Basic trouble shooting for ULM agent 8.x
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Basic trouble shooting for ULM agent 8.x

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Article ID: 179839

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Updated On:

Products

IT Management Suite Client Management Suite Server Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

How do I do basic troubleshooting if sending basic inventory or other ULM agent processes fail in Symantec Management Platform 8.x?

Environment

ITMS 8.x

Resolution

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 aux | grep aex

You should see at least 2 or more aex-pluginmanag services

Note: More than two processes are normal on certain OS versions. Run 'ps -ejH | grep aex' 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 policies:

     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 information. By default, the logging routines are set to only log errors. If no errors have occurred, the logs will be empty. To view the log files directly, they are located in /opt/altiris/notification/nsagent/var and are named aex-client.log. 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 *

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

 

For additional commands, see "NS Agent for Unix, Linux and Macintosh commands and command-line parameters"