Symantec Management Agent stopped sending Basic Inventory or Requesting Configuration

Products

• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

The Symantec Management Agent service is running on many machines, but it will not send Basic Inventory, or update the agent configuration even if the user manually clicks to send or update.

You have a couple of dozens of machines that their last time sending basic inventory or requesting configuration were days ago.

For example:

  

For the purpose of illustrating the process and what you may been seeing, lets say that you noticed the issue on May 12th. And the last time the agent was able to request configuration or send basic inventory was April 30th.

The agent logs shows that the agent is trying to communicate and send something on April 30th:

Entry 1:

Calling NS server endpoint 'https://SMPserver.example.com:443/altiris/NS/Agent/GetClientPolicies.aspx', ID: {GUID}
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 4/30/2020 10:39:48 PM, Tick Count: 416050859 (4.19:34:10.8590000), Size: 375 B
Process: AeXNSAgent.exe (6584), Thread ID: 4320, Module: AeXNSAgent.exe
Priority: 4, Source: Agent

 

Entry 2:

Next policy request from server SMPserver.example.com will be at 2020-04-30 23:39:48, in 60 minutes
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 4/30/2020 10:39:48 PM, Tick Count: 416051015 (4.19:34:11.0150000), Size: 337 B
Process: AeXNSAgent.exe (6584), Thread ID: 4320, Module: AeXNSAgent.exe
Priority: 4, Source: ServerSettings

 

Entry 3:

Calling NS server endpoint 'https://SMPserver.example.com:443/altiris/NS/Agent/PostEvent.asp?encrypted=1&priority=1&source=GUID', ID: {GUID}
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 4/30/2020 10:49:57 PM, Tick Count: 416660562 (4.19:44:20.5620000), Size: 433 B
Process: AeXNSAgent.exe (6584), Thread ID: 4320, Module: AeXNSAgent.exe
Priority: 4, Source: Agent

Entry 4:

Next basic inventory update will be sent to server SMPserver.example.com at 2020-04-30 23:04:57, in 15 minutes
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 4/30/2020 10:49:57 PM, Tick Count: 416660625 (4.19:44:20.6250000), Size: 348 B
Process: AeXNSAgent.exe (6584), Thread ID: 4320, Module: AeXNSAgent.exe
Priority: 4, Source: ServerSettings

After April 30th, you don't see much activity coming from "AeXNSAgent.exe" in the agent logs.

If you restart the Altiris Agent (Symantec Management Agent) service, then things go back to normal: 

• Tasks seem to be running just fine even when the client machines are in "hang" mode.
• Agent service is in a started state. It has been for many days.
• Agent Service shows as connected.
• Agent Configuration request and basic inventory dates do not change. The last date was one week ago.

Environment

ITMS 8.5 RU3

Cause

Known issue. It was found that the affected computers are deployed/imaged and receive an agent installation. Eventually, a task renames the computer to a different hostname, but the same domain.  After the computer is renamed is when this problem started to occur.

An issue was found with the renaming of computers was slowing down the domain name detection, which changes timing in a process and when the next task arrives the deadlock occurs because the previous task results are still being processed.

This issue also can be introduced if the client machine has multiple tasks running at the same time or close to each other. 

Resolution

This issue was fixed in the ITMS 8.5 RU4 release as documented in KB article CUMULATIVE POST ITMS 8.5 RU3 POINT FIXES