comments
  • I tried something similar. I never could get it going.

    http://www.itninja.com/question/kace-cron-scheduling - dugullett 10 years ago
  • I do something similar but you can't select the third Friday. I use this 00 1 15-21 * * and then use my power management software to wake the machines only on the night I want them to patch (in your case, Friday just before 1 A.M.). The 15-21 encompasses the third week of the month and I control the day by waking the machines as detailed above. It can be a pain to setup so many patch schedules if you have thousands of PCs in your organization but that's the way that works for me. - rockhead44 10 years ago
  • So 00 1 15-21 * * this would basically define install the patches somewhere in the third week? But it doesn't definte it to be either a weekend or weekday? - dparekh 10 years ago
  • The K1000 will attempt to install them at 1 A.M. on each of those days (in this case, the 15th-21st). It will quickly fail if nothing is turned on. I shut my machines down nightly then wake the ones that will be patched on the specific day of the week I want them patched. I create my patch schedules accordingly. Again, it's not perfect but works for me within the parameters of the K1000. - rockhead44 10 years ago

Answers (1)

Posted by: jknox 10 years ago
Red Belt
2

The short answer is I don't believe you can with how cron is implemented in the K1000. It's a basic version that doesn't handle the full set of variables or expressions.

You could have it run every third Friday, but that would be overall, not out of the month:

It would look like this:

*    1    *    *    5/3

I'd recommend that you have it run every other Friday, which would look like this:

*    1    *    *    5/2

This is the closest thing I've found to help generate cron entries:  http://www.openjs.com/scripts/jslibrary/demos/crontab.php

Also reference the links below:

man page for cron: http://www.unix.com/man-page/freebsd/5/crontab/

p. 210: https://www.kace.com/support/resources/~/media/Files/Support/Documentation/K1000/v54/K1000-Admin-Guide-v54.ashx

http://www.kace.com/~/media/Files/Support/KACE-Konference/2009/KBOX-Power-Management.ashx

 

If you would like to see cron improved, please submit an enhancement request here: http://kace.uservoice.com/forums/82699-k1000


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