Hello BigFix’ers, please review and vote up my RFE to introduce a WatchDog service for the BESClient. This would be a secondary, back-end service to monitor the health and functionality of the BESClient.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rfe/execute?use_case=viewRfe&CR_ID=109156
Up voted!
This is something more than required.
Another thing I would suggest as a “fix” is to “reset the BES Client Content” by stopping the BES Client, deleting the contents of the __BESData folder and restarting the Client. This triggers the client to re-download all the Fixlets/Tasks/Analyses.
I’ve written a Task to do this under Windows but have not taken the time to generalize it to other OS’s yet.
Up voted for watchdog service!
It should be noted that we have such a service for Windows-based BigFix Clients (referred to as the Client Helper - http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21506091). It seems the request here is to perhaps extend its support to other OS platforms.
@Aram, I’d say yes and no.
To me, a WatchDog should be be external service to the BESClient and provide more than simple up/down monitoring. This WatchDog service should help monitor the general health of the local BESClient installation and when/where possible take corrective action. It should also prevent users with elevated permissions from disabling or otherwise tampering with the BESClient installation.
I think with the BESClient compliance API this should be relatively possible.
Finally, I can provide specific NIX use case details if you’re interested.
Thanks for the additional context. It would be worth discussing the *nix-specific use cases. That said, the Client Helper is in fact an external service to the BigFix Client, and does take a number of corrective actions (including deleting the contents of the __BESClient folder as a last resort per @TimRice’s suggestion above).
Upvoted as well. Definitely have a need for this for our growing Linux environment where we need to periodically restart our clients as they seem to stop themselves though appear running. (and/or people stopping the client as mentioned above)
What version of the BESClient on NIX? There was a known issue with the “lines of file” inspector in 9.5.x versions that I’ve seen leave the BESClient hung/non-responsive but show status as running.
Issue 138234 - APAR IV93412 - SLOW EVALUATION CYCLE FOR CLIENTS 9.5.X WHEN USING “LINES OF FILE” INSPECTOR
https://support.bigfix.com/bes/changes/fullchangelist-95.txt
If you’re experiencing similar issues and are not version 9.5.7.90 or newer, then you may want to look at upgrading.
We’re at 9.5.8.38…that APAR was suspected earlier this year when I had a support case open, but was not the case. Isn’t a horrible issue in my environment but we still have a handful every month.