August 2009 - Posts

• WSUS 3.0 SP2 released

  New Windows Server and client version support   The feature improvements and important software updates in WSUS 3.0 SP2 WSUS 3.0 SP2 includes the following improvements:   Integration with Windows Server 2008 R2 Support for the BranchCache feature on Windows Server 2008 R2 Support for Windows 7 clients WSUS feature improvements Auto-Approval Rules: Auto-approval rules now include the ability to specify the approval deadline date and time for all computers or specific computer groups. Update Files and Languages: Improved handling of language selection for downstream servers includes a new warning dialog that appears when you decide to download updates only for specified languages. Easy Upgrade: WSUS 3.0 SP2 can be installed as an in-place upgrade from earlier versions of WSUS and preserves all settings and approvals. The user interface is compatible between WSUS 3.0 SP1 and SP2 on the client and the server. Reports: New Update and Computer Status reports let you filter on updates that are approved for installation. You can run these reports from the WSUS console or use the API to incorporate this functionality into your own reports. Software updates Stability and reliability fixes are included for the WSUS server, such as support for IPV6 addresses that are longer than 40 characters. The approval dialog now sorts computer groups alphabetically by group name. Computer status report sorting icons are now functional in x64 environments. A new release of Windows Update Agent is included with WSUS 3.0 SP2 that provides improvements and fixes, such as support for APIs called by nonlocal system callers in a noninteractive session. You can obtain WSUS 3.0 SP2 from the following link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972455 Things of note for me are: Auto-approval (the loaded gun!) A new client version to be rolled out after backend has been upgraded A cool feature called nonlocal system callers. This one is VERY important as before if you did this "wuauclt.exe /resetauthorization /detectnow" you'd see this in WindowsUpdate log "Windows Update is disabled by policy for user". SP2 applied, the call will get through instead of being rejected due to the way the API call is made. Posted Aug 27 2009, 07:18 AM by Robs Blog - MVP Filed under: WSUS SP2

• MDT 2010 is released

  A clip from the MDT team blog on Technet: MDT 2010 Release Candidate is Now Available for Download! We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the release candidate of MDT 2010.  This release contains numerous bug fixes since MDT 2010 Beta 2.  MDT 2010 RC has been tested and will work with Windows 7 RTM and Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM as well as all previously supported operating systems. I bet Johan Arwidmark is pretty excited about this :-) Posted Aug 20 2009, 10:46 AM by Robs Blog - MVP Filed under: MDT 2010

• Unix 40 years old

  40 years ago two bearded, sandal wearing uber-overlords (Thompson and Ritchie) came together to create Unix, they said let there be a pipe between programs and a new language called C, and there was a pipe, and a language called C :-) Lots of stories on the web about this, one in particular I just read on the ComputerWorld site: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9133628/Timeline_40_years_of_Unix And a search string to get your going: http://www.bing.com/search?q=40+years+of+unix&form=QBLH&filt=all&qs=n Posted Aug 20 2009, 10:42 AM by Robs Blog - MVP Filed under: Unix, 40 years old

• One for the memory book: Linux Kernel open to exploitation

  Not often you see this ... got to admire their openness, and for providing an immediate fix. Some groups like to hide this kind of stuff (Apple *cough*), glad to see the Linux folk are in the same boat as Microsoft and have decided not to cover stuff up (Apple *cough*). Seems there is a linux kernel exploit doing the rounds which is easily induced. Linux NULL pointer dereference due to incorrect proto_ops initializations (CVE-2009-2692) http://blog.cr0.org/2009/08/linux-null-pointer-dereference-due-to.html Had to laugh when I read this comment: Anonymous said... I'm safe, I run Windows Here is the patch: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=e694958388c50148389b0e9b9e9e8945cf0f1b98 (posted by the great kernel writer himself Linus Torvolds!) Posted Aug 14 2009, 05:31 AM by Robs Blog - MVP Filed under: Linux, Exploit

• Microsoft August 2009 Patch releases - Huge filesizes this month

  We just added up the patch sets for August 2009 to 1.3GB. Holy cow that is a lot of content to be pushing out for patching. Little bit of looking and you'll discover that the main culprit is Visual Studio. We've seen this before for SQL patches, but the size of the patches for Visual Studio are just stupidly huge. Just don't understand why we are deploying what looks like full installers just to fix a problem. For those of you struggling to manage the disk space on your DP's, be prepared to see over a GB disappear this month depending on what you push out. I'd recommend splitting out the visual studio stuff as a seperate patch list\package and only assign it to DP's where it really is required and that have enough disk space. If you have ample disk space on your DP's throughout your hierarchy, consider yourself blessed! Here is the August 2009 bulletin: http://www.microsoft.com/security/updates/bulletins/200908.aspx And here is a good break down of each patch brought to you by Justin James over on TechRepublic: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=1414 Posted Aug 12 2009, 05:59 AM by Robs Blog - MVP Filed under: Patching, August 2009

• Windows Print Spooler service crashing

  In July 2009 we started experiencing Print Spooler crashes on our W2K3 SP2 print servers. Check the event log and you'll see something akin to this: Faulting application spoolsv.exe, version xxxxxx, faulting modeul gdi32.dll, version xxxxxxx, fault address 0x00037453 This seems to have been induced by the July 2009 patch KB961371 - MS09-029. This patch has been re-released to the public, and I can confirm it does indeed fix the problem. It can be found it here for W2K3 SP2: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=018ef53d-f78e-4084-940d-7c86bf59d83c&displaylang=en  The bulletin here:  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS09-029.mspx Posted Aug 12 2009, 05:49 AM by Robs Blog - MVP Filed under: Crash, MS09-029, KB961371, Print spooler