Best Practices for Application Patching (4280706)

Application patches enable the installation as well as updating of applications. For example, the patch content feed includes both Mozilla Firefox patches and also full software installers. Running a detect and deploy action against machines that do not have Firefox results in Firefox being installed.  If the patch filter for the schedule catches the installer, it will run.

If this is not the intended behavior, then the following recommendations can be adopted to prevent unintentional installs of full applications.

When updating applications and intending to apply upgrades only, but not intending to install applications, use K1000 appliance patching as follows.

1. Create a machine label which filters for the applications you wish to upgrade and create a complementary patch label which covers the patches for the same applications.
   For example, create a machine label for "Mozilla Firefox 3 installed" and a complementary patch label for "Mozilla Firefox 3 Patches".
2. Create separate detect/deploy schedule for the complementary labels.
   In this case, create a separate detect/deploy schedule for "Mozilla Firefox 3 installed" machines which applies patches in the "Mozilla Firefox 3 Patches" label. This will ensure that only machines which already have Firefox 3 installed will show it as "NOT PATCHED" when detect schedules which include patches could update Firefox 3.

For more details on Patching you can also see: K1000 Patching Support.