Agent Does not Report - BAD SERVERNAME

Usage and Config Platform
1

I am getting the following error when looking at the agent logs:

FAILED to Synchronize - General transport failure. - BAD SERVERNAME (winsock error 4294967290 - gather url - http://xxx.xxx.xxx:52311/cgi-bin/bfenterprise/BESGatherMirror.exe?url=http://xxx.xxx.xxx:52311/cgi-bin/bfgather.exe/mailboxsite14109700&Time=05Jan01:20:19&rand=15bb1b22&ManyVersionSha1=da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709

I can ping the server and when I put that URL in a browser it works just fine. Any ideas?

Also the client version is 11.0.1.104 and the relays and root server match that version.

2

The error suggests a name resolution problem. Just for test, what if you put the name resolution in your local hosts file?

3

That seems to work but I donā€™t understand why resolution was failing. When I do an nslookup, ping, web browser entry with the hostname it resolves just fine. One thing of note is that this server does have itā€™s nics teamed. Donā€™t know if that would cause any issues?

4

Ok, that confirms the issue is in the resolutionā€¦
As far as I know, DNS queries can be done using UDP or TCP; it might be some of these traffic types to be blocked. I donā€™t know if/how having teamed nics can affect DNS query mechanism (I donā€™t think so).

5

Iā€™ve used the BESClient on teamed NICs, no particular configuration is required for that, it should be fine.

Iā€™d suspect some kind of endpoint security / antivirus / EDR / VPN client. Iā€™ve worked with at least one that can block network traffic ā€œper-applicationā€ so you might need to whitelist the BESClient?

6

I have seen same error message when the client system has resource exhaustion.
Like no free ephemeral ports, or memory, etc

The BESClient does not recover after it is denied a resource, the only way to recovery is restart the service.

2 Likes
7

I have done that and the only thing that seems to work is having the server in the host file. Very odd but this is the only location that does it.

8

If you havenā€™t opened a support ticket yet, that might be helpful.

Iā€™d take the hostname back out of the hosts file, enable client debug logging as described at https://support.hcltechsw.com/csm?id=kb_article&sysparm_article=KB0023680 , and then restart the client. The generated debug log might be helpful.

I recently saw one case where I believe an erroneous entry into the ā€˜last fallback relayā€™ masthead option left new clients unable to register. Note that in the error message you posted where it shows 'gather url ` that the URL listed is not necessarily the hostname of the server we are trying, but rather itā€™s more like a label or ā€˜nameā€™ of the site we are trying to gather. The client could still be using a Relay or Root server to get that site name.