Service Pack 3 install failed due no freespace space on OS drive

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Service Pack 3 install failed due no freespace space on OS drive

quackhandle1975

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Points: 11055
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January 3, 2017 at 7:33 am

#333548

Slighty odd one this and apologies if it's been posted before.
I have an issue on a number of dev servers that are struggling for free space so when I want to install SP3 for SQL Server 2012 + MS16-136 hotfix I find that the SP can fail due to lack of free space.
Short of requesting an increase in C:\ is there another way of installing the SP? A DBA colleague of mine has stated that if you install the SP from command line you can specify where you want to put the installer files - ie not C: (OS drive).
Today I installed SP3 + MS16-136 on a dev server that had 4GB of free space on C:\. Post installs, there was 1.86GB free space remaining, so can these file be hard coded to be copied to a different drive?
TIA
qh
[font="Tahoma"]Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. – Carl Jung.[/font]

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Sue_H SSC Guru Points: 90860 More actions · Answer 1

If what you want is to extract the service pack files to some specific location, you can execute the service pack exe from the command line and use something along the lines of:

SQLServerBlahBlahServicePack-ENU.exe -x: X:\NewPath\ForServicePackFiles

And the files will extract to X:\NewPath\ForServicePackFiles

You used to be able to just add /extract and the end and you should get a prompt for where to extract the files to: SQLServerBlahBlahServicePack-ENU.exe /extract

I haven't done that one for awhile so not sure if it still works.

Sue

quackhandle1975 SSChampion Points: 11055 More actions · Answer 2

Thanks Sue_H, I will give that a try. Will post my result (if any) on here.

qh

[font="Tahoma"]Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. – Carl Jung.[/font]

quackhandle1975 SSChampion Points: 11055 More actions · Answer 3

I did not find any result with extracting the files as the SP installer still uses the C:\ drive, however what I did find, (and in 15+ years of SQL Server, I was not aware of this) is that whenever a SQL SP, CU or hotfix is installed it copies the whole caboodle to a specific folder, in my case: 'C:\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Setup Bootstrap\UpdateCache\' - there was 5GB of hotfixes/SPs in here! Anyone else aware of this? Incidentally, when doing a search for large files to remove, this folder is not picked up by the search.
So, if you need some free space on the OS drive, try looking in here first, could save the hassle of looking for files to remove or trying to get the drive size increased.

qh

[font="Tahoma"]Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. – Carl Jung.[/font]

Sue_H SSC Guru Points: 90860 More actions · Answer 4

quackhandle1975 - Tuesday, January 31, 2017 3:00 AM
I did not find any result with extracting the files as the SP installer still uses the C:\ drive, however what I did find, (and in 15+ years of SQL Server, I was not aware of this) is that whenever a SQL SP, CU or hotfix is installed it copies the whole caboodle to a specific folder, in my case: 'C:\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Setup Bootstrap\UpdateCache\' - there was 5GB of hotfixes/SPs in here! Anyone else aware of this? Incidentally, when doing a search for large files to remove, this folder is not picked up by the search.
So, if you need some free space on the OS drive, try looking in here first, could save the hassle of looking for files to remove or trying to get the drive size increased.
qh

Starting with SP1 for SQL Server 2008, they added to functionality to uninstall updates so a lot gets cached to support that process. Just as it does with Windows updates.
Not sure why the extract didn't work - it looks like it's still supported, The switch was changed to /extract[:path] but -x is still supported.

Sue