Altiris agent not communicating back to the Notification Server

Products

• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

After doing a scripted installation, the Altiris Agent will not communicate back to the Notification Server. It was found that with the Push or Pull installation the Altiris Agent would communicate back to the Notification Server with no problems. Both methods were tested on the same computer for verification and duplicated in a separate environment.

The following error message in the agent side logs may also be present:

<event date='Jun 01 15:16:23' severity='1' hostName='machinename'
source='HttpRequest' module='AeXNetComms.dll' process='AeXNSAgent.exe'
pid='1384' thread='1448' tickCount='23607500' >
  <![CDATA[GET NTLM: Response to server challenge denied, check
credentials are correct]]> </event>

Cause

The scripted installation or any other installation method (excluding Push and Pull methods) do not place the Package Access User or the Package Access Password into the Hkey_Local_Machine / Software / Altiris / Communications registry settings without specifying parameters during the installation process.

Resolution

The scripted installation do not place the 'Package Access User' or the 'Package Access Password' into the Hkey_Local_Machine / Software / Altiris / Communications registry settings. The Push and Pull installation, by default, pulls that information and includes it as follows. The following information was pulled from the aexswdinstsvc.log file (note the accUserName and accUserPassword parameter):

c:\windows\aexswdinstsvc.exe -u "http:///NS/NSCap/bin/Win32/x86/NS Client Package/AexNSC.exe" -s SERVERNAME -w http://SERVERNAME/FQDN -nostartmenu -accUserName SERVERNAME\USERNAME -accUserPassword Ic56rZ7dILYNJskh0HX6Ozxm8fCa3mzzOi3mWw== (this is the encrypted password).

Once the accUserName and accUserPassword parameter are used, then registry keys are written and the Altiris Agent is able to communicate back to the Notification Server.

Note: There are multiple ways to add the missing values to the affected machines. One way is to create a DS job where you copy over the registrykey locally to the client machines and then run a script like this:

net stop "AexNSClient"
regedit.exe /s "C:\Temp\yourRegistryKey.reg"
net start "AexNSClient"

This is how the registrykey will look like:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Altiris\Communications]
"Package Access User"="yourDomain\yourUsername"
"Package Access Password"="LM50rZrdJrYWJpQhgXW4O3lm"
 
In order to get the right values for the 'Package Access User' and 'Package Access Password', check for one client machine that is communicating properly and copy them.

The other way to accomplish this is to use the below batch file to manually add the information to the registry

REM Write Package Access info to registry

cmd /c net stop "AexNSClient"

cmd /c reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Altiris\Communications /v "Package Access User" /d "domain/username" /t REG_SZ /f

cmd /c reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Altiris\Communications /v "Package Access Password" /d "your_password" /t REG_SZ /f

cmd /c net start "AexNSClient"

Applies To
Notification Server 6.0.6074
Altiris Agent 6.0.23xx