Some settings not propagating to clients

Avast Business Avast Distributed Network Manager
1

Hi,
Been using Avast! and ADNM for some months now and very pleased with it (have a 35 seat license that we are only using about half of at present), however I’ve just noticed an odd problem.

I added a couple of new machines to the network (remote deployed seemingly successfully) and assumed all was well (they appeared in the catalogue and were/are green and I can see the last contact time changing throughout the day) however a couple of days later I noticed they had not picked up all their settings from the AMS, and no amount of settings fiddling and ‘applying to group’ or ‘applying to computer’ on the AMS seems to make them do it. I also tried deleting all the computers from the catalogue and getting AMS to re-discover them, and that made no difference either.

Out of curiosity I removed the client (with aswclear) from one of the existing machines that appeared to be working and re-deployed, that machine is now also not picking up all it’s settings any more.

The REALLY strange thing is that certain things DO seem to be propagating, the scheduled scan ran as expected on Friday (on all machines including the stubborn ones). I changed the poll-rate to once a minute as an experiment and ALL the machines picked up the new poll-rate but the stubborn machines still didn’t change their other settings (such as password to access client settings, remote access to chest, check cds and floppies in drive when logging off, ask for update when new program available, only pause scheduled scan not stop etc. etc.)

My ADNM version is 4.7.608 running on MS SQL Server Express (on a W2KPro machine that is not running anything else, except the avast managed client)
All managed clients are at v4.7.652.0
One of the stubborn clients is on Windows 2000 Professional SP4 (fully updated)
The other is on Windows XP Proffesional SP2 (fully updated)

Nothing is in the ‘emergency’, ‘alert’, ‘critical’, ‘warning’ or ‘notice’ AMS logs,

There is general start-up info in the ‘info’ AMS log along with the ‘error’ entries below in other places, but I’m pretty sure that’s just to do with a re-boot of the AMS machine I did around that time.

AMS error log once:
30/04/2007 12:24:20 1177932260 SYSTEM 328 Database command failed [CClient::OnPop, 80004005]: [DBNETLIB][ConnectionWrite (WrapperWrite()).]General network error. Check your network documentation.
30/04/2007 12:24:20 1177932260 SYSTEM 328 Database command failed [CClient::AppendEngGroupProperty, 80004005]: [DBNETLIB][ConnectionOpen (Connect()).]SQL Server does not exist or access denied.

XP Client error log once (but not on the W2K client):
30/04/2007 12:23:54 1177932234 SYSTEM 1776 Third server conn attempt (last good: 192.168.1.6:16111) failed. (error 0000274D).
30/04/2007 12:24:03 1177932243 SYSTEM 1776 Cannot connect Server lookup didn’t find any AMS’! socket, WinSock error 0x00000000 has occurred.

I’ll carry on digging myself but if anyone else out there has any suggestions please point me in the right direction! I’m sure I must just be missing something stupid as everything had been working fine!

Thanks.
Dammon.

2

Hi, and welcome to the avast forums.

To start, please check the logs on a client that has the problem. Especially the files \data\log\error.log and warning.log. Are there any suspicious entries in there?

Thanks
Vlk

3

Hi Vlk,

Checked the logs, nothing in them on either problem client except the entries mentioned in my original post which I’m sure relate to a reboot of the server that I did at that time.

Thanks for getting back so quick!

Just checked the management console again, both clients are still green, both popped less than 5 mins ago. The client I have access to at the moment (my own machine, the XP one) is still using old settings.

P.S. Forgot to mention in my original post, the firewall on the problem XP box is disabled at the moment too (tried just it in case, made no difference) and there is no firewall on the W2K box.

4

OK, thanks.

Is the Computer Catalog laid out in groups? Are you making the changes directly on the group the machines in question reside in, or on the root? Does doing it vice versa make any difference?

5

It was laid out in groups, I tried editing the root and applying to the groups, applying to the root, applying to individual computers within the groups, none helped.

I then deleted all the machines from the Catalog and re-detected them (so they were all in the root) and tried applying to the root, and to individual machines, again no difference I’m afraid.

6

Would it be possible to get remote desktop access to one of the machines (e.g. using logmein.com)?

Thx

7

Errm, posibly!
I’ll look into it and let you know!

8

It seems like it’ll work harmlessly through our firewall, and whilst I’m usually loathed to allow electronic access into the building by anyone or anything in this circumstance it’s probably the most expedient course.

My machine seems the obvious choice (as that’s the one I’ve been experimenting with and it also has our adnm console installed on it) How do you want me to proceed??

9

Well it depends on which remote access system you’ll be using.
LogMeIn?

10

Well, that was the one you suggested, and therefore the one I checked up on :wink:

I assumed you were already set up at your end to run that one as you suggested it.

11

Randomly, I just remembered we changed the domain all our machines are in recently, would that be affecting it? (it hasn’t affected anything else, the change over went without a hitch!)

12

Unfortunately, I’m afraid I don’t have time to do it today. Can we schedule the remote session e.g. for tomorrow? Say 10am GMT?

RE rebuilding the domain: has the domain name changed? If so, do the machines in the Catalog show up with the old or new domain name? (I suppose new, since you said you have already tred to reinit the Catalog from scratch).

Thanks
Vlk

13

No problem at all, any help you can give is appreciated as this problem has me totally confused! ;D

I’ll try and be at my machine as close to 10am GMT as possible. We are on BST now (clocks forward 1 hour for ‘summer time’) so 11am for me will be 10GMT which is fine.

Regarding the domains, yes the domain name changed, but all machines show up with the new domain name in the catalogue.

14

Sounds good.

You’ll have to send me a LogMeIn “invitation” that I will accept and connect to your machine. The advantage of this solution is that it can pass thru any firewall (well, not any - but most) because it’s YOUR MACHINE that’s making the (oubound) connection to a LogMeIn’s server (and not vice versa - which is the case with classic RDP, for example).

Thanks
Vlk

15

I’ll have another look at their site to see how to do that then!
See you in about half an hour!

16

Hi, I think I’ve got everything installed and set up correctly, I just need to know what e-mail address to send the invite to!

Thanks.
Dammon.

17

Well, it’s nearly quarter past so as I don’t know how long changes to this forum take to propagate I’ll take the risk that it’s your address in your profile on here, here goes!

18

:cry:
I guess something didn’t work as I’ve heard nothing.

Suggest another day and maybe we can give it another try??

Thanks.
Dammon.

19

Sorry just sent you an email.
Can we retry now?

Thanks
Vlk

20

Thanks for all your hard work Vlk, you’re a star! ;D ;D ;D