We have workstations that are showing “Pending Restart” as their Status in open actions. The problem is the computers completed some of these actions a month or more ago and have been restarted multiple times since then. This is happening with various Microsoft OS and Office Patches. As an example 221 of 1343 computers are reporting having the MS07-017 GDI Fixlet action as pending a restart even after sending a forced reboot to the computers pending a restart. Anyone else see this?
Will Web Reports show these computers as not patched?
This will happen when the computers are not restarted before the action expires. Because the action has expired the client will ignore the action and will not send back any further status updates.
As long as the computers are not showing relevant for the ‘Restart needed’ Fixlets in the BES Support site and are no longer relevant for the 07-017 GDI patch, you can assume they are patched.
That was my first thought so I verified that the actions I looked at were still open. Is there a reason my open actions would show computers pending restarts even though many of them have uptimes of 0 days and action completion dates of a couple weeks ago?
The problem ended up being that the console operator who deployed the actions was continually losing and regaining management rights over some of the systems. The management rights were assigned based on location by IP. When a computer disconnects from the network, e.g. laptop, the console operator loses his management rights over that system until the computer reconnects to a location he has rights over. If the last report a client sends regarding a Fixlet is that it is pending a restart then that’s what stays in the Database because the client doesn’t send updates for Fixlets that were deployed by operator’s whose management rights were removed then re-added. The resolution was to base management rights on both location by IP and the OU container the computers are in by creating a new retrieved property.
When an agent changes its management rights to be unmanaged by a specific user, it throws away all information about its current actions from that user. Later when it becomes “remanaged” it will have forgotten about the action status update so it will stay “frozen” in that action state.
This is a good note for anyone who uses management rights based on properties that change often.