Guest da sponge Posted July 11, 2007 Share Posted July 11, 2007 We're running an internal WSUS server with GP pointing everyone to it. A few of my servers are having issues where Software Distribution grows and grows - with different results on servers from the exact same vmware template. Flushing is only a temporary solution - any ideas? I posted it here because it's a Windows Update related problem and Dial-a-fix is a Windows Update jack of all trades fixer upper. I also thought DjLizard was generally interested in odd WU behavior, hence I posted here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DjLizard Posted July 12, 2007 Share Posted July 12, 2007 I'm always interested in odd WU behavior, and I tend to know more about this crap than everyone else anyway, so it's fine to post here for now. (Oh and Tarun - I know da sponge from Something Awful.) The problem is though, that I only have experience fixing client computers not joined to a domain / using WSUS. I've never used WSUS before and it could be something simple causing this, but I would never know it since I don't have access to WSUS (yet). My boss is building a Win2k3 box soon and we'll be experimenting with WSUS, but until then, I literally know nothing about how it works or where it can go wrong. What kind of stuff is in SoftwareDistribution making it grow? Logs? Patch files? DataStore.edb? Have you kept a close eye on the Event Viewer of the afflicted machines for clues? Edit: have you checked out %systemroot%\windowsupdate.log on the afflicted machines? I believe Windows still uses this log when doing WSUS updates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest da sponge Posted July 12, 2007 Share Posted July 12, 2007 I'm always interested in odd WU behavior, and I tend to know more about this crap than everyone else anyway, so it's fine to post here for now. (Oh and Tarun - I know da sponge from Something Awful.) The problem is though, that I only have experience fixing client computers not joined to a domain / using WSUS. I've never used WSUS before and it could be something simple causing this, but I would never know it since I don't have access to WSUS (yet). My boss is building a Win2k3 box soon and we'll be experimenting with WSUS, but until then, I literally know nothing about how it works or where it can go wrong. What kind of stuff is in SoftwareDistribution making it grow? Logs? Patch files? DataStore.edb? Have you kept a close eye on the Event Viewer of the afflicted machines for clues? Edit: have you checked out %systemroot%\windowsupdate.log on the afflicted machines? I believe Windows still uses this log when doing WSUS updates. It's been patch files in \Download - some servers will have 800+ MB of patches. It's a huge hit in a 4GB virtual machine. The servers might not be targeted to use WSUS. Your note about the logs pointed me to look at ReportingEvents.log in SoftwareDistribution (windows update.log hasn't been modified since 2006). I saw that all of the patches had downloaded and were waiting for administrator notification; except that I had logged in as administrator many times on these machines and received no notification. I shut down installing updates and the log shows success for all of them - yet I now have less disk space than before (patches installed, but they're still in SD\download). I'm going to try flushing it again and I think they won't redownload now that they're installed. Is there a way to kickstart the sync or do I just need to wait and see? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DjLizard Posted July 13, 2007 Share Posted July 13, 2007 Try "wuauclt.exe /detectnow" Also, "windows update.log" is a different file. Look for "windowsupdate.log" without the space. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest da sponge Posted July 18, 2007 Share Posted July 18, 2007 Try "wuauclt.exe /detectnow" Also, "windows update.log" is a different file. Look for "windowsupdate.log" without the space. sorry for the delay in updates. windowsupdate.log did show useful information - it showed that it was detecting new updates after I flushed. turns out the main problem was that the WU notification icon was no longer showing up. A shutdown installed most of the updates (SP2 failed because of insufficient space to create uninstall). Even after creating the space for SP2 and installing it through the WU interface it didn't delete the downloaded update. A flush and detectnow detects 0 available updates. I think I'm in the clear now. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction Also - if you need a test bed for WSUS let me know. I can probably throw something together with a few spare PCs around the office and vmware server (drop me a pm on SA) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DjLizard Posted July 18, 2007 Share Posted July 18, 2007 We got our new server parts in and just threw 2003 on it, so we're going to play with WSUS ourselves - but thanks for the offer! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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