Re: [squid-users] Windows Update mirroring

* Henrik Nordstrom (hno@squid-cache.org):

> On Fri, 16 Apr 2004, Sampei wrote:
>
> > Although I tried several times mirroring Microsoft Windows Update using free
> > software I did not the solution; I looked at in Squid ML archives and other
> > documentations on web but resolving nothing.
>
> You can not easily mirror Windows Update, but you can cache it and have
> clients redirected to the cache.

This is only true when you restrict youself to non-MS-Software. You can
in fact set up your own Windows Update mirror quite easily using the SUS
(Software Update Service) package which MS provides for free (sic!). You
just need an W2k system running IIS (if you know what you are doing you
can even get it to work on an XPPro system, the german c't magazine did
an article about it in fall 2003).

> The difference is that the Windows Update function knows it's servers, so
> even if you request a specific server in the browser the Windows Update
> will try to use the server names it thinks it should have, so for this to
> work the client needs to know that for the Windows Update domains it
> should talk to your accelerator, not Microsoft. This you can configure in
> your internal DNS to have the Microsoft Update domains redirected to your
> accelerator, just make sure your Squid is using a real DNS without this
> "pollution".

You can tweak XPPro's "Windows Update" service quite easily via W2k's
Group Policies or NT's system policies into using your own mirror. I
would not go through all the pain you describe above in a corporate
environment.

See <http://www.susserver.com/> and Microsoft's SUS web pages for
further information.
Received on Fri Apr 16 2004 - 11:47:15 MDT