[sims] SOLUS3 Nightmares

[Ecclesbury]

I've joined the SOLUS3 bandwagon late, but that doesn't mean I get to miss out on the horrors it has in store.

 

A quick query while I wait from Capita to get back to me. This morning I've suddenly had a handful of machines that tell me that the agent is offline when I know that it isn't and when I check the agent status I get the old "The agent actively refused it" message.

 

A quick google tells me to run the EESUprgade.exe but this was 2 years ago and the link is now broken.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[neilenormal]

restart the agent service on the affected PC? Has a firewall been turned on (mysteriously? and without reason!!)

[neilenormal]

Oh and check DNS for the affected ones?

[Rawns]

Check DNS and firewall. They are the two main causes of a communication failure between device and server. If you disable firewall globally, chkec its off, otherwise ensure the correct port exceptions are configured to allow traffic through.

[Ecclesbury]

This is what happens when a school's IT team is too small, so the management of the SIMS server is given to a data manager (me) with hardly any IT experience!

 

I'm afraid I don't really know what you mean by "Check DNS" but I will get the Network Manager to check those things.

 

Just for a bit more detail, I checked a machine affected and the SOLUS3 Agent serviced had stopped. When I tried to restart it wouldn't happen and just gave me an error message (which I didn't write down!)

 

Uninstalling the agent from the machine, then removing from the DE in SOLUS3 and re-adding the computer fixed the problem for that machine.

 

That is going to be a nightmare to do every time, so if anyone has any other thoughts for a more permenant fix that would be great.

[neilenormal]

Sounds very much like DNS error to me as when re-installing it picked up the correct record. Is it a laptop that connects wirelessly and with an Ethernet cable? I had one yesterday similarly and when I corrected the DNS record to be the correct IP address the agent appeared as online again.

[Ecclesbury]

It's actually mainly desktop PCs that this is affecting, although some laptops as well.

 

If it's not too much to ask could you give me a Dummies guide to how I might sort the DNS issue that you describe? It might give me something to go on.

 

The extent of what I know has already been tried. i.e. I did an ipconfig /flushdns on the SIMS server!

 

EDIT: Had a little play and pinged the name of one of the machines that is affected to find out the IP address. When I then tried to ping the IP address the request timed out. How would I resolve that?

 

Apologies for turning this into a Compooters for Dummies - Lesson 1 thread.

[Ecclesbury]

You'll have to excuse me, I'm having a small melt down over here. You can ignore that rubbish about pinging the IP timing out...turns out I just can't type a number properly.

 

Still not got to the bottom of this one. It seems to be possibly a permissions thing, since SOLUS is finding the machines OK, and they can be pinged from the server but the Agent services are stopping on the machines and they can't be re-started either by a domain user or a domain admin.

 

Absolute nightmare. I have done nothing but this all day.

 

I'm not even going to talk about the fact that I can't update SIMS on our door control server...which isn't part of the domain.

Edited September 26, 2013 by Ecclesbury

[mavhc]

There's a log file in C:\Program Files (x86)\SIMS\SOLUS 3\Agent on the client machines that might help

[Cache]

You'll have to excuse me, I'm having a small melt down over here. You can ignore that rubbish about pinging the IP timing out...turns out I just can't type a number properly.

 

Still not got to the bottom of this one. It seems to be possibly a permissions thing, since SOLUS is finding the machines OK, and they can be pinged from the server but the Agent services are stopping on the machines and they can't be re-started either by a domain user or a domain admin.

 

Absolute nightmare. I have done nothing but this all day.

 

I'm not even going to talk about the fact that I can't update SIMS on our door control server...which isn't part of the domain.

 

Not part of the domain, but must be connected to the network in order to have SIMS on.

 

What you need to do for this is on your Solus3 Console is export the Agent Installer which is listed under the System Settings screen. You can then take this and run the Solus3AgentInstaller.bat file on your Door control server which will install the Solus3 agent and register it in Solus 3. If you then go back to Solus3 Agents and then your Deployment Environment, find SIMS Workstation and Select a Computer, Add and from the left hand side choose Browse Agent Computers which should then list your Door Control machine in there.

[Ecclesbury]

Thanks for that Cache.

 

We got that far already I'm afraid. The server in question is connected to the network, just not part of the main domain. We managed to install the Agent on it, but this did not make it automatically appear in the list of agent computers in SOLUS3. We could add the computer manually as a network computer by searching for it's IP address only and SOLUS3 resolved the name but despite this we can't get SOLUS3 to recognise the agent already installed or install the agent remotely.

 

After adding the computer manually as above it is listed in the deployment environment but without an agent version, and checking the agent status give a "Could not find IP address" error.

[Cache]

Thanks for that Cache.

 

We got that far already I'm afraid. The server in question is connected to the network, just not part of the main domain. We managed to install the Agent on it, but this did not make it automatically appear in the list of agent computers in SOLUS3. We could add the computer manually as a network computer by searching for it's IP address only and SOLUS3 resolved the name but despite this we can't get SOLUS3 to recognise the agent already installed or install the agent remotely.

 

After adding the computer manually as above it is listed in the deployment environment but without an agent version, and checking the agent status give a "Could not find IP address" error.

 

Ok, that means that the agent, although installed, didn't register correctly within Solus3.

 

What I would do is remove the computer from Solus3 that doesn't have an agent version and uninstall the agent on the Door Control server.

 

You mention you can ping the IP address, can you ping the computer name for one of your desktop computers (Solus3 works off the computer name, looking that up in DNS to get the IP Address).

 

The fact that all your agents are appearing offline and that the Door Control Server didn't register the manual agent install suggests something isn't right somewhere. Are you sure the required firewall ports are open on both the server and clients?

 

Regarding the Solus3 Service not starting on some machines, I've had this a couple of times, I've got one which I still haven't fixed, the majority though I've managed to manually reinstall the agent on the computer by opening a command prompt and changing the directory to the exported agent installer. From there manually running the command

msiexec /lv* c:\solus3install.log /i SOLUS3AgentInstaller_x86.msi

and using the values from the .bat file to fill in the prompts or just repairing the installation has resolved most of them. I've only needed to do this since the 3.6.92 version was released, do you know which version you are running?

[Ecclesbury]

Thanks for you help everyone.

 

I got to the bottom of the non-domain server issue. I was just not careful enough when manually installing the agent...a compbination of errors, but the final one was using the domain name of the server rather than the IP address in the batch file. Changing this sorted it out, which was nice.

 

The issue with machines stopping the service is still a mystery. I have been been able to fix each machine by uninstalling the agent and re-doing the whole thing through SOLUS3, but this has meant I have spent the last 2 days solid running from machine to machine and fending off angry teachers. NOT ideal. I'll leave this one with Capita for now. I'm dreading the next upgrade though!

 

Hopefully the final question on this from me: How would I go about updating our PX server database, given that it wasn't upgraded in the initial deployment? I have an agent installed on the server now, and targets for a SIMS SQL Server, SIMS Database and SIMS workstation. I can easily upgrade the SQL server version and the SIMS workstation by re-deploying the original upgrade. However, I don't seem to be able to update the Database version...there is no option to re-deploy this? Any ideas?

 

Big thanks again.

[Rawns]

Hopefully the final question on this from me: How would I go about updating our PX server database, given that it wasn't upgraded in the initial deployment? I have an agent installed on the server now, and targets for a SIMS SQL Server, SIMS Database and SIMS workstation. I can easily upgrade the SQL server version and the SIMS workstation by re-deploying the original upgrade. However, I don't seem to be able to update the Database version...there is no option to re-deploy this? Any ideas?

 

Big thanks again.

 

With the database, there is no option to "redeploy", you just have to deploy the FULL SIMS Summer 2 package and it will go though each system and skip any that are already upgraded. It should also upgrade your PX database if it's on an older version and defined in SOLUS3.

Edited September 30, 2013 by Rawns

[Ecclesbury]

Spot on, thanks Rawns!

 

I suspected that might be the case. So presumably I can happily deploy the full upgrade without it impacting on users?

[Ecclesbury]

Apologies, this really does seem never ending at the moment!

 

I tried deploying the summer 2 release directly from 'Manage Updates' this morning, but got the error message "Error SIMS 2013 Summer 2 (7.153.10) cannot be deployed as the version of SIMS database is less than the required version of 3.61.901.0.

 

However, SOLUS still happily does some upgrading but I get another error message in the UI that says "Unable to create deployment plan because not all targets are at the required version." Running this upgraded the Monitor server workstation, but not the database.

 

Any ideas?

[Rawns]

It sounds like SOLUS3 cannot get the versions of all the SIMS server targets (Database, SQL Server, DMS etc). In the Agents list, highlight the server and click on 'View Agent Details' There should be version numbers for everything except the SIMS File Server.

[Ecclesbury]

Hi Rawns,

 

On our main SIMS server we have version numbers for everything except the SIMS DMS and SIMS File Server. We have 2 databases on this server and both are on version 3.61.901

 

However, on the PX monitor server the SIMS database version is currently blank. I have no file server Target on this server...should I?

 

I'm wondering whether a complete un-intall and re-insall of the agent and target types on the PX server, and then attempt another full deployment of the summer release might be on the cards?

[Rawns]

Yes, your PX SIMS Database should have a version returned. That's why it won't upgrade then as SOLUS3 has no idea what version it's currently on.

 

If it can't return a version, it's usually because either the path to the SQL binn folder in SOLUS3 is incorrect, or when you added the database into SOLUS3, the SA password was incorrect. Check those things and then manually request a target version check. Once it returns the version number, you should be able to go ahead with the deployment.

Edited October 1, 2013 by Rawns

[Ecclesbury]

Thanks again Rawns, you really are saving my life!

 

Now this sounds like a really stupid question, but how would I go about resetting the SA password? I'm looking at our standard SIMS database in system manager and I can't see a username sa anywhere, even though that is the username listed in SOLUS 3 for this user. I can't see it in System Manager 6 either? Am I being dense?

[Ecclesbury]

Am I being dense?

 

Yes, yes I am. sa is a SQL server login, not a SIMS.net user.

 

I figuered out the sa password for the monitor server so didn't have to reset it and changed the credentials on SOLUS3, re-deployed the whole update and bob's your uncle...upgraded Monitor.

 

Big thanks for your help Rawns and others.

 

Still don't know why the agents are stopping.

[Rawns]

Yes, yes I am. sa is a SQL server login, not a SIMS.net user.

 

I figuered out the sa password for the monitor server so didn't have to reset it and changed the credentials on SOLUS3, re-deployed the whole update and bob's your uncle...upgraded Monitor.

 

Big thanks for your help Rawns and others.

 

Still don't know why the agents are stopping.

 

Glad you got there in the end. SOLUS3 can be a right PITA sometimes! Let us know how you get on re: solus 3 agents stopping. Can't say I've seen it happen before. Anything in event log on the workstations in question?