How to modify BES_GATHER_INTERVAL after installation

Hi,

During install you can choose an interval for BES_GATHER_INTERVAL. As I wanted to be able to watch the logs I took the short interval of 15 minutes. I would like to change that to 3 or more hours.

I was hoping it would be a “Edit Computer” setting, or a task - but I cannot find a correct attribute name for Edit Settings, nor do I find a task.

Thanks for your time.

I think that can only be changed in the bes admin utility, if at all.

You should never make this more often than every 6 hours in my opinion. If you want to have things go faster, use command polling instead. I believe the gather interval is more impactful than command polling, but without any benefits over command polling, and less flexibility since it can’t be set per endpoint like command polling can be.

Generally clients should know about new things within minutes due to UDP notifications. Those that don’t get UDP notifications will know about new things based upon the command polling interval, or the gather interval.

Nods - I understand that. And shall take the value of 6 hours or 12 hours.

I had seen a sentence where the words BESAdmin.sh and gather and change, but that was all it said. I was thinking that was only for the client gather time (aka the 24 hour default) - and that maybe the server - as the “only” connection to external sites - might have a different, better additional, setting.

I’ll look it up then and change it (in the masthead - another word in that sentence).

Update: I have examined my masthead - and the advGatherSchedule is 24 hours. So, I assume I used the wrong term in my subject.

It may not be tunable - but I see via proxy logs that it seems the Server is doing a “gather” check every 5 minutes. Is this tunable?

  • No is a valid answer.

To help understand my question - from the proxy logs:

192.168.129.2 - - [08/Oct/2017:19:42:14 +0000] “GET http://sync.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/bfgather/webui-common?Time=1507491733 HTTP/1.1” 200 -
192.168.129.2 - - [08/Oct/2017:19:42:17 +0000] “GET http://sync.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/bfgather/webui-appadmin?Time=1507491736 HTTP/1.1” 200 -
192.168.129.2 - - [08/Oct/2017:19:42:20 +0000] “GET http://sync.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/bfgather/webui-custom?Time=1507491739 HTTP/1.1” 200 -
192.168.129.2 - - [08/Oct/2017:19:42:23 +0000] “GET http://sync.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/bfgather/webui-swdist?Time=1507491742 HTTP/1.1” 200 -
192.168.129.2 - - [08/Oct/2017:19:42:26 +0000] “GET http://sync.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/bfgather/webui-profilemgmt?Time=1507491745 HTTP/1.1” 20 0 -
192.168.129.2 - - [08/Oct/2017:19:42:29 +0000] “GET http://sync.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/bfgather/webui-query?Time=1507491748 HTTP/1.1” 200 -
192.168.129.2 - - [08/Oct/2017:19:42:32 +0000] “GET http://sync.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/bfgather/webui-patch?Time=1507491751 HTTP/1.1” 200 -
192.168.129.2 - - [08/Oct/2017:19:46:32 +0000] “GET http://sync.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/bfgather/bessupport HTTP/1.1” 200 693578
192.168.129.2 - - [08/Oct/2017:19:47:15 +0000] “GET http://sync.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/bfgather/webui-common?Time=1507492035 HTTP/1.1” 200 -
192.168.129.2 - - [08/Oct/2017:19:47:18 +0000] “GET http://sync.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/bfgather/webui-appadmin?Time=1507492038 HTTP/1.1” 200 -
192.168.129.2 - - [08/Oct/2017:19:47:21 +0000] “GET http://sync.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/bfgather/webui-custom?Time=1507492041 HTTP/1.1” 200 -
192.168.129.2 - - [08/Oct/2017:19:47:24 +0000] “GET http://sync.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/bfgather/webui-swdist?Time=1507492044 HTTP/1.1” 200 -
192.168.129.2 - - [08/Oct/2017:19:47:27 +0000] “GET http://sync.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/bfgather/webui-profilemgmt?Time=1507492047 HTTP/1.1” 20 0 -
192.168.129.2 - - [08/Oct/2017:19:47:30 +0000] “GET http://sync.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/bfgather/webui-query?Time=1507492050 HTTP/1.1” 200 -
192.168.129.2 - - [08/Oct/2017:19:47:33 +0000] “GET http://sync.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/bfgather/webui-patch?Time=1507492053 HTTP/1.1” 200 -

There are different kinds of Gather. There is the BigFix Root Server gathering new content from IBM’s servers, then there is BigFix clients gathering new content from the BigFix Root Server.

currently bigfix is set to attempt to gather webui sites in particular every 5 minutes, while it should gather other external sites once every 12 hours. As far as I know this is not configurable, but the webui gather interval should be changing in an upcoming version of bigfix platform.

If the root already has the most current version of the site, then the gather is just a check and shouldn’t do any actual downloads.

If your server appears to be downloading the sites over and over again, then something is wrong with the gather. In some cases, this may fix it: https://github.com/jgstew/bigfix-content/blob/master/fixlet/clientsettings/Set%20__BESGather_Use_Https_%20to%20_1_%20-%20Root%20Server.bes

Also, you cannot modify the masthead directly, it must be done through the admin tool/script.

Thanks for the clarification.
Not using the WebUI atm, and WebReports is turned off for now (focusing on other things).

Might also be ‘handy’ to have some kind of ‘relevance’ checking if WebUI is activated - rather than checking every 5 minutes - regardless.

Yes, it is small - but it (the repeated WebUI gathers, rather checks) does rather fill a proxy logs with lots of ‘nothing’.