Agent Policy download ‘Hostname lookup failed’

[wernerb]

Hi Community,

This is maybe a dumb question…

We have installed an agent on a Windows 7 device.

Before we installed the agent, we tested that communication is up to the beacon.

1. We did a ping to the beacon worked 100%

2. We did and NSLOOKUP to IP and Name and FQDN all worked 100%

3. We also tested via web browser testing the ManageSoftDL and RL, Worked 100%

We get an error when the agent is trying to connect to the beacon ‘Hostname lookup failed’

a. We have tested with IP and FQDN.

NOTE: Both the device and the beacon is on the same domain.

I did flush DNS on this device and tested the above again and no change, did anyone else have this issue before?

[bmaudlin]

Hey,

In the agent logs, on the installer.log file can you confirm the agent is trying to connect to the correct FQDN to download the FNMS policy?

As if all other checks are working, it may be an issue with the configuration file.

Ben

[winvarma]

Hi @wernerb 

Verify the installation logs as suggested by @bmaudlin and if everything is intact with the configuration file go through below procedure. if you are using a cloud version of FNMS( with on-prem beacon), then the communication to the clients and the inventory beacon(assuming that your FlexNet Beacon version is 2017 R1 or later) is forced to happen via only TLS 1.1/1.2 and since the  windows 7 version doesn't support TLS 1.1/1.2 Protocols we may have to add the registry keys as suggested in the below link.

https://community.flexera.com/xtqzp85664/attachments/xtqzp85664/FNMS-Discussion/1594/1/FNMS%20configure%20TLS%201.1%201.2.pdf

Please check and try if the conditions matches.

[wernerb]

Thank you for the reply,

I have verified all the logs etc...

I'm doing a manual  policy download using the '-o downloadrooturl: http://beacon.name/managesoftdl'

for the above, I have used both FQDN and IP both the same result

This is on-prem 2019 R1 and the agent will only use port 80

[statler]

Hi Werner,

Sorry in case I'm beating a dead cow:

The syntax for triggering a download of the policy from a Beacon to a client computer is:

mgsPolicy -t machine -o DownloadROOTURL=http://beacon.name/ManageSoftDL

Case generally does not matter when running this command. Can you check the following please:

• You are using an equal sign ("=") - no colon (:) when running the command?
• The "mgsPolicy" command is triggered from an Administrator command window?

[bmaudlin]

Hey,

So to confirm that when the logs were verified the agent is trying to connect to the beacon, and the default configuration is not being used.

If the default configuration is being used - it looks something like this:

Thu Jul 11 13:08:35 2019 (N, 2)] {12120} Prioritizing download servers
[Thu Jul 11 13:08:35 2019 (N, 2)] {12120} Starting to prioritize servers from "HKLM\Software\ManageSoft Corp\ManageSoft\Common\DownloadSettings"
[Thu Jul 11 13:08:35 2019 (N, 2)] {12120} Applying prioritization algorithm "MgsRandom" with parameters ""
[Thu Jul 11 13:08:35 2019 (N, 2)] {12120} Applying prioritization algorithm "MgsPing" with parameters ""
[Thu Jul 11 13:08:35 2019 (N, 2)] {12120} Applying prioritization algorithm "MgsADSiteMatch" with parameters ""
[Thu Jul 11 13:08:35 2019 (N, 2)] {12120} SelectorAlgorithm "MgsADSiteMatch" could not be loaded
[Thu Jul 11 13:08:35 2019 (N, 2)] {12120} ERROR: Could not successfully prioritize servers
[Thu Jul 11 13:08:36 2019 (G, 0)] {12120}
 

Can you also confirm which server os version you're running on the Flexera beacon, at a guess I'm guessing that Windows 7 by default has TLS switched off, and Windows Server 2012 or newer has TLS switched on by default.

Please note: TLS is different to SSL and requiring the agent to communicate on port 443 rather than 80.

With the manual policy download are you trying to run that via command prompt? As for this testing I would test either using Windows or cmd line but just using the following parameters - mgspolicy -t machine

Ben

[adrian_ritz1]

Hi,

Just encountered the same error on my customer and what I did was the following:

When you deploy the agent, the registry key will be populated regardless if the beacon is reachable or not. In my infra we have several beacon and from the server the beacon from the config file was not reachable. We modified the registry key to point to the right beacon and run mgspolicy -t machine to force the agent to deploy again the policy from the right beacon.

And when we run this, we encounter the error with the Host name lookup failed, we tested the dns, nslookup, ping, port etc, all was ok, when we notice that the name from registry was wrong, we had .. in the name.

So please double check the settings from registry and double check the name of the beacon server.

I hope you will solve your issue.

Adrian Ritz

[mfranz]

Hi all,

in such scenarios, you might want to consider providing multiple Beacon connections during the agent installation: https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-Forum/FNMS-Inventory-Agent-Deployment/m-p/97436/highlight/true#M581

Best regards,

Markward

[adrian_ritz1]

Hi Markward,

Thank you for your answer, I will take this into consideration and I will search how can I implement this.

[wernerb]

to re-phrase the challenge,  we only have one beacon in the area not multiple.

Beacon name: beaconsrv.domain1.com

Device where the agent is installed on Name: device123@domain1.com

Device where the agent is installed on Name what was tested:

Website via Internet Explorer: http://beaconsrv.domain1.com/ManageSoftDL/test

and was successful which means the connection is there and there are no DNS issues.

but when the agent tries to connect we get 'Host Name lookup failed' which refers to DNS issues?

[adrian_ritz1]

Hi,

Did you check the registry on the server that is not working?

Hkey_local_machine->Software->Wow6432Node->Managesoft Corp->ManageSoft->Common->DownloadSettings->BootStrap Server 1

There are the settings for the beacon server

check the host (copy paste it to the IE and see if it get resolved)

Checked the Port to be right one and the protocol

[wernerb]

hi yes i did check that, it is the exact same server beaconsrv.domain1.com

[ChrisG]

---

Device where the agent is installed on Name what was tested:

Website via Internet Explorer: http://beaconsrv.domain1.com/ManageSoftDL/test

and was successful which means the connection is there and there are no DNS issues.

but when the agent tries to connect we get 'Host Name lookup failed' which refers to DNS issues?

Is it possible that Internet Explorer is configured to use a web proxy when accessing the beacon, but the FlexNet agent is not configured to use a web proxy?

If you try to run the following command in PowerShell on the client computer to test connectivity to the beacon, does this show that "TcpTestSucceeded" is "True"?

PS C:\> Test-NetConnection -Port 80 beaconsrv.domain1.com
[...]
TcpTestSucceeded : True

[JulAlx]

I had one device with exact same problem. No DNS, proxy, internet issues, etc. But the agent would still fail to retrieve its policy.

Export the following registry key from a machine with working agent and import it to the problematic one, then run the following command as admin:

Reg key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\ManageSoft Corp\ManageSoft\Common]

Command:

"%PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\ManageSoft\Policy Client\mgspolicy.exe" -t machine -o UserInteractionLevel=Quiet