ColinHardie asked a question.
What is the default behaviour of the Mac agent scanning schedule
Reviewing the default schedule of the Mac OS agent I can see that this is controlled by the file /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.snowsoftware.Inventory.plist. Assuming we do not ask Snow to package this with a different scanning schedule, this will kick off at 9am. My question is what happens if the user/machine is not online/on at this time. Say they switch their machine on at 10am, will the agent retrospectively run a scan/send for that day?
I ask as a number of our Mac's are not reporting in regularly and I'm trying to get to the bottom of why this is.
Hi Colin,
As far as I am aware the agent should behave the same way on a Mac as on Windows. if the machine is not on at the time of scanning the next time the computer is switched on the agent verifies the local date:time v. Date:time to scan and it will perform the scan at that point.
Hi, upon reading the LaunchD notes from which the agent list relies on, the inventory LaunchDaemon (com.snowsoftware.Inventory) has a StartCalenderInterval defined e.g.
<dict>
<key>Hour</key>
<integer>9</integer>
<key>Minute</key>
<integer>0</integer>
</dict>
..and the documentation appears to back up what you say e.g.
...however when reviewing this post (and some limited testing by myself of starting my Mac at 10am), I note that the behaviour of shutting the machine down will mean that the job is NOT run when switched on (and scheduled time is missed). This differs completely from the Windows agent that also allows randomisation of when the scan takes place, as defined by the Windows only configuration element Schedule...
Hi Colin,
please check on those Mac's if they have multiple .snowpacks stored? We have this issue going on for some time now (also on Windows) where sometimes a .snowpack can not be send to our Gateway server and this holds all next generated .snowpacks from sending too... Snow is working on this together with us but it's hard to find the root cause.
For now we run a little script daily which deletes .snowpack files from C:\Program Files\Snow Software\Inventory\Agent\data (Windows) and /opt/snow/data (Mac OS) when they are there. That way a correct .snowpack can be send again next time.
Regards,
Gert-Jan.
Hi Gert-Jan,
Any definitive update on the issue around Mac agents not reporting in? Was it related to number of snowpack files? Something else? I'm still having this issue (seeing heartbeat but no inventory).
Thanks
Colin
Hi Colin,
we had an issue on our firewall which caused this issue, sometimes... . But i still notice some - far less- MacBooks indeed with a recent heartbeat but no recent Last scanned date. So it looks like the issue your having too.
Regards,
Gert-Jan.