[Today's post is provided by Brian Huneycutt ]
There has been some confusion lately over a little known feature in Configuration Manager 2007: the ability to automatically apply hotfixes to the client during initial install by creating a ClientPatch folder on the site server.
As it turns out, this little known feature was little known for a reason - it was not fully tested for use with Configuration Manager 2007. As a result, it is not supported.
In this context, "not supported" means that if you reported problems with the use of the ClientPatch folder directly - or problems as a result of its use - we would not change the product code to resolve those.
In the event you have already deployed your clients and patched them in this manner but have no known issues, chances are there's nothing to worry about.
The specific issue uncovered so far is that if certain command line properties were specified (such as FSP or SMSSLP) they may not be honored when the patch is applied. There could be other issues that we are not aware of yet, but that one is apparent quickly if you are in that state.
Use of the ClientPatch folder was initially referenced in a Knowledge Base article, followed by an entry on the SMS and MOM supportability blog . At the time of this writing those references have been removed, but the details were cross posted to Rod Trent's blog here . (Rod was kind enough to update his post with key points from this blog entry).
An option to achieve a result similar to the ClientPatch folder is to use the PATCH= command line parameter. This has been tested, and is noted in KB article 907423 (note this article applies to both SMS 2003 and Configuration Manager 2007).
Thank you all for your understanding,
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.