HIS file RU and patch level for Service Desk

Products

CA Service Desk Manager CA Service Management - Service Desk Manager

Issue/Introduction

While there are several approaches to validate the release of Service Desk, the HIS file serves as a way to determine for installed patch levels. The following article describes how to determine patch levels from a given Service Desk HIS file.

Environment

All releases of Service Desk

Resolution

The Service Desk HIS file is located in the install location, default is C:\Program Files (x86)\CA\Service Desk Manager. File name: [SERVERNAME].HIS

Consider the HIS file to also be a log record of a given patch or Roll Up fix and the files that were modified as a result of the install. For instance, the first few lines of a given HIS file may read as:

[Tue Oct 08 18:09:16 2024] - PTF Wizard created this history file.
[Tue Oct 08 18:09:36 2024] - PTF Wizard installed GOL-78_CUM_C (USRD)
RELEASE=17.4
GENLEVEL=0000
COMPONENT=USRD-CMN
PREREQS=
MPREREQS=
COREQS=
MCOREQS=
SUPERSEDE=
INSTALLEDFILE=C:\Program Files (x86)\CA\Service Desk Manager\doc\Deliverable_List_in_Cumulatives_for_Windows.txt,TIME=Thu Jun 22 10:37:41 2023

INSTALLEDFILE=C:\Program Files (x86)\CA\Service Desk Manager\doc\Deliverable_List_in_Cumulatives_for_Windows.html,TIME=Thu Jun 22 10:37:41 2023

INSTALLEDFILE=C:\Program Files (x86)\CA\Service Desk Manager\bin\CatalogSync.jar,TIME=Thu Jun 22 10:16:53 2023

INSTALLEDFILE=C:\Program Files (x86)\CA\Service Desk Manager\bin\GRLoader.exe,TIME=Thu Jun 22 10:26:49 2023

....

The key entry to be aware of is the highlighted line, which indicates the build and patch that was installed. All new patch entries will contain a line that says "PTF Wizard installed".

To list only these entries, you can do a search in the HIS for lines that contain the string "PTF Wizard". In a command prompt, you can run this command from the Service Desk install location to achieve this task. Replace [SERVERNAME] with the name of your SDM Server.

findstr "PTF Wizard" [SERVERNAME].HIS

Running this command will yield a result like this:

C:\PROGRA~2\CA\SERVIC~1>findstr "PTF Wizard" [SERVERNAME].HIS
[Tue Oct 08 18:09:16 2024] - PTF Wizard created this history file.
[Tue Oct 08 18:09:36 2024] - PTF Wizard installed GOL-78_CUM_C (USRD)
[Tue Oct 08 18:20:32 2024] - PTF Wizard installed GOL-78_LANGCOMBO (USRD)
[Tue Oct 08 18:24:47 2024] - PTF Wizard installed GOL-78_EN_US (USRD)
[Thu Jan 09 18:28:59 2025] - PTF Wizard installed GOL-230_CUM_C (USRD)
[Thu Jan 09 18:40:05 2025] - PTF Wizard installed GOL-230_LANGCOMBO (USRD)
[Thu Jan 09 18:43:48 2025] - PTF Wizard installed GOL-230_EN_US (USRD)

Additional Information

All RU patch installs will contain three distinct lines for the PTF Wizard install.

The line that indicates "CUM_C" indicates the installed binaries

The line that indicates "LANGCOMBO" is the language combo patch, which will contain your localised patch

The line for the actual language patch will vary depending on the language of your installation. "EN_US" indicates that this is a US-English instance of Service Desk and the relevant language patch was applied.

The prefix code "GOL" is an identifier to indicate that this is a 17.4 build. Identifiers for earlier Service Desk releases:

GOA: 17.0 and 17.1
LEH: 17.2
HYD: 17.3

The numeric value following the code is an identifier for the actual RU that is in place. The following chart matches the given SDM 17.4 release with the corresponding code value found in the HIS file.

Release	Code
17.4 GA	GOL-78
17.4 RU1	GOL-94
17.4 RU2	GOL-168
17.4 RU3	GOL-230
17.4 RU4	GOL-310
17.4 RU5	GOL-351

Releases prior to 17.4 GA are omitted in the above chart as they are all EOS releases of Service Desk.

There may be gaps between releases when reading a given HIS file. In the above example, 17.4 GA (GOL-78) was installed on Oct, 2024, which is the baseline install. However, 17.4 RU3 (GOL-230) was installed on Jan, 2025, which appears to bypass 17.4 RU1 and 17.4 RU2. The intervening RU entries are not included in the HIS file because RU fixes are cumulative and contain all prior fixes that had been published.

The above HIS file shows that the install is up to date for 17.4 RU3 and includes all updates that were introduced in 17.4 RU1 and 17.4 RU2. The lack of entries for 17.4 RU1 (GOL-94) and 17.4 RU2 (GOL-168) in the HIS file is normal behavior in this scenario.

Any entries that do not follow the above convention are generally one-off patches that were issued to address a specific problem, often Development issued test patches, or in rare cases, specialised patches that were published in order to address a critical problem. Such entries will usually contain a code value which starts with a "T", which is the patch in question. In the example depicted below, the installation had test patch T5UG123 installed. T5UG123 is a non-existent hypothetical Service Desk patch being used for example purposes.

[Thu Sep 11 14:41:28 2025] - PTF Wizard installed T5UG123 (USRD)

In very rare instances, an entry with a code value that starts with "R" or "Q" were applicable for much older installations of Service Desk and pre-date any of the current 17.x installations, usually the 11.x, 12.x, or 14.x series.