Cleaning the installation sandbox environments for Windows patching

New

TrueSight Server Automation uses the Shavlik SDK during the deployment of Windows Patches. TrueSight Server Automation uses the Shavlik deployment engine executable (STDeploy.exe) to deploy a patch on the target Windows system. 

STDeploy.exe creates a sandbox for every patch to be installed. This sandbox is a temporary working directory for the Shavlik engine during installation of the patch. The sandbox is created in the RSCD\Transactions\shavlik\Installation directory.

STDeploy.exe stores information about various status events occurring during a patch deployment, in the RSCD\Transactions\shavlik\Patches directory.

Every invocation of STDeploy.exe performs automatic cleanup of the following items:

  • Older sandboxes found in the parent directory under which the new sandbox is created (RSCD\Transactions\shavlik\Installation). 
  • Unprocessed deployment status event files (RSCD\Transactions\shavlik\Patches).

The rules for this automatic cleanup by STDeploy.exe  are as follows:

  • All installation sandbox environments in RSCD\Transactions\shavlik\Installation directory, that are older than five days are deleted.
    • There is one sandbox directory per patch because STDeploy.exe is used for each patch separately. 
    • The sandbox directory names are based on timestamp on the host target system. For example, InstallationSandbox#2018-08-22-T-11-20-55, InstallationSandbox#2018-08-22-T-11-19-34, and so on. The timestamps are in UTC timezone.
    • The cleanup is based on the timestamps found in the directory names, that are older than five calendar days. The sandbox directory creation time is not considered for cleanup.
  • All files inside the RSCD\Transactions\shavlik\Patches directory, that are older than 180 days are deleted by STDeploy.exe. This cleans up the unprocessed deployment status event files. 

Important

BMC recommends that you must restart the target server within five days of deploying the patch.

All installation sandboxes that are older than five days are automatically deleted during subsequent Windows patch deploy job execution on the target server. If the installation sandbox of a deployed patch is deleted, any post-restart actions pending for the deployment might not be completed successfully after the target server is restarted. Hence, you must restart the target server within five days to avoid incorrect patch deployment.

 

Tip: For faster searching, add an asterisk to the end of your partial query. Example: cert*