Jason, can you explain what you mean by extending the amount of time bigfix waits?
I’ve run actions that take an hour or more and have never had to modify any client settings for it to work.
Yes please elaborate! If there’s a way to make the BigFix Client give up on an external action, I’ve been looking for just such a thing. I sometimes have external actions that hang up on a user input (Evil Java!), and when the client gets into that state it never times out and will stop processing any new actions until we restart the BES Client service.
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Here’s my whole action script. It’s pretty basic, but it works…
prefetch 97e8833420d373311bff33dc4bb8f13cc7bd793 sha1:97e8833420d373311bff33dc4bb8f13cc7bd7932 size:8015176664 http://bigfix.domain.com/Uploads/97e8833420d373311bff33dc4bb8f13cc7bd793/MATLABR2016aWindowsx64.tmp sha256:ba849c5f8110e1f09dc9aa7d368b0cf34ed56abaeddcce034e7cc1c09ecfd69
extract 97e8833420d373311bff33dc4bb8f13cc7bd793
folder create “C:\TEMP"
copy “__Download\networklicense.lic” “C:\TEMP\networklicense.lic"
setting “_BESClient_PauseWhile”=”{now as string}” on “{parameter “action issue date” of action}” for client //Prepare to wait
wait __Download\setup.exe -inputFile __Download\installer_input.txt //Run the unattended install
pause while {(not exists key “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Matlab R2016a” of registry) AND (now - (value of setting “_BESClient_PauseWhile” of client as string as time)) < 45*minute} //Wait, now, 45 minutes
delete __createfile
delete MatlabFirewallRules.bat
createfile until __EOF
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name=“Matlab R2016a TCP Inbound” dir=in program=“C:\program files\matlab\r2016a\bin\win64\MATLAB.exe” action=allow profile=domain protocol=tcp
netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name=“Matlab R2016a UDP Inbound” dir=in program=“C:\program files\matlab\r2016a\bin\win64\MATLAB.exe” action=allow profile=domain protocol=udp
__EOF
copy __createfile MatlabFirewallRules.bat
waithidden cmd /c MatlabFirewallRules.bat
I had to update around 200 machines with this. It saved me a great deal of work.
The “wait” command will execute setup.exe and wait for it to return before continuing. It may be that setup.exe is spawning off a child installer process and then terminating before the child installer is complete. That kind of setup behavior is rare these days as most vendors have been properly beaten for it, but is still around in somee cases.
Some setup programs add a command-line switch to prevent it from returning until all child processes are complete. If this was packaged with InstallShield, you might try running this from the command line to see whether it changes the behavior:
setup.exe /s /SMS