Endpoint Protection

We are experiencing an issue that I believe many unmanaged small or medium networks are also dealing with.  Some details:

- Any # of users can access our machines, we use active directory, students and faculty are constantly moving from computer to computer.

- People have consistently complained that the bouncing LiveUpdate icon in the dock is "annoying" and we've been repeatedly asked to take care of the thing.

- We use DeepFreeze, so our updates rely heavily on scheduling. For whatever reason, LU does not cooperate even with a schedule set by each individual computer's administrator account. The update still opens at every login and eats up unacceptable amounts of bandwidth (thanks to 150mb updates that don't stick due to DF).

- We have worked with SEP staff to attempt utilizing symbolic links to avoid the frozen drives, that didn't work. We don't mind keeping LU on a schedule, but it doesn't behave! We've tried copying the user profile into a template, but it doesn't seem that LU keeps it's schedule in the user library, so for each new user a blank schedule appears, leading to an immediate automatic update.

What we would like, is to have LU remain inactive for any user until called upon by the schedule, which doesn't require a quiet update but it would be nice. Has anyone achieved solace??? This is becoming more than just a nuisance.

A little background info on Mac's LiveUpdate--

Scheduled LiveUpdate is written to crontab.  The ones set via the GUI Symantec Scheduler are written to the individual user's crontab and will only run for that user.  If your clients are being installed as unmanaged, they are getting a schedule written to the root user crontab, and that schedule is (unfortunately) not silent. 

Please see the following:

"Unexpected, frequent LiveUpdate sessions launch on SEP for Macintosh client "
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH144410

This document has instructions for removing that hidden schedule, and how to set a new schedule for all users that is quiet.  Managed SEP for Mac Clients are given a silent schedule via SEPM policy. 

As for Deep Freeze, I am not familiar with the ins and outs of it; you may wish to consult with them regarding settings for AV solutions.  I know they used to have a guide for SAV on Windows.

Let me know if this helps.

sanrda

I was successful in removing the hidden schedule, and it seems that everything is working as desired now! Thanks!

You're welcome!  Please be sure to mark the solution

sandra

Okay Sandra,

I understand how to schedule a quiet update, but how can I RUN a single, unscheduled quiet update via command line. We have ...liveupdate.app -update... and it works running a UI instance, can we just add the -quiet variable to the command to keep it in the background?

I can't seem to find much info on this...

-mike

I can't find a public document specific to this -- it looks like you're on the right track, and it looks like it takes the same switches that crontab uses (visible via crontab -l).  Specifically:

-update LUdf - updates definitions

-liveupdatequiet YES - suppresses the progress window (the window with the antenna).

Do not use this to schedule a task that might run when no one is logged in. This may cause LiveUpdate to hang until the processes are killed or the machine is restarted.

I haven't played around with this much as I haven't needed to do what you're describing.  Hope this helps.

sandra