download

Deprecated: use download as or download now as.

Downloads the file indicated by the URL. This command is included for backward compatibility with version 2.0 of the Client Edition, and it continues to be supported to properly handle legacy IBM BigFix actions. For all other applications, this command has been superseded by the download as and download now as commands.

After downloading, the file is saved in a folder named "__Download" (the folder name begins with two underscores) relative to the local folder of the Fixlet Site that issued the download command.

If the download fails, the action script terminates. The name of the file is derived from the part of the URL after the last slash.

For instance, consider the command: 

download ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/deskapps/readme.txt

The action example above downloads the readme.txt file from the Microsoft site and automatically saves it in the local __Download folder as readme.txt.

The filename is derived from the URL. Everything after the final / or \ character is considered to be the filename. This might occasionally generate a problematic filename, for instance: 

URL: http://skdkdk.ddddd.com/cgi-bin/xyz?jjj=yyy

results in a file named xyz?jjj=yyy, which is not a valid filename. You can usually work around this inconvenience by adding a dummy argument to the end of the URL: 

http://skdkdk.ddddd.com/cgi-bin/xyz?jjj=yyy?file=/ddd.txt

which will result in a file named ddd.txt being saved to the __Download directory. The download as and prefetch commands can also be used to address this situation.

Syntax

download [option] <File_URL>

Where the [options] preface can be one of two optional keywords:

open: calls the ShellExecute API, passing the resulting filename once the download completes.

now: tells the IBM BigFix Client to start the download at that point in the execution of the action, as opposed to pre-fetching it before the action begins. The agent will attempt to collect the download directly from the specified URL instead of going through the relay system.

The File_URL is the location of the file to download.

Examples

download http://download.mycompany.com/update/bfxxxx.exe

Prefetches the bfxxxx.exe file from the mycompany site, and directs the downloaded file to the default site "__Download" folder.

download open http://download.bigfix.com/update/bfxxxx.exe

Prefetches and saves the bfxxxx.exe file to the default site "__Download" folder and executes the program once the download completes.

download now http://download.mycompany.com/update/bfxxxx.exe

Downloads the bfxxxx.exe file from the mycompany site as soon as the command is executed.

download "http://download.microsoft.com/download/prog.exe" 
run "__Download\prog.exe"

This set of actions automates the download process, reducing the application of an executable patch to a single click. Note that the downloaded program is run from the '__Download' directory of the Fixlet site, where the download command places it. The Fixlet site directory is the working directory for all commands and the __Download directory is located there.

Note: Relevance substitution is NOT performed on the download action command lines. This is because these actions are scanned by other components that deliver the downloads and these other components run on different machines which do not share those client's evaluation context. This restriction, however, allows the IBM BigFix to prefetch downloads through a relay hierarchy to the clients.

Version 5.1 and above