BigFix Action Setting Status

(imported topic written by bakoppan)

I am not sure if this is possible or not, but is there a way to set the status manually in a ActionScript? For example, due to issues with IEM restart on my Linux hosts, I have inserted my own reboot process into the script with the wait statement. However, I would like to set the status on the console so it reflects that my client is restarting, is this possible. I have a pause wait statement inserted in after the reboot so the action script does not complete until the besclient process is running after reboot. But it would be nice to set the status from “Running” to “Restarting” before it “Completes”.

(imported comment written by SteveHull)

You can use actionscript and relevance logic to control success or failure criteria, but you do not have the ability to set any other specific action statuses, like Pending Restart. You could probably create a custom report in Web Reports that would do what you wanted, using ‘line number of action result’ you could display your own status for clients that are still ‘Running’ but at the line number where your reboot occurs. You’d probably have to do some testing to see whether the clients actually report they are at that line or an earlier one when the reboot occurs, but you could also create a dashboard to view this same information in the console.

(imported comment written by JasonWalker)

Have you tried using “run” instead of “wait”? Then your Action doesn’t wait for the restart to complete, your Action finishes. You can use the

action requires restart "MyCustomRestarter"

statement to flag your completion status as “Pending Restart” rather than “Complete”.

In any case, you’re not going to see the result in the Console if your restart is fast enough - the BES Client would have to be able to send off a report back to the server before the restart kills the BES client.

This approach does introduce a possible problem; since BigFix doesn’t “know” it’s going to restart, it might start executing another action which might still be running in the middle of your shutdown. That certainly seems like enough reason to leave a “wait” running, at least with one action executing a new one won’t start. Maybe you could use both your custom shutdown (to make the reboot happen) and a BigFix Post-Action Shutdown (to stop BES from starting a new action)?.