BES Client Helper

Usage and Config Platform
1

(imported topic written by SystemAdmin)

I understand that the BES Client Helper was made to start clients that are stopped and fix “common agent issues”. Does anyone have better documentation on what all the helper does?

Since the Client Helper tries to start the agent when it is stopped, could it interfere with an agent upgrade? (Say by dumb luck that it attempts to start the agent in the middle of an upgrade.)

If a relay is installed on a machine that has the Client Helper, does it fix any Relay issues too or strictly agent issues? If not, any thoughts about a Relay Helper?

Is the Client Helper agent version agnostic? Will it be updated for 7.2?

Is there (or should there be) intelligence in the Client Helper process to try to self-remediate only a limited number of times followed by an e-mail or some other notification? (I ask because I have witnessed a situation several times where a vb script runs periodically (pre-Client Helper service) to start a stopped client service. In those cases, there was file corruption in the agent sub-tree. The agent would crash on start-up, leaving a dump file. As the dump files began to fill the hard drive, a SCOM alert for drive space identified the problem indirectly.) It would be helpful to be able to specify the number of remediation attempts per time period. Should it hit a configurable threshold for restart attempts in a time interval, then be able to either send an SOS message to the server, snmp trap, and/or an e-mail to the administrator.

2

(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)

I understand that the BES Client Helper was made to start clients that are stopped and fix “common agent issues”. Does anyone have better documentation on what all the helper does?

It monitors the state of the BES Client service and attempts to start it if it stopped. It runs every 24 hours by default. If the initial attempt fails, it tries to delete the revocation list file and start the service again. If it fails again it tries to remove the __Data folder and restart. If that fails, it gives up. It also waits 30 seconds after each attempt to ensure the client stays running.

Since the Client Helper tries to start the agent when it is stopped, could it interfere with an agent upgrade? (Say by dumb luck that it attempts to start the agent in the middle of an upgrade.)

It only runs once a day so it’s pretty unlikely for that to happen but all it does is make service manager control request which shouldn’t interfere with the client upgrade process. The files that the help deletes aren’t part of the upgrade process so even if it deleted the files in the middle of the upgrade that shouldn’t be an issue.

If a relay is installed on a machine that has the Client Helper, does it fix any Relay issues too or strictly agent issues? If not, any thoughts about a Relay Helper?

Only fixes Client Issues. You could create a policy using the BES Client itself to restart the Relay, the client is very good at these types of operations so no reason not to use it.

Is the Client Helper agent version agnostic? Will it be updated for 7.2?

Yes it is agnostic.

Is there (or should there be) intelligence in the Client Helper process to try to self-remediate only a limited number of times followed by an e-mail or some other notification? (I ask because I have witnessed a situation several times where a vb script runs periodically (pre-Client Helper service) to start a stopped client service. In those cases, there was file corruption in the agent sub-tree. The agent would crash on start-up, leaving a dump file. As the dump files began to fill the hard drive, a SCOM alert for drive space identified the problem indirectly.) It would be helpful to be able to specify the number of remediation attempts per time period. Should it hit a configurable threshold for restart attempts in a time interval, then be able to either send an SOS message to the server, snmp trap, and/or an e-mail to the administrator.

The Helper attempts to fix corruption issues with the BES Client but in the event that it fails, it doesn’t not generate any notifications. It does record status information about failures in the registry and there is an option to generate an additional log file. It would be pretty easy to use some other tool to generate the SNMP traps based off of the registry keys but at this point the helper doesn’t do it, seems like a good feature to add though.