Stuck on Evaluating

[system]

(imported topic written by rmnetops91)

Greetings,

We have a simple baseline filled with BigFix provided Office Updates.

We have a handful of machines (about 10 out of 1400) that are stuck in an “Evaluating” state, even though when we look at the status detail on them, it shows all the relavant fixlets status as “Fixed”. It’s like they applied properly, but didn’t update their main baseline status to “Completed” for some reason.

Any idea what might cause this?

[system]

(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)

We just had the same issue. A support call did not find the cause of the issue. The recommendation was to reset the BES client. While it technically does fix the issue, we have major issues with this approach. It does not find the root cause and it basically just resets the client and starts from scratch, duplicate computer in BES and all.

Sorry I couldn’t help more, but I thought you may want to know the approach support took before you call. If you find a cause, please post it here.

[system]

(imported comment written by rmnetops91)

I was going to call support, so thanks for the heads up. Ya I’ve seen other posts about this issue, but everyone seemed to think it was related to syntax error in their action scripts. In my case all it was is a baseline with about 50 office update fixlets that were created/provided by BigFix; no customizations or anything to the action scripts. And even so, the same applicable fixlets applied just fine on the majority of machines.

Maybe some of the moderators can shed some light on the issue, or a fix that doesn’t require resetting the client.

PS: Does resetting the client have any negative effects besides creating a duplicate computer record? We have duplicates and deleted computers purged regularly so that issue really isn’t a problem for us, but wasn’t sure if there were any other negative side effects.

[system]

(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)

As you stated, the same fixlets completed on a majority of the machines. And subsequent fixlets completed successfully as well on the same machine.

We’ve seen no other negative side effects. The duplicate issue for us is not one of duplicates in the database, but one of client history. It’s lost once the client is recreated. For audit an comliance, that’s not so good. Do you have to handle worry about that and if so how do you work around the issue?

[system]

(imported comment written by rmnetops91)

Well we haven’t had to worry about it yet, as we are new to BigFix (only a couple months). Good to know.

[BenKus]

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hey guys,

We had some issues with older (pre-7.2) versions of the agents got stuck in “Evaluating” sometimes due to some various issues that we thought we have fixed… We have speculated that there is some sort of rare issue involving the agent when it tries to write save its state when restarting… but we can’t ever reproduce or confirm it… If anyone has a specific case that you can reproduce, we would be happy to look at it…

Ben

[system]

(imported comment written by snoczp91)

Is interesting as we have machines that also get stuck at the Evaluating stage for a particular fixlet or baseline, and also some that continually report as Pending Message or Pending Restart even though I can reboot and login to them, with no noted change in status for a given action.

For the ones stuck on Evaluating, the only fix for us was to upgrade to a newer/newest agent version. No resolution for the Pending status’ though. Later actions will report and run as normal.

[system]

(imported comment written by rmnetops91)

snoczp, we also have a few machines that stick at pending restart or pending message, even though they themselves have moved far beyond that. The only way we can clear it is to reset the BES agent, or just stop the action.

[system]

(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)

We had another similar issue today.

Baseline applied to client. Client got about midway and then just stopped. No additional logging to the client log for over 35 minutes.

Called support, looked at client log and stated it looked like UDP was being blocked between client and server. Had me send blank action. As suspected action never ran and client did not log anything to client log. Client eventually greyed out in console. Wanted me to reinstall client to make sure it wasn’t corrupt. I declined - this is not an acceptable solution for a product that is supposed to be our End Point Security agent.

Support continued to say it must be UDP. So I right clicked on the greyed out client and chose “Send Refresh”. Client immediately woke up and went merrily on it’s way, completing the action.

We’ve also resolved this issue in the past with a restart of the client. To us, this definitely looks like a client agent issue. There seems to be some instability that just can’t be tracked down.

[BenKus]

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hey jspanitz,

Does the agent log indicate that the UDP messages are being received (either gather or refresh messages)? You should ask to talk to level 3 support if you are not already for this complicated issue.

Ben

[system]

(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)

We see the force refresh messages in the log. I will be calling back into support this morning and requesting this issue be elevated. Thanks Ben.

[system]

(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)

Not to drag this out in the forum, but in the interest of others not having to go through the same steps, here is the response I got from support. Please note, when i called back in I did not ask to go to level 3, the tech on the phone just read through the case notes and responded.

We were again told to limit the number of items in a baseline to around 50 to avoid problems. We were also told they are working on correcting the issue, which is why I did not ask for level 3 support. Working on it = good!!!

Running Subsequent test with smaller baselines seems to always work. So be careful when deploying baselines with a moderate amount of items at this point in time.

[system]

(imported comment written by rmnetops91)

We also have the same issue with larger baselines. We require larger baselines though, so we are just dealing with the annoyance for now.