We certainly try to limit the number of releases on each version of BES because of the confusion and stress caused by having newer releases. At the same time we have to balance the impact of new releases against fixing issues and adding functionality our customers are requesting, or sometimes even demanding. Our goals for releases are to have as few releases as possible, ensure each release is as high quality as we can make it and to provide documentation on all the changes made to provide clarity and visibility for our users who are ultimately in a better position to decide about whether they should upgrade than we are.
You can actually see how many incremental updates have been done on each version here:
I have new BES client 7.0.9.110 installed on systems, but some systems are not getting upgraded if Iuse Bigfix Fixlet "Updated BES Client… " . There are systems which are restarted still the they are not getting upgraded. The status is “Not reported” in the Action list . There is no firewall service running on the host computers. The other option is to have manual upgrade but there are 200 systems, so not sure how can I automise.
If the BigFix Agents are reporting “” to the action, it might mean they never received the action, which could be for several reasons that don’t have anything to do with the upgrade. But in order to tell you for sure, we would need to start a support case and examine the issue on these computers.
I don’t think we have any known issues that would require manual upgrading…
Also, note that 7.0.9.164 was released tonight so you can consider upgrading to the new version that has sme additional fixed issues instead of 7.0.9.110.
Thanks for the reply and update. I am working on some other issue, will update the clients, servers and relays next week. The client contacts the BES servers everyday. Whenever a action is triggered the status remains “Not reported” for some clients. There is no firewall, and how can the action triggered or pushed from BES server not reach the clients. So how can we debug this? You can see the attachment for details.
When you propagate an action to the client you should see a message in the BES Client log indicating it needs to do something. Example message ’ GatherAction command received’. Afterwhich the client will try to gather the data from its BES Relay.
If the message appears in the BES Client log, the client is succesfully receiving udp messages. It should then try to gather a fixlet site with the action in it. Does that fail or succeed? If it fails, it could be a problem with the BES Relay and we would troubleshoot the BES Relay.
If the message doesn’t appear, it means the BES Client is not getting udp messages from its BES Relay. I would normally go to the BES Relay and run a telnet command on the BigFix port, its a simple test to see if the BES Relay can reach the BES Client computer using the bigfix port. If it can, then we have a real mystery!
Telnet example:
telnet 127.0.0.1 52311
If the screen goes blank, that means success. hit ‘q’ and then ‘enter’ to go back to command prompt.
Oh, one more point. The problem may lay anywhere between the client and the BES Server. I usually start at the BES Client and work my way up the chain. Example:
I checked with BES relay by doing telnet on port 52311, its working fine. I changed the Relay selection from Manual to Automatic on one system ( let us call this “system A”). This didnt take effect. I checked logs of System A and found " FAILED to Synchronize - General transport failure. -" located at C:\Program Files\BigFix Enterprise\BES Client__BESData__Global\Logs\date_of_file. I checked the “Last report time” of System A and it was fine, it had contacted BES Relay before 10-15 minutes. But, still the status is “”. I issued action of changing the relay selection one hour ago.
One more thing to clarify, there are some clients with 6.0.15.7 version. Now, I dont have any fixlet to upgrade to 7.0.9.110 version.
Ok, so basically the client is able to talk to the BES Relay but when it tries to gather your actions it is failing to do so. Likely the problem is on the BES Relay, you could try restarting it and see if that fixes the issue. Otherwise I would contact support for help troubleshooting the relay.
They all are pointing to BES root server. Any other option? There are 115 systems for which I want to change the BES Relay Selection method from Manual to Automatic.
I have couple of systems which are “” for OS, BES Relay and all other information. How do I trace them because I dont have any information available. I cant run BESclient refresher.exe on them. If I remove them they appear after couple of hours. Please find the snapshot for details.
Is there any configuration I can do by modifying the file located in c:\program files\big fix\BES client. I am not able to change the relay selection to Automatic from BES console. The systems are not shown as “not reported” in Console. If there is any line to be added on client system. I can access the C$ of client system and may be modify any file,so that relay selection is set to “automatic” instead on “manual”.