Question on Bigfix ( in-depth knowledge)

Usage and Config Platform
1

(imported topic written by rahulcynosure91)

Hi ,

I am a new bee to big fix …

I have installed BES , done some patch management activities and created some fixlet…

But I am not getting any inside knowldege of Big Fix … like the below questions… Could anyone help me ?

  1. Where fixlets is stored in BES server(or in database) . And in which format . Where and how can I see a fixlet file on my server?

  2. Its written in document that “Download Mirror Server Component” hosts Fixlet site data for the BES Relays and BES Clients.

So could you please elaborate on how this is done … ? I mean how a client connect to it, how a client knows that it has to check for new fixlet?

  1. Does each any every fixlet’s relevance is checked on clients ? or server do some kind of filtering like sending windows specific fixlet to windows computer only for checking relevance? If yes , then how this filtering is done ? Is it possible to see the code or any log files ?

  2. And how does fixlet are separated into different categories like on the basis of source… I mean the internal logic ,where this happens , how this happens ?

What I mean is … How console shows fixlet in different categories like

– All fixlet and tasks

– All

– By source severity

…

…

patch management domain

----Application vendors

----Os vendors

— Apple

— IBM AIX

— Redhat Enterprise Linux

…

…

According to my understanding there should be some ‘Filtering’ actions that are performed on fixlets to show/represent them in those categories. Could you please tell me how this is done ?

Could you give me any document/ link which can give me “in-depth” view of BigFix,like my questions above ?

2

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hello,

Here are some starting places for answers:

  1. Fixlets are stored as files on the server in the wwwrootbes folder (this is how the server delivers the Fixlets to relays and agents) and also in the database in the External_Object_Defs table. However, I don’t think there is any reason that you should need to know this data because you can’t change the Fixlets in the database or the file system without messing up the digital signatures and essentially breaking your deployment. We have APIs that you can use if you want to make programmatic changes:http://support.bigfix.com/bes/misc/platformapi.html

  2. The Agent is sent a UDP message when there is a new Fixlet and it also polls for new data periodically.

  3. Agents will subscribe to different sites based on what you choose in the console using site subscriptions and using “site relevance”. Agents also are smart enough to skip Fixlets within a site based on certain attributes like OS (we call this optimization “sidelining”). This is all done as part of the internal optimizations of the agent.

  4. The domain tree is build by the Fixlet site authors and they decide how the site is displayed.

Some of these questions are more oriented towards development details rather than questions that are useful for customers using the product. You might want to contact someone inside of IBM directly if you have deeper questions.

Thanks,

Ben

3

(imported comment written by rahulcynosure91)

Thanks Ben ,

Could you give me any person who could help me in deeper information?

For answer 1 : Why there is need to store Fixlet in server as well as in database ? inside wwwrootbes folder

for Answer 2 : Does “Download Mirror Server Component” send a UDP message to relays and clients ?

For 3 : As I understood , I subscribe to sites and Fixlets from that site are visible in my Big fix server. And My client is intelligent enough to filter the fixlet according to OS installed ? And there is no other Filtering mechanism ?

Please correct me if I misunderstood something …

  1. So BigFix server doesn’t do any kind of filtering here ( like on fixlet applicable to different OS , fixlet from different vendors etc ) to display fixlet in different domain… It is done by bigfix people and it is independent of server ?

Also I can’t add any customize view to that ??

4

Sorry for posting question in response of question but I need answer of one question too. If I am using a trial version of Bigfix and it is expired. After expiry will Agent script work on client?

I am not a Bigfix admin but using Bigfix to integrate with another product. When I am running a script, I get below error in console in View action info pane:

The computer is not licensed:
Status : error
Start time : Not executed
End Time: Not executed
Exit code: None

Why I am asking this because, my action script is failing and as I am in testing phase, so I need to confirm is it because of license or there is some issue in license.

What my script does is, at start it downloads one zip, for that download, status is cached on server, after that it send some files on client temp directory but no file reaching there.