Client are unable to download packages from the Notification Server. Restricted extension files in the package.

Products

• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

Client are unable to download packages from the Notification Server. The packagedownload stops around 85% or 98% in some cases.

 

Looking on the Agent logs, we found the following messages:

Priority: 4
Date: 8/17/2009 12:39:52 PM
Tick Count: 9185781
Host Name: ServerName
Process: AeXNSAgent.exe (1776)
Thread ID: 2128
Module: AeXNetComms.dll
Source: HttpTransfer
Description: HTTP request redirected from HTTP://servername.domain.com/Altiris/NS/NSCap/Bin/Win32/X86/HPCMS/Agent/L10N/HealthStrings.aspx.it.resx to HTTP://servername.domain.com/Altiris/NS/error.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/Altiris/NS/NSCap/Bin/Win32/X86/HPCMS/Agent/L10N/HealthStrings.aspx.it.resx

 

The download seems to be erring out when downloading this file.

Cause

In this case there were some file extensions that were not downloaded, causing the whole download to stop in certain percentage. We noticed that the download is having a hard time downloading were .resX, .vb, and .vbproj extension files.
Searching online, .resX, .vb, and .vbproj extension files are somehow blocked/restricted by IIS.

 

IIS logs showed the following entries:

2009-08-18 00:12:44 W3SVC1 10.20.200.70 HEAD /Altiris/NS/NSCap/Bin/Win32/X86/HPCMS/Agent/L10N/HealthStrings.aspx.it.resx - 80 - 10.20.22.40 - 401 5 0

2009-08-18 00:14:44 W3SVC1 10.20.200.70 HEAD /Altiris/NS/error.aspx aspxerrorpath=%2FAltiris%2FNS%2FNSCap%2FBin%2FWin32%2FX86%2FHPCMS%2FAgent%2FL10N%2FHealthStrings.aspx.it.resx 80 - 10.20.22.40 - 401 2 2148074254

***Messages from other files that were not downloaded:
2009-08-18 00:02:05 W3SVC1 10.20.200.70 HEAD /Altiris/NS/error.aspx aspxerrorpath=%2FAltiris%2FNS%2FNSCap%2FBin%2FWin32%2FX86%2FPackages%2FUIP66SP1%2Fsybase%2Fcase11510031%2FODBC%2Fsamples%2Fkerberos%2FadoKerberos.vbproj 80 CARRINGTONMS\Altiris 10.33.100.17 - 200 0 0

2009-08-18 00:02:05 W3SVC1 10.20.200.70 HEAD /Altiris/NS/error.aspx aspxerrorpath=%2FAltiris%2FNS%2FNSCap%2FBin%2FWin32%2FX86%2FPackages%2FUIP66SP1%2Fsybase%2Fcase11510031%2FODBC%2Fsamples%2Fkerberos%2FAssemblyInfo.vb 80 - 10.33.100.17 - 401 2 2148074254

2009-08-18 00:04:06 W3SVC1 10.20.200.70 HEAD /Altiris/NS/error.aspx aspxerrorpath=%2FAltiris%2FNS%2FNSCap%2FBin%2FWin32%2FX86%2FPackages%2FUIP66SP1%2Fsybase%2Fcase11510031%2FODBC%2Fsamples%2Fkerberos%2Fkerberos.resX 80 - 10.33.100.17 - 401 2 2148074254

Resolution

In this particular case customer excluded those file extensions from his package. In this way he was able to finish downloading. If you need those files in the package, search the Microsoft website for possible ways to allow in IIS those file extensions (some suggest to add those extensions to the MIME types).