esx automatic patching

[dominic7]

I've been out of touch with the ESX community for a while as I worked on a 6 month project, but I've freed up some time and can work on more fun stuff again ( yay ).

Anyway, I've written a script to take care of one of the more tedious parts of ESX v3, patching. I was inspired by this gentleman (http://virtrix.blogspot.com/2007/03/vmware-autopatching-your-esx-host.html), but his process didn't quite fit all my needs. I wanted something that would work via ftp, and all check the integrity of the patches before they were installed. The result is this:

Script:

http://www.vmprofessional.com/material/esx-autopatch.pl

Pre-compiled patchlist.txt

http://www.vmprofessional.com/material/3.0.1/patchlist.txt

http://www.vmprofessional.com/material/3.0.0/patchlist.txt

If you like it, please drop me a line at dominic@vmprofessional.com, if you don't like it email me and let me know \*why* you don't like it.

Cheers,

Dominic

[xr7]

Thanks to Dominic for repsonding very quickly and helping me via email.

I placed esx-autoupdate.pl in /usr/bin, so I found that I could not use ./esx-autoupdate.pl to execute it. I assume I could have also placed his script in the /bin folder instead and it would have worked.

He suggestied running the command as follows: (with /usr/bin as the current directory)

#perl esx-autopatch.pl

solved the problem for me.

[Jae_Ellers]

Did you by any chance open the file in notepad or another windows editor before saving it to the ESX server? It sounds to me like you've changed it to a windows cr/lf end of line instead of the *nix cr.

[Michael_Allums]

For those of you that don't require a script, I found an excellent FREE tool that will analyze your ESX servers to find what patches it does and doesn't have, downloand them from the VMware site, extract them into a repository folder and allow you to pick and choose which patches you want to install. Check it out at www.vmts.net. It's called VMTS ESX Patch Manager and it seems to work great. Hope this helps.