Update Accelerator

[WhiteTiger-IT]

Certainly mine is a question that others have asked in the past.
Today, is there any package that manages updates on PC / Server, like IPFire Update Accelerator does?
I know that Squid could be configured, but it would be inappropriate to use. UpdAcc also uses Squid, but in a completely different way, more performing and easier to manage.

[Gertjan]

@whitetiger-it said in Update Accelerator:

Today, is there any package that manages updates on PC / Server, like IPFire Update Accelerator does?

Fast answer : see here : System > Package Manager > Available Packages

What is an IPFire Update Accelerator ?
Never saw some one talking about such a thing.
Neither on www.netgate.com.

[WhiteTiger-IT]

@gertjan
Here is an explanation.
The page still looks like it is being worked on, but the service is consolidated.

Update Accelerator intercepts updates of Windows, Linux and some popular programs such as antivirus and other software.
Everything is saved, but not as the usual Squid cache; this allows ipFire to keep them for some time and replace the package with an updated one.
When a second PC tries to upgrade, it downloads these packages from disk rather than from the Internet making everything much faster.

It wouldn't be bad if there was a similar addon for pfSense.
I know there was a second version in the pipeline that made things even more efficient.

[Gertjan]

@whitetiger-it said in Update Accelerator:

Here is an explanation.

I get it.
A typical MITM situation.
As shown in the explanation, that was possible somewhere before 2010.

The thing is : the Microsoft update process can't be fooled any more. It wants a connection to "update.microsoft.com" - everything that pretends to be "update.microsoft.com" will get discarded. if some one manages to reverse engineer the "accepts also updates from local 'LAN' devices functionality as seen in WIN10+, other identical already updated systems, or some one knows how the "centralized Microsoft update store " works, as what you ask already exists for Microsoft products, it's called WSUS.

Others : dono, but I guess 'they' will do everything so the clients will get a copy from the original source. Not some third party == "you".

[WhiteTiger-IT]

@gertjan
There is an underlying misconception why Update Accelerator integrates into Squid managed by ipFire.
After all, pfSense does it too.
In the pfSense documentation on Squid there is a section just dedicated to Windows Update with the patterns recommended by Squid.
So we are not violating Windows functionality.
What Update Accelerator does is to use Squid to download the update and then save the files in a separate folder.
When Squid intercepts a new download, instead of looking in the cache, it fetches the file in this other folder.

Same thing for the other updates that are not from Microsoft.

I am not part of the development team, I just find that this is what is described in the documentation and that U.A. is activated in the Squid configuration page.