Unable to communicate to robot on the DMZ Windows server (Controller: hubcall_robotup - not available if robot is not in passive mode)

Products

• DX Unified Infrastructure Management (Nimsoft / UIM)

Issue/Introduction

I'm trying to deploy the robot on the DMZ server, we opened all the firewall ports bi-directionally from the robot to the hub(vice versa), but we are still unable to connect to the robot. 

Environment

Release : 9.2.0

Component : UIM - ROBOT

Cause

- corrupt robot configuration/installation

Resolution

Problem/Symptoms: All robot probes green but only controller has port and PID but not the hdb, nor the spooler

firewall check - Enabled on the robot but not the Hub

first_probe_port = 48000 is set

controller and spooler log appears 100% clean/free of errors

On the robot we issued the command:
netstat -an|findstr "4800" (Robot IS listening on port 48000)

On the hub we issued the same command and we could see that the hub is listening on port 48002

Testing connections via telnet was not installed nor allowed on either robot or hub.

Firewall rule (inbound and outbound) was only configured for TCP but NOT UDP.

UIM (Nimsoft) Protocols for all components are TCP except for controller, hub, and spooler, which also require UDP. UDP broadcast is used for the discovery of the hub, spooler, and controller components. All other core communications are done via TCP.

Running several pu commands from hub to robot was successful

C:\Program Files (x86)\Nimsoft\bin>pu -u administrator -p Pnxxxxxx! /ABCPRD/HUB3_JAX/tjxxxxxxxxxpp/controller/controller
C:\Program Files (x86)\Nimsoft\bin>pu -u administrator -p Pnxxxxxx! /ABCPRD/HUB3_JAX/tjxxxxxxxxxpp/controller/controller gethub
C:\Program Files (x86)\Nimsoft\bin>pu -u administrator -p Pnxxxxxx! /ABCPRD/HUB3_JAX/tjxxxxxxxxxpp/controller/controller probe_verify hdb
C:\Program Files (x86)\Nimsoft\bin>pu -u administrator -p Pnxxxxxx! /ABCPRD/HUB3_JAX/tjxxxxxxxxxpp/controller probe_verify spooler

The pu commands run on the Hub TO the robot within the DMZ finished successfully without error. Hub to Robot communication worked fine.

***This v7.91 Robot incorrectly showed as 'Passive' in the IM Main window but NOT in the Hub Robots Tab view nor was the robot.cfg showing robot_mode set to passive - the parameter was not configured and setting the parameter to robot_mode = normal made no difference after restart.***

So I suggested that we uninstall the existing robot, remove the robot directory and then reinstall the robot (robot v9.20). The Robot then showed as 'Regular' and no longer as 'Passive' in IM view.

Then the controller, as well as the hdb and spooler probes had ports and PIDs and the main issue was resolved

When we tried to open the controller GUI from the IM session on the customer's desktop, we got a communication error, so we installed the Infrastructure Manager on the local Robot inside the DMZ and from there the probes opened up fine.