Welcome
Patch User Guides
Explore how BigFix Patch streamlines automated patch management, enhances vulnerability remediation, and facilitates seamless update deployment from a unified console. This comprehensive solution ensures efficient system maintenance and security, making it an essential tool for IT professionals.
Patch for Alma Linux User's Guide
Discover how BigFix Patch for Alma Linux provides an automated, simplified patching process that is administered from a single console. It gives you unified, near real-time visibility, and enforcement to deploy and manage patches to all Alma Linux endpoints.
Custom Repositories Management
You can set up your custom repositories to manage patches for Alma Linux. This solution allows for multiple repositories on the entire deployment.
Alma Linux Custom Repository Management dashboard
Use the Alma Linux Custom Repository Management dashboard to easily integrate your existing repository solutions with the BigFix patch management solution.

BigFix Documentation Homepage
BigFix 11 Patch Documentation
Welcome to the BigFix Patch documentation, where you can find information about how to install, maintain, and use the BigFix Patch.
BigFix Platform
Patch Overview
Learn how BigFix Patch offers an automated and streamlined patch management solution, simplifying the patching process that is administered from a single console.
Patch User Guides
Explore how BigFix Patch streamlines automated patch management, enhances vulnerability remediation, and facilitates seamless update deployment from a unified console. This comprehensive solution ensures efficient system maintenance and security, making it an essential tool for IT professionals.
- Patch for Windows User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix Patch for Windows™ provides Fixlets for Microsoft™ security and non-security patches. Dashboards, wizards, and reports aid you in managing updates for various endpoint devices.
- Patch for AIX User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix Patch for AIX® provides an automated, simplified patching process that is administered from a single console. It gives you unified, near real-time visibility, and enforcement to deploy and manage patches to all AIX endpoints.
- Patch for VIOS User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix Patch for VIOS provides an automated and simplified patching process specifically designed for IBM's AIX Virtual I/O Server (PowerVM VIOS) environments. It allows system administrators to manage and deploy patches efficiently across all PowerVM VIOS endpoints from a single console.
- Patch for Red Hat Enterprise Linux User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix Patch for Red Hat Enterprise Linux™ provides an automated, simplified patching process that is administered from a single console. It gives you unified, near real-time visibility, and enforcement to deploy and manage patches to all Red Hat Enterprise Linux endpoints.
- Patch for CentOS Linux User's Guide
  Learn about BigFix® Patch for CentOS Linux™ that provides an automated, simplified patching process that is administered from a single console. It gives you unified, near real-time visibility, and enforcement to deploy and manage patches to all CentOs endpoints.
- Patch for Alma Linux User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix Patch for Alma Linux provides an automated, simplified patching process that is administered from a single console. It gives you unified, near real-time visibility, and enforcement to deploy and manage patches to all Alma Linux endpoints.
  - Overview
    BigFix Patch for Alma Linux keeps your clients current with the latest updates and service packs.
  - Download plug-in for Alma Linux
    The Alma Linux sites uses CentOS Plug-in R2 for downloading the packages from the internet and caches it on BigFix server. CentOS Plug-in R2 is an executable download plug-in that retrieves the relevant packages directly from the patch vendor. Fixlets use an internal protocol to communicate with the download plug-in to download files. These Fixlets are based on updates made by the vendor.
  - Using BigFix Patch for Alma Linux
    BigFix Patch for Alma Linux enables automated patch management for Alma Linux systems. It uses Fixlets to detect and deploy relevant updates based on official Alma Linux repositories. The solution ensures consistent compliance and reduces manual effort by leveraging the BigFix platform to deliver, track, and report on patch status across Alma Linux 9.5 and later systems.
  - Using the download cacher
    The download cacher is a standalone command-line tool that is designed to download and cache files required for caching. The pre-cached files can be used by the download plug-in to patch the endpoints.
  - Multiple-Package Baseline Installation
    BigFix Patch provides a solution to combine the installation of updates for multiple packages in a baseline into a single task, which can reduce the execution time of the baseline.
  - YUM transaction management
    View YUM transaction history and manage transactions through the YUM Transaction History dashboard, which works with Alma Linux.
  - Custom Repositories Management
    You can set up your custom repositories to manage patches for Alma Linux. This solution allows for multiple repositories on the entire deployment.
    - Alma Linux Custom Repository Management dashboard
      Use the Alma Linux Custom Repository Management dashboard to easily integrate your existing repository solutions with the BigFix patch management solution.
    - Adding a repository
      Use the Alma Linux Custom Repository Management dashboard to add a repository into the repository list so that you can register and connect it to endpoints.
    - Registering Alma Linux endpoints to a repository
      You can use the Alma Linux Custom Repository Management dashboard to add repositories as the package source when patching endpoints.
    - Unregistering Alma Linux endpoints from a repository
      Use the Alma Linux Custom Repository Management dashboard to unregister endpoints from repositories that are no longer relevant.
    - Deleting repositories
      To manage the dashboard repository list more easily, delete the repositories that no longer exist in your deployment.
    - Importing repositories
      Use the Import feature of the Alma Linux Custom Repository Management dashboard to add all the known existing repositories of an endpoint to the list of repositories in the dashboard.
- Patch for Amazon Linux User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix® Patch for Amazon Linux™ provides an automated, simplified patching process that is administered from a single console. It gives you unified, near real-time visibility, and enforcement to deploy and manage patches to all Amazon Linux endpoints.
- Patch for SUSE Linux Enterprise User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix Patch for SUSE Linux™Enterprise provides an automated, simplified patching process that is administered from a single console. It gives you unified, near real-time visibility, and enforcement to deploy and manage patches to all SUSE Linux endpoints.
- Patch for Ubuntu User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix Patch for Ubuntu provides an automated, simplified patching process that is administered from a single console. It gives you unified, near real-time visibility, and enforcement to deploy and manage patches to all Ubuntu endpoints.
- Patch for Oracle Linux User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix Patch for Oracle Linux™ provides an automated, simplified patching process that is administered from a single console. It gives you unified, near real-time visibility, and enforcement to deploy and manage patches to all Oracle Linux endpoints.
- Patch for Solaris User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix Patch for Solaris provides an automated, simplified patching process that is administered from a single console. It gives you unified, near real-time visibility, and enforcement to deploy and manage patches to all Solaris endpoints.
- Patch for HP-UX User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix Patch for HP-UX provides an automated, simplified patching process that is administered from a single console. It gives you unified, near real-time visibility, and enforcement to deploy and manage patches to all HP-UX endpoints.
- Patch for Mac OS X User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix® Patch for Mac OS X provides an automated, simplified patching process that is administered from a single console. It gives you unified, near real-time visibility, and enforcement to deploy and manage patches to all Mac OS X endpoints.
- Patch for Debian User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix Patch for Debian provides an automated, simplified patching process that is administered from a single console. It gives you unified, near real-time visibility, and enforcement to deploy and manage patches to all Debian endpoints.
- Patch for Raspbian User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix Patch for Raspbian provides Fixlets that you use to manage the latest updates and service packs that Raspberry Pi releases. These Fixlets are available through the Patches for Raspbian sites.
- Patch for Rocky Linux User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix Patch for Rocky Linux provides an automated, simplified patching process that is administered from a single console. It gives you unified, near real-time visibility, and enforcement to deploy and manage patches to all Rocky Linux endpoints.
- Patch for Open SUSE Leap 15 User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix Patch for Open SUSE Leap 15 provides an automated, simplified patching process that is administered from a single console. It gives you unified, near real-time visibility, and enforcement to deploy and manage patches to all Open SUSE Leap 15 endpoints.
- Patch for VMware ESXi User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix Patch for VMware ESXi provides you unified, near real-time visibility to manage patches to all VMware ESXi endpoints from a single console.
- Patch for Virtual Endpoint Manager User's Guide
  Discover how BigFix Patch for Virtual Endpoint Manager provides an automated, simplified patching process that is administered from a single console. It gives you unified, near real-time visibility, and enforcement to deploy and manage patches in a virtual environment.
- Extended third-party Windows Application
- Supersedence for Non-Windows
  This topic describes how supersedence works in Patch.
Detailed system requirements
The tables in this section provide detailed information about the system requirements for BigFix 11.
Glossary
This glossary provides terms and definitions for the BigFix® Patch software and products.
Patch guides in PDF format
Below is a comprehensive list of links to the BigFix Patch user guides available in PDF format, designed to assist users in navigating and utilizing the software effectively:

Alma Linux Custom Repository Management dashboard

Use the Alma Linux Custom Repository Management dashboard to easily integrate your existing repository solutions with the BigFix patch management solution.

The Alma Linux Custom Repository Management dashboard allows Fixlets to use DNF for downloads instead of using the standard BigFix downloading infrastructure. The dashboard also allows you to register repositories to use the DNF commands when installing packages on the endpoints.

To access the dashboard, subscribe to the Patching Support site. From the Patch Management domain, click All Patch Management > Dashboards > Alma Linux Custom Repository Management. Activate the Repository Configuration - Alma Linux analysis to view the content in the dashboard.

Important: Your custom repositories must be pre-configured with the required metadata and headers before you use the dashboard.

Use the Alma Linux Custom Repository Management dashboard to perform the following actions for patch management:

Register and unregister endpoints to a repository
Add, delete, and import local repositories to the repository dashboard list

Note: The Alma Linux Custom Repository Management dashboard does not support the creation of a physical repository server. You must create the repository separately.

Important: You must register the CentOS Plug-in R2 download plug-in using custom repositories to avoid download errors. The CentOS Plug-in R2 download plug-in can be registered through the Manage Download Plug-ins dashboard.