How To: Change the HII Driver download location within the Patch Manager Download Updates tool

This article applies to LANDESK Management Suite 9.6

Problem:

When downloading HII drivers through Patch Manager, the path is hard-coded to "C:\Program Files\LANDesk\ManagementSuite\landesk\files\drivers"

Changing the path for the patches does not alter this. Nor does changing the path in the HII Manager for the repository's location;

Cause

Unfortunately, the console is working as designed. A defect has been entered to add functionality to the console that will allow you to change this.

Resolution

You can add a symbolic link that will allow you to download the drivers to a network resource.

1. If you already have content in your "Drivers" folder on the Core Server , move the contents of it into the folder you will be creating the link to, then delete the "Drivers" folder on the Core Server. You want the network share's folder to already exist, but not the path to the one on the Core Server, because you are going to create it using the symbolic link.
2. Open a CMD prompt as an administrator. the following is the command you need to enter(Add your own network path in place of \\Server\Share)
   
   mklink /d "C:\Program Files\LANDesk\ManagementSuite\landesk\files\drivers" \\Server\Share
   
   In my example I use a subfolder inside the "Drivers" folde "HII", but you may want to target the actual "Drivers" folder instead.
   
3. Download new drivers, they will show in the default folder, but will actually be stored on the network share. If they were already downloaded, browse to them on the core server. You will see them there, but they are not taking up room on the core server's hard drive.

and if you look at the parent folder, you will see the folder is listed as a symbolic link;

For more information on creating symbolic links, hard links and directory junctions, you can look at this Microsoft article.