After restart postponed, reminder never returns

Usage and Config Patch
1

(imported topic written by bdoellefeld)

Hey. I’m having an issue where joeuser decides to postpone a restart request for X amount of time.

After X amount of time the reminder restart dialog never returns. Any ideas?

All versions are 6.0.12.5

2

(imported comment written by bdoellefeld)

Still having this issue. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

3

(imported comment written by StacyLee)

Are you using the “Restart Needed” Fixlet #177?

What are your constraints, execution and Post Action set for?

Did the action expire before the next postponement time?

4

(imported comment written by bdoellefeld)

Hi Stacy.

This appears to be happening for any fixlet I take an action on. Here is the behavior of the latest one.

Message No message will be shown before running 

this action.   No message will be shown 

while running 

this action.   Constraints This action starts 10/2/2006 9:00:00 AM, client local time.   This action will never expire.   It will run at any time of day, on any day of the week, independently of user presence.   Execution If the Fixlet message becomes relevant after 

this action has successfully executed, the action will automatically be reapplied an unlimited number of times.   If the action fails, it will be retried up to 1 times, waiting until the computer is rebooted between attempts.   Post-Action After the action completes, the computer will be restarted.   The user will be allowed to postpone the restart 

for up to 6 hours.   The user will be allowed to cancel the reboot/shutdown.   The following message will be displayed after running the action:
5

(imported comment written by rharmer91)

I’ll be interested to see how this works out for you. We recently used the reboot fixlet to reboot a bunch of machines and had the same issue. For us the action length was fine, but the time of day that it was relevant was too short. We’ll see how it goes for our next patching cycle.

Rich

6

(imported comment written by Bjowah91)

Try to leave the “user cancel” command out. If the action is canceled the “postpone” is not vaild anymore.

/Björn

7

(imported comment written by bdoellefeld)

Just to clairify…

This example I posted is not the only fixlet or behavior model that this happens with. This happens with ANY action that has the option to postpone (whether cancel is there or not) . If the user postpones the restart, the postpone time they have chosen passes and the restart dialog never reappears. This is happening across 1200 PCs.

8

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hi bdoellefeld,

Sorry for the delayed response… We were trying to reproduce this for a while and it always seemed to work for us…

It is possible the postponement will do funny things if the clocks are changing, but it is particularly interesting that you noted it happens on a large number of computers repeatedly. Please start up a support ticket and we will investigate it with you in detail.

Thanks,

Ben

9

(imported comment written by Harald.Zarakowitis)

Hi,

I only tested it with values ranging from 1 to 10 minutes. So I always thought it worked but the other users told me that they postponed it for 12 hours and never got the dialog again. This could explain why it worked in your tests?

10

(imported comment written by Paul_Kerpa)

I have come up with the constraints used by a customer that do cause the stated scenario and we are working on a solution for it currently.

Paul Kerpa

Bigfix Technical Support Engineer

11

(imported comment written by HectorB)

Yes, please do keep us informed as we’re also experiencing the same problem on several computers.

Thanks,

Hector B.

12

(imported comment written by Paul_Kerpa)

All,

At this point in time I have been getting mixed results on the tests of the postponements and the user interface returning on the postponements.

I would ask that anyone that can reliably recreate this scenario to please turn on the debug logging on a couple of clients and recreate the sencario.

Once complete please send the resulting log file to enterprisesupport@bigfix.com so that I can further test this problem. As well as export and send the action associated with the problem so that I can see if we are running into any common themes amongst the actions.

Please note that the client will attempt to auto postpone for the last postponement time even if the user is not present to see the user interface.

This is noted as “RemindAuto” in the client log.

Thanks in advance for any data sent my way.

Paul Kerpa

Technical Support Engineer

Bigfix

13

(imported comment written by Harald.Zarakowitis)

Paul,

I did some more testing with my colleagues and we´ve made the following observation.

The problem seems to occur when multiple actions are deployed.

I tried it now several times with several computers:

If one patch is deployed there are no problems.

If a Multiple Action Group is deployed, the reminder will not pop up again after the first postponement (even if the dialog is only postponed for 1 minute).

I´ll send you the action and the logfile of the computer where this happens.

I hope this was not only random and we found the issue now

Harald