Clients stuck at evaluating a simple fixlet for days

(imported topic written by jfschafer)

We’re running version 8.2.1310 of the server and clients:

I deployed an extremely simple batch file that runs fine on 99.9% of all our systems. 4 systems that are no different than the others (bes client version 8.2.1310.0) stayed stuck at “Evaluating” and I verified that they never ran or attempted to run the batch file. I sent the clients refreshes and that didn’t work. The only thing that worked was restarting the BES service on those clients. It’s great there’s a workaround, but that can be a lot of work if you have 100,000 systems and 2000 of them (as an example) have this issue. My question is, do you know what is causing this? Do you have a quick fixlet that can target systems stuck on evaluating or can you make one? For example, a fixlet that restarts the BES agent on systems that have been evaluating a fixlet for more than 1 hour?

(imported comment written by Lee Wei)

Is it possible that on the 4 systems, the batch file wanted to prompt the user for some response/input?

Most of the Windows OSes since Vista does not by default allow a service to interact with the desktop.

So the Fixlet is hung waiting for a response.

That is one possible scenario that will explain what you see.

Lee Wei

(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)

Lee is right. Our client service does not, by default, interact with the desktop. You can use the RunAsCurrentUser utility for those purposes (here are a few tasks which take advantage of that functionality

http://bigfix.me/cdb/search/runascurrentuser

).

The BESClient service is extremely stable. Odds are very high the issue you are experiencing is related to content. Consider digging into the client logs or watching them live using a utility like BareTail

http://bigfix.me/cdb/fixlet/67

. You can also go to your BES Support site and finding the “BES Client Setting: Enable Debug Logging” (

http://bigfix.me/cdb/fixlet/520

) and “BES Client Setting: Disable Debug Logging” (

http://bigfix.me/cdb/fixlet/528

) tasks. They will enable additional logging in those client logs so you can get an even better idea of what the client is doing.