Smoothwall IDex being very flakey

[mdrabble]

Just recently we have see issues where users are suddenly classed as default users and all access blocked.

 

The only way to resolve this is to run SendDataNow.exe from the domain controller and then waiting for a couple of mins before all working again.

 

I have idex 2.2.4.0 agent installed on both DC's

 

Anyone else noticed issues with IDex?

 

Smoothwall support just told me to schedule SendDataNow.exe to run everydata in the morning!

 

Cheers

[tdk1069]

We have constant problems with idex, I logged a call last week regarding it picking up students doing suspicious searches at gone midnight on computers we shutdown overnight. Smoothwall enabled the "log everyone out at 2am" fix in the hidden back end settings, which we know causes issues for us. Come this morning, not one single person was authenticated via idex, only our wifi radius was working.

 

Smoothwall restarted the auth service on smoothwall directly which then picked up all the logons.

 

I'm 100% expecting the same tomorrow morning

[ibpalle]

Just recently we have see issues where users are suddenly classed as default users and all access blocked.

 

This doesn't sound right - are users logged in but their group mappings are no longer showing?

 

Do you know if the Smoothwall is set to purge iDex info overnight? Go to the https://smoothwall.ip.address:441/admin/hbd and in the bottom of that page, check if purging has been set.

[ibpalle]

. Come this morning, not one single person was authenticated via idex, only our wifi radius was working.

 

The purging of iDex is not a solution as such, not for iDex info not being processed or seen. A restart of the iDex agent service can sometimes address this - setup a task on the DCs to restart the iDex service at 1am. We have a new iDex agent coming out soon.

[tdk1069]

The purging of iDex is not a solution as such, not for iDex info not being processed or seen. A restart of the iDex agent service can sometimes address this - setup a task on the DCs to restart the iDex service at 1am. We have a new iDex agent coming out soon.

 

I did try to explain that to the guy on the phone this morning. First thing I do is restart the service on the DCs but user activity still only showed radius auth's as working. We've had this on and off for a long time now. But didn't want to hi-jack the call just agreeing our idex has been rough (over 2 schools) even when it is working it does sometimes log people in on the wrong account.

 

Looking forward to a new idex agent... Now you have my hopes up!

[mrstrong]

we're also getting this i.e. users being identified as in Default users group

causing lots of issues Found this thread via searching on google!

We're on Leeds-64

I didn't install / deploy idex here so have limited knowledge on how it works.

It was recommended/installed by our LEA support as we were having issues with NTLM auth.

 

@ibpalle what is your recommended temporary workaround(s) ?

e.g. Enable daily login purge ? (we have this unchecked at moment)

you also said restart the idex service daily, what is it called as can't see idex in services.msc ?

 

Presumably smoothwall will "communicate" with LEA's when the new "idex agent" is released

and they will update it for us.

[ibpalle]

The new iDex agent has just gone live on https://software.smoothwall.com for all to download and install. We are communicating this to customers as well.

[supportman]

The new iDex agent has just gone live on https://software.smoothwall.com for all to download and install. We are communicating this to customers as well.

 

Great just installed on our DC. Seemed very smooth upgrade.

 

Has anything changed in the way it works? I didn't see a changelog.

[mrstrong]

is it just download the msi

https://software.smoothwall.com/idex-agent/IDexAgent-2.3.3.msi

and run, no need to uninstall old version ? Looks like we are currently on IDexAgent-2.2.4

[ibpalle]

Just install over the old one. No reboot needed.

 

Main fixes were issues with delivering data to the on-prem smoothwall and additional fixes for the cloud client integration.

[Griff]

So I had this yesterday all our users were getting Default User filtering. We have Ofsted today so I spent close to 4 hours last night trying to sort it out. Updated Smoothwall to latest version, installed new IDex still nothing no groups being pulled in the end I created new groups in AD and added the pupils/students and it started working. Our previous AD groups were groups of groups which probably isn't best practice but I wonder if that was causing the issue.

 

Been on Smoothwall since February not that impressed so far. From implementation to ongoing support its been poor. No communication about updates or new IDex's nothing.

[ibpalle]

iDex does have an issue with nested groups - should be partly resolved by this new updated version - in those cases, we often do what you did. Have an AD connection to manage the group mappings which works fine for iDex as well.

 

Announcing new versions of iDex and other types of supplementary software hasn't been our strong suit for sure. I always felt it could be taken as an occasion for a marketing push in some way or form. We did try mailing lists at some point, announcing new updates and blocklist changes but those mails rarely ended up in the right hands. Changes in tech crew, email was for the ones who signed the POs, not the ones that used the product and so on.

[Primus]

We've seen nest AD groups not work at all over the whole time we've been with Smoothwall so we made sure our filtering groups weren't nested as a result. This is mapping through AD but using iDEX to track user log ons etc.

[fiza]

The new iDex agent has just gone live on https://software.smoothwall.com for all to download and install. We are communicating this to customers as well.

 

We are customers but not had this information communicated to us yet.