Purpose

The purpose of this document is to show how to clean out your Patch Download Directory on the Shavlik Protect Console machine. It is good practice to clean or reduce the number of files in the Patch Download Directory to conserve hard drive space and to reduce database utilization when accessing the patch database during deployment package creation and selecting  View > Patches.

Description

The Shavlik Protect Console Patch Downloads folder is configurable.  To  Locate the Patch Download Location on Protect Console select Tools > Options > Downloads and edit the Patch Download Directory field.  The Protect Console uses one location as a patch repository.  If the path is changed the old directory is not used as a patch repository and can be deleted. Patch files can be deleted directly from the Patch Downloads Folder using any kind of file system delete or using an IT Script.  The execution of the IT script can be scheduled to create a periodic purge of the patch Download directory.

Manual Method

Access the patch download Patch Download Location on Protect Console using windows explorer or some other file management tool and deleted the contents of the folder.

IT Script Method

1) Open up the Shavlik console that you want to clean up.

2) Go to Manage > ITScripts.

3)  Highlight the 'Console Clean Up' script under the 'Maintenance' Category and then select 'Approve'.

NOTE: This script deletes patches and deployment files that are older than the specified ages (default 180 days) since they were created or downloaded.

4) Once the ITScript has been approved. Close out of the 'Manage ITScripts' window and navigate to Tools > Run Console ITScripts.

5) This will bring up the Run ITScripts window. Select the 'Console Clean Up' script from the drop-down box (default if it is the only one approved) and click Continue.

NOTE: There are two different parameters with this ITScript.

• deploymentAge (removes files from the DataFiles\Installs directory that are older than the number of days specified)
• patchAge (removes files from the Patches directory (as specified in Tools > Downloads > Patch Download directory that are older than the number of days specified))   

          If you want to change the 180 day parameters for either the deploymentAge or the patchAge:

               1) Select the parameter.

               2) Click the 'Edit' button.

               3) Select the value to remove files from the specified directory that are older than the number of days. (This is for the number of days that the file has been sitting in the specified directory NOT how old the patch is.)

6) Confirm the target machine affected and then select when you want the script to run and then click on Run.

7) Once the job has completed, verify that patches have been cleaned up based on the parameters specified above within the Patches directory (Default: C:\Windows\ProPatches\Patches or as specified in Tools > Downloads > Patch Download directory)

Affected Product(s)

Shavlik Protect 9.x