Update from TightGate-Pro

The software maintenance contracts available together with TightGate-Pro entitle you to updates and upgrades within the term. The update of TightGate-Pro is possible manually or time-controlled.

Special tasks of the administrator update are the:

• Installation of iBus modules for entering country-specific special characters
• Carrying out integrity checks

In general, the installation of updates always requires the prior download of the updates. Since the updates can be several 100 MB in size, it makes sense to download the updates beforehand. During the download, the productive operation of TightGate-Pro can continue unhindered. During an update (installation of the updates), all user sessions are automatically logged off from TightGate-Pro. The TightGate-Pro server is not available to users during the update.

Both the download and the actual update can be time-controlled. This makes it possible to postpone the download of the updates to a time of low network load. The actual update should be scheduled at times when there are no users, so that productive operation is affected as little as possible.

The execution of an update should be planned in such a way that the users of TightGate-Pro are informed about the maintenance work in good time.

The auto-update should not be confused with the time-controlled update. While time-controlled updates start automatically at a fixed time, only the update process itself is automated in the case of the auto-update . However, it must be initiated manually by calling up the menu item Auto-Update.

This is how it works:

1. schedule maintenance operation (approx. 2 hours before carrying out the update!)

• Log in as administrator maint
• Select the menu item Maintenance operation
• Select the date on which the update is to be installed.
• Select the time on which the update is to be carried out.
• Enter a reason for the maintenance operation. This will be displayed to users at regular intervals 2 hours before the start of the scheduled maintenance.
• (Optional) Select the menu item Disable VNC logon (only useful for a TightGate-Pro Clsuter, do not set this value for a single system) so that no other users can connect to this node.

Update 2.

• Log in as administrator update
• Select the menu item Download
• Perform update via the menu item Auto-Update (All steps of the updates are performed automatically and then all services are restarted).
• If there was a core update among the updates, please restart TightGate-Pro. After the update, this is indicated by a message in red text in the menu header.
• If you have deactivated the VNC login, please log in again as administrator maint and select the menu item Deactivate VNC login. This will deactivate the VNC login. This will remove the VNC lock and users will be able to connect to TightGate-Pro again.
• Please now establish a direct VNC connection with the TightGate viewer to the just updated TightGate-Pro. Please check whether pages on the Internet can be accessed and multimedia content can be played.
• If everything is working properly, please log in as administrator maint and select the menu item Maintenance operation. Cancel the current maintenance operation. This makes TightGate-Pro available to all users again.

TightGate-Pro offers the option to start the update process automatically at a certain time without intervention. For this purpose, the TightGate-Pro server contacts the update servers of m-privacy GmbH at the scheduled time and checks them for available updates. If no updates are available, the process is terminated until the next scheduled update run and the result is logged. If, on the other hand, updates are available, maintenance mode is activated, i.e. logged-in users receive a notice of the upcoming work. Single systems deactivate the client logon immediately before the start of the update process; in cluster systems, the node of the computer network to be updated is excluded from the load distribution 1 hour before the update.

At the configured time, all logged-in users are disconnected, the updates are retrieved and installed. Finally, the system or the node is restarted if necessary as a result of the update. If the process is consistently error-free, the maintenance operation is cancelled and the VNC logon for users is released again.

This is how it works:

1. set a time-controlled download

• Log in as administrator update
• Select the menu item Scheduled download. Download: Active and select Yes. (Afterwards, a new menu item appears in the main menu for setting the day of the week and the time for the automatic download.)
• Use the menu item Timed download. Download: Start, you can set the time at which TightGate-Pro should start downloading the updates. The m-privacy GmbH recommends setting this time to 1-2 hours before the start of the update, depending on the Internet connection.
• (Optional) Via the menu item Timing. Download: End you can set a time when an automatic download should be interrupted. This function is not normally required and no time should be selected.

2. set time-controlled update

• Log in as administrator update
• Select the menu item Scheduled update: Active and select Yes . Update: Active and select Yes. (Then a new menu item appears in the main menu for setting the day of the week and the time for the automatic update.)
• Use the menu item Timed Update: Start to set the time for the automatic update. Update: Start to set the time at which TightGate-Pro should start installing the updates.

Special situations may require unscheduled updates at TightGate-Pro. The technical customer service of m-privacy GmbH informs users in cases where unscheduled updates ("hotfixes") should be applied by e-mail and, in urgent cases, additionally by telephone. These services are included in all software maintenance levels.

Unscheduled updates can be installed manually or automatically with the normal scheduled update process.

This is how it works:

• Log in as administrator update
• Select the menu item Available Hotfixes. After a short wait, a list of available hotfix updates is displayed. Basically all hotfixes can be selected and installed.
• After selection, unscheduled updates can be installed either manually via the menu item Auto-Update or via a Scheduled Update.
• (Optional) If the menu item Always install all hotfixes is set to Yes, all available hotfixes will always be installed with every scheduled and manual update.

If an update is omitted, serious problems may occur with further updates. It is therefore advisable to catch up on a previously omitted update. To do this, log in as update and go to the submenu Customer service. Here you can update individual packages (Partial update from Oldstable) or the entire system (Full update from Oldstable).

For the sake of operational safety, it is necessary to sensibly limit the existing automatic updates of TightGate-Pro. If a time-controlled update (download incl. import of files) is planned, the download of the update files starts 1 hour before the actual update run. A maximum of 10 attempts will be made to obtain the necessary files from the update server of m-privacy GmbH . If the download fails, a "warning flag" is set and another 10 download attempts are made immediately before the actual update run. If the download fails again, the time control is first switched off and the actual update run is prevented by an update lock.

If the node of a cluster system is involved, it also switches to maintenance mode if the download of the update files has definitely failed. This can only be deactivated manually as an administrator maint .

As soon as the "warning flag" is set due to a failed download, the error status is also signalled via Nagios using the sensor check_versions with the error message "Update download failed". Furthermore, a corresponding display "Update download error" is shown in the title bar of the administrator's configuration menus update . The "warning flag" can only be reset by completely downloading the update files.

There are two ways to proceed:

• The set update lock is deleted via the respective configuration option of the administrator update and then a auto update or time-controlled update is started. In this case, the process of downloading the update files starts again immediately or at the scheduled time. For cluster systems, the maintenance mode can be manually deactivated beforehand so that the node is accessible to users until the actual update run begins.
• The set update lock is deleted via the respective configuration option of the administrator update and any scheduled update is cancelled. No updates will then be downloaded and installed. For cluster systems, the maintenance mode must also be cancelled manually.

In contrast to the update lock, a "warning flag" about the failed download cannot be deleted manually. This has no influence on the productive operation of TightGate-Pro and does not hinder the initiation of further manual or time-controlled updates. However, the error is indicated until the next successful download of the update files.