On my vCenter 4.1, during the last two months the nightly "download patch definitions" task has been reporting:
patch definitions cannot be downloaded
every night. The same happens if I start the download manually.
The 2012-11-15 patches have been retrieved fine though, so I didn't think too much of it.
Today I finally decided to look at the problem, and found that if I disable the entry
Windows VMs https://xml.shavlik.com/data download Windows VM patches Connected
in the patch download sources table, the download succeeds. If I reenable it, the error is back.
Interestingly, its companion entry
Linux VMs https://xml.shavlik/unix/ download Linux VM patches Connected
does not cause that sort of problem.
Is there a known problem with that download source?
What will I be missing if I leave it disabled?
Would the trailing slash on the URL make the difference?
If so, how can I add it to the "Windows" entry? I didn't find an "edit" button. :-)
TIA
T.