I upgraded to version 8 pretty much without a hitch. However, I deployed the new BES client as the last step to all our clients and they installed successfully, but the services are stopped. (Even the deploy tool had the option checked to verify BES Client service is running) I can manually start the service and client reports in (or reboot the machine) and all works fine. However, manually doing this or rebooting machines is not a good solution. Any ideas on why this happened? Any Bigfix utilities that I can use to go out and start BES Client service on all machines quickly?
Thanks Nberger! Looks like I may have found a bug in version 8 if what you are seeing is simular. I should have just did the fixlet method. I thought I’d hit all the online machines with the deploy tool as it’s super quick and then use the fixlet to get the machines that come on later. Guess I choose wrong!
Hello jfschafer, I tried to reproduce the behavior you described but I wasn’t able to recreate the problem. When I run the client deploy tool against a computer with the 7.2.5.22 agent already installed, the deploy tool successfully upgrades the agent and it starts up after the upgrade.
Are you able to reproduce the behavior? If so, we might ask you to collect additional data for us from your systems.
Did you select any advanced options? What deployment method did you use?
I didn’t use any advanced options. I used the deploy tool that comes with the BES server install. The deploy log shows succussful installs for all machines (XP, Windows 7, 2003, 2008) but says this for every single client: (notice the line BESClient was installed but is no currently running)
Assembling computer name…
Connecting to remote machine…
Copying installation files…
Opening the Service Control Manager…
Creating the installer service…
Starting the installer service…
Waiting for setup.exe to finish…
Deleting the installer service…
Waiting 10 seconds to verify installation…
Verifying installation…
Waiting 10 seconds to verify installation…
The BESClient was installed, but is not currently running.
The BESClient version ‘8.0.584.0’ is now installed.
Tyler et al, we’re seeing similar failures. The Client upgrade fixlet is reporting back “Waiting” for a number of systems and haven’t checked in since we pushed it on Saturday. When we look at the machines in person, we’re seeing that the client still looks like 7.x (file dates jive with that), the besclient.exe process is NOT running, and when we try to start it manually (by double-clicking it in Explorer), it starts and then disappears quickly. The Event Viewer gives us:
Event Type: Error
Event Source: BESClient
Event Category: None
Event ID: 2
Date: 8/24/2010
Time: 10:10:31 AM
User: DOMAIN\user
Computer: {computername}
Description:
The description for Event ID ( 2 ) in Source ( BESClient ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: The service process could not connect to the service controller…
I wanted to post some general troubleshooting tips for client upgrades because not all of the issues posted on this forum appear to be the same.
Collect the client upgrade log from here if you used the Fixlets to upgrade: \Program Files\BigFix Enterprise\BES Client\besclientinstall.log
Check to see if the BESClientUpgrade.exe process is still running. If it is, messing with the client could corrupt the client installation, you should try to let the upgrade proceed uninterrupted.
Check the Event Log for information related to the BES Client.
Try to record: the operating system, the original installation source (setup.exe, msi, or custom installer), the previous version of the client, the upgrade method (Fixlet, custom source, client deploy tool).
Try running the upgrade by hand. Does it generate any failure messages when run manually? Does it work while the Fixlet failed?
Try upgrading InstallShield and running the upgrade again. See Fixlet #544 in BES Support ‘TROUBLESHOOTING: Upgrade InstallShield 11 Install Engine’.
Check to see if other MSIExec processes are running. It’s possible another installation is blocking ours.
Try manually uninstalling the BES Client, if it fails, you may have a corrupt InstallShield engine.
Ok, we are investigating a work around for the errors reported here. There appears to be differences between what each user posted but situations where the work around would be used is:
The 7.2 agent is installed, it was installed using the MSI, it won’t uninstall and you get some error message when attempting to do so.
The 7.2 agent is installed, it was installed using the MSI, when you try to run the upgrade the agent service is stopped and the upgrade fails silently.
got a different error on this but same problem. in our instance, the upgrade removed all the details about the service including image path, start settings, etc. please see below for what is available via the registry.