Problem with agent communication profile using DNS alias
Article ID: 162990
Updated On:
Products
Issue/Introduction
A new instance of ITMS has been installed on a new server build. There is an issue with understanding how to modify the Symantec Agent Communication profile. The present profile is not linked to the SMP server name as desired. When creating a new profile and then attempt to unlink the old one, this is not working. Installing the Sym Agent on the SMP Server is not seeing itself as the new SMP Server.
The main goal is to try to hide the actual local host name and use only the DNS alias for all communications
New NS
Local hostname: SMP01main.example.com
DNS alias: smc.example.com
When the trying to modify the Agent Communication Profile to use smc.example.com for HTTPS, the SMP modifies it after the changes are saved, and it always adds the local hostname back in with the DNS alias separated by a semicolon.
Also, the "Current profile is linked to 'SMP01main.example.com' NS Server" and always shows the local host name where it shows the DNS alias on the old NS. The option to unlink or modify it seems to be grayed out and does not do anything when clicked.
Environment
ITMS 8.x
Cause
Working as designed. This use case has been reported to Symantec Development team for consideration.
Resolution
Broadcom did not consider this scenario when users would want to hide the available NS host name. Rather we tried to make the default profile to be resistant to user errors (to always hold the detected configuration in place).
In this scenario, the you do not need to remove/unlink the default SMP Server's Communication Profile. The default Sym Agent's Communication Profile has embedded “default URL” that is stored in httpdefFQDN attribute and you can’t remove it using the SMP Console UI. As you save changes, it takes this default URL and forcefully inserts it back into the profile. Other UI locations where the URL needs to be seen just take first URL from profile and build http://url/altiris using it.
So the current solution (besides changing the current behavior in the SMP Console ) is to change the XML manually, what can be a bit tricky. The suggestion is as follow:
As a field fix, the profile item state XML can be modified manually to get rid of the saved local host names so just remove them from:
httpdefFQDN="SMP01main.example.com:80"
httpsdefFQDN="SMP01main.example.com:443"
and make it look as:
httpdefFQDN=" "
httpsdefFQDN=" "
After that you will be able to specify what you want as the URL and that URL will then be shown in the UI. “Unlink” has no relation to the URLs, it is just security binding to NS for the HTTP registrations, as the tooltip says.
Additional Information
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