One or two agents unable to update configuration, send basic inventory, or receive policies and tasks

Products

• IT Management Suite
• Client Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

Customer seeing one or two machines unable to send Basic Inventory, update configuration, or receive polices and tasks.

If the agent is reinstalled, an initial connection is made to the SMP but the same behavior is noticed.

No other Symantec Management Agents exhibit this behavior, including computers on/off domain and in the same network location.

Agent logs contain repeated failed attempts to connect to the SMP for client task servers and persistent settings:

/altiris/TaskManagement/CTAgent/GetClientTaskServers.aspx 
/altiris/TaskManagement/CTAgent/PersistentSettings.aspx
Error type: HTTP error 
Error code: HTTP status 401: The request requires user authentication (0x8FA10191) 
Error note: Authentication failed, server refused to authenticate with the provided credentials or the user account is locked 

Environment

8.6 RU3

Cause

In one example of this issue, the computer records for the two problematic agents had been migrated from another environment and were corrupt. It is unclear what corruption had occurred with the record.

Resolution

Deleting the two computers from the console (Manage > Computers) and allowing the agent to re-register solved the problem.

Deleting computers and other records from the console isn't always recommended and should be done with an understanding that stored information about the record will be removed from the database permanently.

In this case, the old record wasn't of value and could be safely deleted. However, this should be done at your own risk