Macintosh clients are unable to download plug-in upgrade packages

Products

• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

Macintosh agents were suddenly unable to download package files. It was not clear what change had been made.

The agent logs contained a continual pattern similar to the following for every package that needed to be download

WARN 2019-07-05 11:45:29.619       210  123145347371008  PackageDelivery > Empty codebases from NS for package {17872B48-9792-4C23-9783-D9BFDE505FC3}.
DEBG 2019-07-05 11:45:29.620       210  123145347371008  SecureStore > Failed to load item nsagent/packages/17872B48-9792-4C23-9783-D9BFDE505FC3/package.xml: 2165571600, Cannot open file for reading
WARN 2019-07-05 11:45:29.621       210  123145347371008  PackageDelivery > There are no cached codebases, download is not possible.
WARN 2019-07-05 11:45:29.621       210  123145347371008  PackageDelivery > Failed to get package {17872B48-9792-4C23-9783-D9BFDE505FC3} codebases. Error = 2147554186
NOTE 2019-07-05 11:45:29.622       210  123145347371008  PackageDelivery > CDownloadThread::WorkerFunction: Start download failed for PKG[{17872B48-9792-4C23-9783-D9BFDE505FC3} - /opt/altiris/notification/nsagent/var/packages/{17872B48-9792-4C23-9783-D9BFDE505FC3} - {E767AC81-08D6-43F1-A295-CA56BDFE7E2E}(1)], retry later
NOTE 2019-07-05 11:45:29.622       210  123145347371008  PackageDelivery > DownloadQueue::ProcessDownloadResult: Result - -2147413110, Package - {17872B48-9792-4C23-9783-D9BFDE505FC3}
NOTE 2019-07-05 11:45:29.623       210  123145347371008  PackageDelivery > CDownloadListItem::RetryLater: Set package PKG[{17872B48-9792-4C23-9783-D9BFDE505FC3} - /opt/altiris/notification/nsagent/var/packages/{17872B48-9792-4C23-9783-D9BFDE505FC3} - {E767AC81-08D6-43F1-A295-CA56BDFE7E2E}(1)] to download one more time 96 minutes later, next retry number 6 starts 13:21:29.

The NS was giving out codebases.  A look at a profiler trace showed that the response was giving out 1-2 possible package sources to contact. But the Macintosh client was not receiving the response.

The client was getting a response from the NS but it was not in an encrypted format; therefore it was not trusted and the response was discarded

Environment

Symantec Management Platform 8.5

Cause

The following registry setting, which is used to troubleshoot GetPackageInfo requests, was set to 0 on the SMP.    

HKLM\Software\Altiris\eXpress\Notification Server\SW Delivery\  EncryptPackageInfo

This was causing the responses to be non encrypted which certain client OS security settings require.

Resolution

Set the value of EncryptPackageInfo to 1 or delete it from the registry. The SMP will default to encrypting GetPackageInfo responses.