When I deploy the agent manually it defaults to manual relay selection. Is there a configuration file that I can use so relay selection is set to automatic for all operating systems Windows, Linux, AIX etc.
You can use the clientsettings.cfg http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21506065 and just make sure the setting is there like
__RelaySelect_Automatic=1
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Thanks Alan! This is exactly what I needed.
It’s important to note that clients will still initially report to the main BES server with this option since they do not download the list of active relays until they report into something and do a gather.
Yes, Matt. I think that’s where I am having a problem. The BigFix server is behind a firewall with port 52311 blocked. The relay servers are outside the firewall and port 52311 is only open between BigFix server and relay server. So there is no work around to have the agent directly talk to the relay server without ever contacting the BigFix server?
You can do this with a manual relay selection during install using the CFG file (thats what a lot of people use it for) and then once the endpoint has gathered if you want automatic relay selection to be on for your deployment you have a persistent action that triggers for any computer set to manual and it switches it to automatic.
And yes until a computer gathers for the first time it doesn’t have the list of relays to TRY for the automatic selection.
You can specify as many relays as you want in the config file. We have 6 specified, depending on where the endpoint is, it may only be able to talk to one of them. To specify more then 2 relays you can use the _BESClient_RelaySelect_TertiaryRelayList setting as well as setting a primary and backup relay. Here is what our Win config file looks like (I don’t think IP is necessary, but it works so I leave it there 
:
IP:http://relay1.domain.com:52311/bfmirror/downloads/
__RelayServer1=http://relay1.domain.com:52311/bfmirror/downloads/
__RelayServer2=http://relay2.domain.com:52311/bfmirror/downloads/
_BESClient_RelaySelect_TertiaryRelayList=relay3.domain.com,relay4.domain.com,relay5.domain.com,relay6.domain.com
_BESClient_RelaySelect_ResistFailureIntervalSeconds=0
It takes a while for the relay selection process to fail over, so it can take an hour or so to get to relay 6.
It may also be possible to distribute the relay.dat file during the install (This is the file that holds all the available relays that is pulled when gathering) and let the clients do auto relay selection, but I haven’t tried it, the cfg file works fine in our situation.
This wouldn’t work as we won’t trust the file as we haven’t gathered. The file is part of a signed site so it is protected.
I had some limited success with preloading a relays.dat - RFE: Client installer reference relay.dat at installation time
I had to install the client (which fails to find a relay), stop the client, drop a relays.dat, and then restart the client.
Using the clientsettings.cfg to prefill the relay configuration is ideal, but can get you in a situation where you either have a large number of distinct clientsettings.cfg files for each environment, or use a script to generate the clientsettings.cfg at install time. I’m using a script with ‘wget’, or you could use ‘curl’, to iterate through a relays list, try to connect to each, and generate a clientsettings.cfg based on which responds.
I tried using the TertiaryRelayList setting, but there seems to be a limit of 256 characters for a client setting so I couldn’t just put every relay in the list.
The thread I linked to was an RFE for bundling a relays.dat with the installer, vote for it if you think it’s useful for you!