Endpoint side updates can be hosted on the Partner's Portal, in your RBS Server's Web Console, or at another location of your choice. If you use the Partner's Portal or your own Web Console to host your updates, you must build your Endpoint software on the platform you want to provide your updates, and select the options to turn Endpoint Updates ON. This is the simplest and quickest way to update Endpoints.

This article explains how to do Endpoint updates without the Portal and without the RBS Server Console.

The Auto Update feature that is run by "rbsupdate.exe" does the updates. RBSUPDATE.EXE is a program shipped with all RBS products that can be run by the RBackup Endpoint software and it can also be run by Windows Task Scheduler. For this to work, your Endpoint software has to be built and installed with Auto Updates turned ON. Otherwise, updates must be done manually - see the end of this email.

There are registry keys that contain a URL where it will look for a script file that contains instructions for how to do updates. That text file should be posted on your web site so it can be accessed by an HTTP link. Other registry keys (under the ../versions/ branch) hold other info that helps run the updates.

rbsupdate checks the version number of the installed software against the version number of the available updates (in the script file) and triggers an upgrade if the installed version number is lower.

There's a certain format to the update script, explained in the RBS Server's documentation under the "RBSUpdate" topic near the bottom of the topic list.

Most people set the script file to present a link to the end user with some information about the update. It pops up in a modal dialog window, like many other software applications. Click the link to download the update file, usually called clupgrade.exe, and also posted in web space. Run the EXE file to update the RBackup Endpoint.

The script has an option for a fully hands-off update sequence, however lately this has failed in some operating systems depending on the way Windows' UAC and other security settings are set. That's why we recommend popping up the dialog window instead.

We have recently programed a hosted auto-update feature into the Partner's Portal. It can host your update script and clupgrade.exe if you like.

All that's required to upgrade Endpoints is to download the clupgrade.exe and run it. So, you could post it on your website and email a link to your customers. This doesn't require the rbsupdate.exe at all. You can use .reg files to edit registry entries to alter the way the auto updates run.