Cannot retrieve the software version information for the following hosts: 127.0.0.1

Products

• Messaging Gateway

Issue/Introduction

When navigating to the Status -> Hosts -> Software and Services tab, you see the following message:

This does not affect message scanning but, in some situations if unresolved, can result in lost statistics data and a failure to alert administrators of other potentially service impacting issues.

Cannot retrieve the software version information for the following hosts: 127.0.0.1

Cause

This occurs when the Control Center is unable to communicate with the scanner or the scanner is unable to connect to the Symantec software update site.

If the agent service shows as Stopped, the error is the result of being unable to communicate with the scanner host on the expected port and is usually caused by one of the following circumstances:

• The agent service is stopped on the scanner appliance
• There is no network connectivity between the Control Center and the scanner appliance
• The scanner appliance is shut down or otherwise offline

If the agent service shows Running, the issue is the result of the scanner being unable to communicate with the Symantec software update website or, if a proxy server has been configured, with the proxy server.

Resolution

You can identify the source of the issue via the following procedure:

1. Log into the scanner CLI via SSH and restart the agent service via the following command:
   'service agent restart'
2. Log into the Control Center CLI and confirm that it can connect to the agent port via the following command:
   'telnet <IP Address> 41002'
3. If you cannot connect to the agent port on the appliance, visually confirm that the appliance is powered on and conneced to the network.
4. If the appliance is powered on but you cannot connect to the agent port from the Control Center you will need to consult with your network administration staff to diagnose connectivity issues between the Control Center appliance and the scanner host.

Example

vm-sbg> service agent restart
Stopping Symantec Brightmail Gateway Agent: Process does not appear to be running.    [FAILED]
Starting Symantec Brightmail Gateway Agent:                [  OK  ]
vm-sbg> telnet 127.0.0.1 41002
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to 127.0.0.1.
Escape character is '^]'.
^]
telnet> quit
Connection closed. 

If the you can establish a connection to the agent service on the target host, you will need to confirm that the scanner host can connect to the Symantec software update website at https://swupdate.brightmail.com or to the configured proxy server.

1. Log into the scanner CLI via SSH
2. Confirm that it can connect to the Symantec software update site via the following command:
   'telnet swupdate.brightmail.com 443'

If you are using a proxy server for ruleset downloads, confirm that the proxy server is running and can connect to swupdate.brightmail.com on port 443.