Software update best practices

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• Messaging Gateway

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Software update best practices

Before you run a software update, Symantec recommends that you prepare your system.

See About software updates.

See Updating your software.

Table: Software update procedure describes the steps to prepare and run a software update.

Note:
Do not reboot or shut down an appliance while the software update runs. The appliance can become corrupted and require reinstallation.

Table: Software update procedure

Step	Action	Description
Step 1	Read software update documentation	Read the software update notes, release notes, and late-breaking news for the software update. The documentation may describe special steps to prepare for the software update. See About software updates.
Step 2	Delete messages in Spam Quarantine	If your site policies let you, delete all the messages in Spam Quarantine. See Deleting spam messages in quarantine.
Step 3	Delete log messages	If your site policies let you, delete all Scanner and directory data service log messages. See Manually deleting log files.
Step 4	Delete content filtering incidents	If your site policies let you, delete all incidents from the content incident folders. See Deleting incidents.
Step 5	Perform a backup	Perform a backup to save your configuration settings. See Performing an on-demand backup.
Step 6	Stop incoming messages and drain the queue	If you are running software update on a Scanner or a combination Control Center and Scanner, set the MTA operation to Do not accept incoming messages. Incoming messages are temporarily rejected. After you stop incoming messages, flush messages to drain them from the queue. See Managing services and MTA operations. Do not stop the Scanner Services as described in that section.
Step 7	Monitor the update progress	Optionally, you can monitor the update process by running the tail -f update.log on the command line. Run the command before the software update so you can see the data being written to the log. See Monitoring software update using the command line interface.
Step 8	Run the software update	Run the software update either using the Control Center or the update command. See Updating your software. See update.
Step 9	Restart incoming messages	After the update completes, exit from your Web browser, restart the Web browser, and log into the Control Center. If you ran the software update on a Scanner or a combination Control Center and Scanner, set the MTA operation to Accept and deliver messages normally. See Managing services and MTA operations.