Differentiating between the Altiris Agent for UNIX and the Monitor Solution for UNIX services

Products

• IT Management Suite
• Monitor Solution

Issue/Introduction

How do I differentiate between the Altiris Agent (Symantec Management Agent) for UNIX and the Monitor Solution for UNIX services running on a client computer?

Environment

ITMS 7.x, 8.x

Resolution

Altiris Agent for UNIX

• The Altiris Agent is in the /opt/altiris/notification/nsagent directory. It has its own bin directory and services.
• In build 6.2, the agent’s only running service is aex-pluginmanager.bin.
• Prior to 6.2, the agent had a service called "aex-monitor," which monitored aex-pluginmanager. It had nothing to do with Monitor Solution. The aex-monitor "service" is no longer needed or used in build 6.2 of the agent.
• The Altiris Agent for UNIX has entries in the various rc*.d directories.
• If you "cat" the …/nsagent/bin/rcscript file, which is a script rather than a binary, you can see that it only works with aex-pluginmanager.
• The agent has its own uninstaller - …/nsagent/bin/aex-uninstall
• The agent log file is /opt/altiris/notification/nsagent/var/aex-client.log. The logging detail is set in the /opt/altiris/notification/nsagent/etc/client.conf file's debug_level parameter.
• The startup scripts are named 'S99altiris' and 'K99altiris'. The numeric portion of the names vary slightly by platform.

Monitor Solution for UNIX

• Monitor Solution is in the /opt/altiris/notification/monitor directory. It has its own bin directory and services.
• Monitor Solution services are
  • aex-logupload.bin
  • aex-metricprovider.bin
  • aex-appdetector.bin
• Monitor Solution has its own .../monitor/bin/rcscript file. This file is also a script. It checks for the installation path of “Altiris Monitor” and either starts aex-metricprovider (which starts the other two services) or stops/kills the three Monitor Solution services:
  • aex-metricprovider -stop >/dev/null 2>&1
  • wait_for_proc -i aex-metr 30
  • killem 9 aex-metric >/dev/null 2>&1
  • killem 9 aex-appdet >/dev/null 2>&1
  • killem 9 aex-logupl >/dev/null 2>&1
• Monitor Solution is dependent on the agent (pluginmanager) for communicating with the Notification Server.
• Monitor Solution has its own uninstaller in its bin directory - …/nsagent/bin/aex-ms-uninstall.
• Monitor solution's log file is /opt/altiris/notification/monitor/var/monitor.log.
• The startup scripts are named 'S99altirisSM' and 'K99altirisSM'. The numeric portion of the names vary slightly by platform.