If you have a maintenance window, tasks won't run.  Instead, they snooze periodically until they retry during the maintenance window and succeed.

This KB may explain it in more detail:
https://kb.altiris.com/article.asp?article=49768&p=1

Is this target computer subject to a maintenance window?

Neither the server nor the target computer are subject to a maintenance window. At the same time that some jobs are put to sleep, others run successfully. The jobs that are put to sleep return a "Failed" status due to timeout after a while.

We are not using maint. windows either.  It just started happening this week.  Last week everything was fine.

- 0 / 1 child instances done. Timeout at 8/9/2010 7:58:00 PM. Will complete at 8/8/2010 4:58:00 PM if 95% of child instances are complete.
Then

Task instance Quick run on hpc12233-lpc1 (8/6/2010 10:58:00 AM) is being put to sleep until 8/6/2010 

We have a lot of these lines all of a sudden in the logs too:

Requested license for resource 'hpc12233-lpc (82d5b95b-b6b2-4303-b310-05409c5e56bf)' at '8/6/2010 3:58:00 PM' for policy 'Altiris Software Management Solution SP2 MR1 (ad3f5980-d9e9-11d3-a318-0008c7a09198)'

No tasks are running.  Anyone have a clue?  We can't even run the power scheme built in tasks.  Same error. 

Dead in the water.  Any help is appreciated.

someone in our group had changed our managed delivery settings to Allow user to turn on policy from the Altiris Agent and task agent settings to Choose the Task Server with the fewest computers currently connected

Changes in one or both fixed the problem for us.  Hope this helps anyone else having the task/sleep problem. 

Ok, just came back from vacation and will try this out.

Hi,

I had the exact same issue and used the instructions from chessdot.com. Now it works fine.

I enabled the option "Choose the Task Server to which the agent has the fastest connection" in the Task Agent Settings

Thx,

Robin

After trying different settings and going over our configurations, it seems that the issue is resolved, I will get back to it if needed.

I am bumping this to note that suddenly tasks stopped executing on my clients yesterday. I pored over the logs on the NS, task servers, and clients and noticed that the tasks were being put to sleep immediately after being logged as starting. I found this thread and changing the setting as described fixed the issue.

Is this a known bug?

I have an unfortunate update.  Tasks stropped working again yesterday after switching to "Choose the Task Server to which the agent has the fastest connection."  Now, after switching back to "Choose the Task Server with the fewest computers currently connected" has again restored functionality.

Looking at the kb article and how our environment works, I can understand how this issue may be occurring.  We have 4 task servers with no assignments.