Aclients (using 6.9) appear to be offline in the console

I've seen this if the Aclient is an older version than the DS. Would suggest you update the AClient first and foremost.

You might try:

KB1328



especially this query will show you the machines which did not get the upgrade...

quote:


DECLARE @version VARCHAR(10)

SET @version = '6.9.164'

USE eXpress

SELECT c.computer_name, '-c:' + n.ip FROM computer c, nic_interface n

WHERE c.aclient_ver = @version AND n.ip != '0.0.0.0' AND c.computer_id

= n.id

Thanks

Did you unchecked the 'Automatic Upgrade' for the AClient before upgrading the Console? (I think it was recommended!)

If so check it back again and wait 24 hours to see how the upgrade is going, then see if the processing of jobs is smoothier by sending to All Computers a "fake" job.

Be careful with "automatic upgrade". If you have lots of clients, and they span all over the place (across WANs), I've seen it wreak havoc on bandwidth. I enabled the upgrade and within minutes, the networking group was screaming at me...lol. I have since done the upgrades in batches of a few at a time. (I only had 500 or clients).

Excellent remarks from bhawver if your Clients are not stacked by groups by scripts or jobs etc... you could have network issues even the console could be not responding anymore for a while

quote:
Originally posted by: bhawver

Be careful with "automatic upgrade". If you have lots of clients, and they span all over the place (across WANs), I've seen it wreak havoc on bandwidth. I enabled the upgrade and within minutes, the networking group was screaming at me...lol. I have since done the upgrades in batches of a few at a time. (I only had 500 or clients).

Thanks for the tip. Where abouts do you set auto upgrade?



Cheers!

The link is in Start ---> Programs ---> Altiris ---> Deployment Solution ---> Configuration

Options

Transport Tab

Uncheck "Automatically update clients"

quote:
Originally posted by: bhawver

The link is in Start ---> Programs ---> Altiris ---> Deployment Solution ---> Configuration

Options

Transport Tab

Uncheck "Automatically update clients"

Thanks mate, will give that a shot and let you know how I get on



Cheers

Rik

Hey again,



unfortunately we're still having the same problem. Clients are still going grey for no reason. and require teh aclient to be reset to run jobs.



any other ideas?



Cheers

Rik

Also, you may want to set the clients to refresh connection after idle for x hours. This may help your problem as well. It is on the Server Connection tab of the AClient properties.

Do you have a firewall of any kind running? That might be blocking AClient communications.

We do the following to update the aclient:



Turn off automatic upgrades.



Push out the new aclient exe file to a sublfolder called "versions" under the aclient directory using NS and our package servers.



Once the aclient has been copied to all clients using package servers, we upgrade the client instantly with a two step system:



backup existing aclient to the "versions" folder

use the copy aclient to self form the local machine upgrade method.



If you install the aclient from the local machine "versions" folder, you can upgrade 2000 machines instantly. No load on the lan/wan accept for client communications.



This method also allows you to downgrade the clients in case you are forced to roll back your DS if the upgrade fails for some reason. Just use the backup file you created before upgrading to 6.9 SP1 MR1 Aclient.exe



-@ltirisDude