Basic trouble shooting for ULM agent 6.x and 7.x

Products

• Management Platform (Formerly known as Notification Server)

Issue/Introduction

 

Resolution

Question
How do I do basic trouble shooting if sending basic inventory or other ULM agent processes fail in Notification Server 6.x or Symantec Management Platform 7.x?

Answer
Start by running the following command to determine if the agent service is running and if it is communicating with the NS/SMP server:

    aex-sendbasicinv

If it returns anything other than "Basic inventory sent to NS", then there is a problem with the agent service or with communication between the client and the NS/SMP, such as networking, port/firewall blocking, name resolution, etc.

Check to see if the aex-pluginmanag service is running by typing this command in a Linux terminal:

     ps –e | grep aex

You should see at least 2 or more aex-pluginmanag services as shown in the screen shot below:

 

Note: More than two processes is normal on certain OS versions. Run 'ps -ejH' to view them in a parent/child format. Most are child threads that are always running and consume little cpu.

If you do not see the aex-pluginmanag running you can attempt to run the service by running the following command from a command prompt:

      sudo /opt/altiris/notification/nsagent/bin/aex-pluginmanager

      or

      sudo /opt/altiris/notification/nsagent/bin/rcscript start

 

If sending basic inventory works, try refreshing polcies:

     aex-refreshpolicies

Common errors related to refreshing policies deal with timing. It may take several  minutes after sending basic inventory the first time for the NS/SMP to update all resource information related to a ULM client. The resource has to be assigned to appropriate collections/targets in order to refresh policies. Otherwise, the NS/SMP does not know what to send to the client.  

The log files may provide useful informaton. By default, the logging routines are set to only log errors. If no errors have occured, the logs will be empty. The log level can be changed. See KB# 41821 for further information. To view log information, run the following command from a shell prompt:

     aex-diagnostics –log

If there is information in the log you will see something like the following example, with actual error information between the Start Log File Dump and the End Log File Dump header and footer:

=======================

* Start Log File Dump *

=======================

ERRO 2009-05-12 10:45:23.917      *******************errors*********************

=====================

* End Log File  Dump *

=====================

 

Also, please review the related articles listed in the right-hand pane of this kb article.