We are experiencing a very odd data mismatch issue with Web Reports in that a custom report specifies one value for a particular property, but drilling down on a computer asset then reveals a different value for the same property e.g. the report “Symantec AV Definitions” which uses the property “Virus Definition Version” lists computer X as not having any AV installed, however clicking on computer X and scrolling down to the “Virus Definition Version” property reveals that it does! We recently purged the web cache to address another issue, so would hope that this isn’t some sort of recurring cache corruption problem.
We have also noticed that the Scheduled Activities archive retention options appear to have no effect, in that archived reports are kept indefinitely regardless of values entered into the “Limit the number of archives stored” field. We have tried limiting archived reports by age, size and number, however they just pile up and need to be manually purged before we run out of disk space. This option worked fine under v6 but appears broken in v7. We were wondering whether v7 may have an issue with spaces or hyphens in the archive folder name, but haven’t had an opportunity to test that theory yet.
Can you share your custom reports query? Also, can you double check in “Manage Properties” that you don’t have two properties with the same name that might be confusing the results?
For the second question, it sounds like a bug and we will investigate…
Well deduced Ben … there are actually 3 properties with the name “Virus Definition Version”. Two are in the “Client Manager for Anti-Virus” site but only one is activated. The third is in the “Master Operator Site” site and is also activated. The strange thing is that this third one was definitely not created by us, so where did it come from? Is it possible that some site contents has been modified by BigFix resulting in an “orphaned” property. I will happily remove the redundant property in the Master Operator site, but it would be nice to know how this duplication came about in the first place.
Further to my previous post, we actually have 7 “phantom” duplicate properties in the Master Operator site that were not created by us. They are:
Computer Model - Windows
Identifying Number - Windows
Network Adapter - Windows
Number of Used RAM Slots / Total Number of RAM Slots
OS Language - Windows
Screen Resolution - Windows
Virus Definition Version
They are simply editable copies of the default BigFix Inc. created properties. To the best of our knowledge they did not exist prior to the upgrade to version 7, however they are now causing issues with Web Reports so it would be good to know if they are safe to delete.
Are you at 7.0.7 or 7.0.1? This might be a by-product of one of the upgrade quirks in 7.0.1 and I think upgrading to 7.0.7 and/or clearing your web reports cache might help.
We went straight from v6 to v7.0.7. The web cache has recently been cleared as part of the fault finding process for this data mismatch issue, but I am happy to try it again.
Excellent news re the archive limits. So what are your thoughts re these duplicate props, can we safely delete them, or will that cause a major tear in the BigFix space-time continuum
I don’t know where they came from so I am not sure what happens if you delete them… I suppose you could backup the DB and try to delete them and in the event of an issue, you could restore the old DB… or you could start a support case and we could look at it together… or if they arent bothering you, you could leave them and just refer to properties by ID to prevent ambiguity.
Ok, I took the plunge and deleted the duplicate Virus Definition Version property listed in the Master Operator Site. The Console immediately errored with an “Unexpected Error” dialog. The precise issue was “class NoSuchRetrievedPropertyID”. I have restarted the Console and a cursory glance shows that the Symantec AntiVirus - Client Information Analysis is still functioning correctly. The only strange development is that the Virus Definition Version property is no longer available via the Computers Tab ContextMenu so now I cannot view that property as a column in the Computers ListView. Furthermore, I have just noticed that the CheckBox control that used to be at the bottom of the Manage Properties dialog has disappeared in Version 7, so how do you unrestrict a default property so that it can then be selected via the ContextMenu and viewed in the ListView?
unrestricting a default property so that it can then be selected via the ContextMenu and viewed in the ListView
". Should Virus Definition Version be available by default in ContextMenu attached to the Computers tab? If it should, then any ideas how I can put it back now that it has disappeared?
For properties that come in analyses, you will need to make a custom copy of them if you want them to be “global properties” avaialble in the main Computer list. This is different than previous versions, but we had to change it because the old behavior had some issues and led to many bugs.
For your duplicated properties, I suggest either leaving them there or schedule a time with one of our level 3 support technicians to go through and assist you in removing the properties manually because I have no idea on what other issues you might hit.
