Symantec Management Platform (Notification Server)

I have now started testing my agent upgrades from 7 to 7.1 and so far my first two test are complete failures.

The policy downloads to the machine and the agent starts and stops a few times but in the end it deletes AeXNSAgent.exe and removes the service to start the agent.  Then nothing else happens.  These are Agents with the entire cms agents installed.

Any ideas. 

I did not have much luck letting 7.1 take care of agent upgrades.  I ended up using a script to remove the 7.0 agent and then deployed the 7.1 agent fresh.  Luckily we have deployment solution 6.9 so I was able to leverage this for automation.  If you don't have something aside from 7.0, you could use psexec.exe to run a script remotely on computers to remove the 7.0 agent and then use the 7.1 interface to deploy the new agent (or use discovery/push).

thank you for the information I have also noticed by a support ticket this is what they recommend.

%Program Files%\Altiris\Altiris Agent\AeXAgentUtil" /Clean

Then push the agent back out.

My problem is how do I proceed with 150 other clients?  Do I try to figure out the upgrade policy?  Or do I just from 7.0 push out:

%Program Files%\Altiris\Altiris Agent\AeXAgentUtil" /Clean

Then from 7.1 push the new agent.

I don't think there is anyway in 7.1 to see who fails from the upgrade policy so really I'm starting to lean towards the task based removal and push install method instead of a policy.

Does anyone know if SP2 is supposed to fix these problems because it is supposed to be released Wednesday sometime (subject to change)?  I plan on waiting till this to deploy to my clients anyways.

I have not heard about SP2 improving any of these problems, but I personally would not put money on it.

I think you are better off trying to see if you can remove in 7.0 via a task (although I am not sure if the task would fully finish if the agent that is running it is killed...).  I would definitely do a lot of testing before trying that out.

If it doesn't work, like I mentioned, you can download a tool like PSEXEC and script it that way and have it run remotely on machines.  Barring that, you could use a loginscript to remove the old agent as well (or also install the base 7.1 agent and then let policies do the subagents or plugins or whatever they call it these days).

What a mess!!

I wanted to add 7.1 sp2 does not fix this problem.

I basically ran the uninstall policy on 7.0 for all machines but remember to exclude your current 7.0 ns box.

Then some of these uninstalls were not completly removed because they were running inventories or something during the removal so I would then run a aexagentutil /clean on those systems using psexec.

Crazy that this works as bad as it does!

Turn on policy wait a few days start checking machines to see the status of this folder:

c:\program files\altirs\altiris agent\

then either run clean or push new install from 7.1sp2.

Time consuming and crazy that I have this deployment product that can't actually upgrade itself!

Out of 150 I have about 10 left that I'm having a hard time getting users to power up.  Only took me about 3 weeks to complete!

Yeah I feel your pain (or will shortly as we're nearing our full scale migration).  I don't intend to use any built in 7.0 or 7.1 features for removing the agent.  I'll use PSExec or Deployment Solution 6.9.  I'm not sure what I'll do when I don't have that to fall back on anymore... hopefully client deployment/migration is something that they improve in the future. It really shouldn't be that hard.

I wrote a script in 7.0 that I could push as a task but you don't get any notification of completion because of the fact that the agent gets removed.

I had it also writing a entry to a text file in the script to a server but this didnt' work because I guess once the agent starts uninstalling it kills the system process running the script also.  I found this strange as I thought the script would have been able to complete with or without the agent.

Hi,

I used an script where include command line from uninstall and install agent, this file .bat I it's deployed with Active Directory.
Note: Sometimes it's reboot required.

Greetings!!!

Do you have McAfee on the clients?.... I had the problem that mcshield.exe was reading the AeXNSAgent.exe File and the Altiris Update Policy wanted to delete that file.... So the Altiris Updater just said: file is already in use, can't delete

If you havn't already, you could have a look at the Upgrading the Symantec Management Agent and the agent plug-ins topic in the Altiris™ IT Management Suite from Symantec™ Migration Guide version 7.0 to 7.1 SP2. Maybe you can find something useful there.

Nope we run SEP used to use Mcafee but use SEP now.

Erik,

I believe this is the article I followed when doing my upgrade testing.  Basically I had 95% failure rate on upgrade when it was trying to uninstall and install the new agent.  Following the exact method in that article.

I had to manually uninstall all agents myself and then do a push install.

Thanks for the information though someone may find it useful in their quest to upgrade.

jlawson,

I will have a word with support to see if they have heard about this problems from other clients too, and then see if it can be replicated. If so, then this will be a reported bug that will be added to list of things to fix for upcoming releases.

I wish i could give you a a good solution to your problem now, but I will atleast try to look in to it and see what can be done.

Erik fyi I had an open ticket with not much help regarding this.  Case 415-898-417 (agent upgrade fails...)

Remember I have completed my migration and upgrade manually so no longer a benefit for me but there is a definite issue and may help someone else.

jlawson

Yes, I just had a look at your closed ticket there. Still, as you say, I think it could be worth keeping an eye on this issue in case other customers encounter the same problems as you. At least support is aware that there is an issue with the agent upgrade.