Deployment Solution 6.9 SP1 Released

I just installed 6.9 sp1 (an upgrade from 6.9), and we are seeing both cpu's on our server pegged. It looks like axengine.exe is the culprit. Is anyone else seeing this?

Nothing Here I'm afraid CPU's are fine I upgraded hoping that WOL woule be stable in this release oh how wrong I was!!

After installation, all my settings in NS has been wipeout



Package settings, schedules, DB info...



Nice installer !

I was under the impression that sp1 would allow for the exporting of computer groups (similar to the way jobs can be exported).

Is this feature in sp1 (i can't seem to find it)?



Regarding PXE stability, this seems to be related to certain types of clients. Our PXE server is perfectly stable until we start imaging Lenovo Thinkpads. The pxe clients on these laptops consistently take down the PXE server.

Well, unfortunately I can confirm that our DS server is unusable with 6.9sp1. The server will get to a state where axengine.exe pegs both cpus and the server essentially locks up. I'm very disappointed because of all the features we're going to miss out on, but I had to revert to 6.9. Thankfully I backed up the vm before I did the upgrade.

schaffeb,

Just curious, but is the auto upgrade client option still checked? I can see that causing issues if all the clients are getting DAgent. Also, can you try capturing and posting some of the Engine logs?



Cheers,



Jim

Yes, Autoupdate was enabled, and seemed to be working fine. All of our clients are xp, would they get dagent or aclient?



I can probably pull a log file. Where's the axengine log file located?

If I read the notes right, everyone gets DAgent. So this would, depending on your clients, result in alot of extra processing (which is why I try to keep from having it enabled after first upgrading). The aexengine log has to be enabled from the control panel deployment server. You can then tell the app where to create the file.

Is there something more intensive about dagent versus aclient? We've never had any problems with mass autoupgrades before like this.



At some point I'll see if I can put the 6.9sp1 server back in production, unfortunately I can't do it at the moment.

quote:
Originally posted by: PleKy

After installation, all my settings in NS has been wipeout



Package settings, schedules, DB info...



Nice installer !

PleKy,

Just curious by what you mean. The two apps (NS and DS) are separate, unless you are referring to the DS solution for NS. In that case you will have to a rescrape everything.



Can you provide more information?



Jim

schaffeb,

I just think that a big switchover in agents causes a storm of traffic. I haven't done many upgrades, but I know I'll be doing alot, so I'll keep my eyes open.



Jim

I noticed a similar issue following our DS 6.9 SP1 upgrade with Axengine.exe consuming ~100% CPU. I have agent autoupdate disabled, but the 6.9.356 hotfix installer enabled it on it's own and that resulted in over 1000 agent update jobs being automatically scheduled.



Did you install the Dagent 6.9.356 hotfix via Altiris' installer?

At the time I did our upgrade, I believe I had installed the Dagent 6.9.355 hotfix and I was using autoupdate.



Like I said before, I've never experienced any issues with large scale updates of aclient. Additionally, the autoupdate feature does a nice job of staggering updates among clients. I wouldn't think that there would ever be a storm from the clients.



I hope there's some way around this cpu pegging problem, because 6.9sp1 has a lot of nice features we'd really like to use.

Phil Aitman,



About your WOL:

It is well worth contacting Altiris Support about your WOL issues. To help capture what is going wrong with axengine, turn up your engine logging to level 5, and then increase the log file to 400MB while you capture a WOL event failing. Turning on Agent Comms logging is also essential.



Altiris Support appear to be under the impression that WOL is stable, and nicely behaved. If you have problems, use Altiris Support. They are 'free' now -assuming you've renewed the maintenance!



I'll also put out a general post on the forum for WOL issues, so people who have general issues with WOL can add to that post.



Kind Regards,

Ian./

Jim,



I use both DS and NS. NS is used to push DS client/agent (not the best part of deployment solution).



Both the two also synchronize their DB (see all the entries in NS configuration tab).



All those settings, including collections are removed when you do the update from 6.9 to 6.9SP1



Regards,

PleKy

I'm familiar with the DS solution, and don't care for it. As this is a family orientated website, I'll keep my true feelings masked. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but I don't install the NS based solution, unless it is 100% required.



Now that my soapbox has been crushed underneath all that complaining, I will say that I would totally expect what you saw by the upgrade. If you do a rescrape of the DS database, it should populate the data again. *Should* being the operative word.

We have recently upgraded from Version 6.8 to 6.9SP1 and none of the PXE servers are autoupdating in the PXE Configuration Utility.



As soon as I restart thr the PXE Helper Service the entry populates.



If I reboot the server the PXE Configuration Utility is empty again apart from the master.



THe restating the helper service initiates a re-population.



Did I miss some switch in the new release ?



Thanks in advance for any help

After installing 6.9 SP1 we have a problem with the ASDK, we can not retrieve any information from the database through the webservices, the ASDK is 1.4.108.



Anyone knows if there is a problem with ASDK 1.4 and DS 6.9 SP1?

Hi Guys,



I'm trying to install 6.9. I've only had experience with 6.5 and my install for that worked fine. However, I'm having trouble finding decent documentation on how to correctly do a clean install of 6.9. Specifically, I'm not sure what works best for an SQL. I tried installing this but just got all kinds of SQL errors. I tried installing it with SQL Express 2005. Can someone help me out with some documentation?

We are putting up new Altiris hardware and had 6.9 without SP1 on it and it was working fine, however before it went to prod we upgraded to SP1. Now we are getting a boot error decribed in the following KB.



Article ID: 44281



KNOWN ISSUE: WinPE 2.1 boot fails with ''Windows failed to start'' error



The article has you replace the BStrap.0 file for a fix, and it has a paragraph that says that if the target was once in the DS that this same error would occur if the target box was deleted from DS. One piece of information was not removed and this was the DS Primary Lookup key mask.



But there is no info on how to fix this issue. Any thoughts, or do we just go back to 6.9.



Thanks

There are two options, which I believe the article spells out. Replace the bootstrap file and recompile or select more than one type of lookup key.

We have replaced the bootstrap files and recompiled and we have the same error.



The Pxe log shows that the GETPXEClient record is failing for SN





5] (5368): Enter: ClientLookUp( ... )

(5368)GetPXEClientRecord: success (id=10BE210)(key=001B787460DE)(type=1)(dsmask=0x04)

(5368)GetPXEClientRecord: success (id=10BE210)(key={33313134-3737-5355-4537-32344E38354D})(type=2)(dsmask=0x04)

(5368)GetPXEClientRecord: Lookup: failed. (key=*)(mask=0x10)



What file holds The ClientLookup records

Ok. Did you check something else in addition to serial number? I usually use serial number for all my scripts, however I had to check MAC Address (for example) and the issue went away. I still don't use MAC Address for anything, it's just checked.

I did check UUID and MAC, but until I unchecked out SN it would error. After SN is unchecked it was fine, but I then again checked SN and it failed . All of our scripts are also tied to SN.



Any other ideas.



Thanks

Hi,



Is there a way to download and apply just the Service pack?

The way we do with NS...550MB is a lot to download when we just what to upgrade from 6.9 to 6.9Sp1

There is no stand alone pack. For both NS and DS, when upgrading the core solutions at a service pack level (not hot-fix, or hot-fix roll-up) you are essentially removing the old version and installing the new.

Does this version support Windows 2008 and SQL 2008?