FNMS Inventory Agent Version 22 fails to deploy

[andreidrexler]

Hi Community,

I'm facing an issue with the deployment of agents (only tried Windows at this point) for the new 22 version.

For context, I am deploying the agent with the custom package posted by @ChrisG  this link Solved: FNMS Inventory Agent Deployment - Community (flexera.com) . Using the command line to transform the file: 

msiexec.exe /i "FlexNet inventory agent.msi" TRANSFORMS="InstallFlexNetInvAgent.mst" GENERATEINVENTORY=YES APPLYPOLICY=YES BOOTSTRAPSCHEDULE="Bootstrap Machine Schedule" BOOTSTRAPFAILOVERSETTINGS="Bootstrap Failover Settings" REBOOT=ReallySuppress /l*v "%TEMP%\FlexNet inventory agent-install.log" /qb-

Everything is configured as described in Chris's description and the package worked with all other Agent versions, but for some reason it stopped working with the latest Version, 22. I've removed the /qb- part so I can see the error (See SS1 for the error I'm receiving).

After the error, the agent rolls back and the installation fails.

If we install the agent with the classic "setup.exe", using "mgssetup" config file, everything works great, the agent installs correctly and it communicates with the beacon. (But we want to deploy using the custom package because it's more reliable for us and easier to mass-deploy)

I am thinking maybe something changed with the deployment setup UI and we have to modify the cmd line?

Any ideas what might happen and how we can fix this?

[ChrisG · Accepted solution]

That old InstallFlexNetInvAgent.mst transform uses capabilities available in older versions of the agent which no longer work in the 2024 R1 (22.0) agent version. In particular, the BOOTSTRAPFAILOVERSETTINGS setting specified on the msiexec command line will not work.

You will need to avoid using that option and find another way to bootstrap beacon details - such as by specifying them in the mgssetup.ini file.

[andreidrexler]

Thank you for the insight @ChrisG, the package was very useful.

Guess I'll go back to the standard approach now 😃

[ChrisG]

One further point of clarification: I suspect the transform will still work as long as you do not specify a value for the BOOTSTRAPFAILOVERSETTINGS property on the msiexec command line. In other words, other parts of the transform's capabilities can still be used.

If anybody has the chance to test that theory and report back here whether it is correct then that would be interesting to hear.

[andreidrexler]

Hi @ChrisG ,

I've installed the agent without the BOOTSTRAPFAILOVERSETTINGS="Bootstrap Failover Settings" part of the command line. 

I can confirm it worked and the agent installed.

By the looks of the log files. The agent took the Beacon Server value from the mgssetup.ini file (DEPLOYSERVERURL = http://deployment.server.com/ManageSoftDL ).

So it looks like the command line worked in sync with the mgssetup.ini.

[adrian_ritz1]

Hello,

I have a  question, how can we deploy the agent when we have multiple beacon, because with that custom package we created only one package and put all the beacon server there also we can deploy the package even if at that moment we don't have communication with the beacon server (users not on VPN, firewall closed, certificate error on the client side), after we fix the errors the agent will start reporting automatically. 

[mfranz]

You can still use the DEPLOYSERVERURL attribute in mgssetup.ini with multiple beacon names, separated by comma.

DEPLOYSERVERURL = http://Beacon1/ManageSoftDL,https://Beacon2/ManageSoftDL

That won't bring the same bootstrapping resiliency as the "RefImpl" (2018) approach, because it doesn't create any schedules, but it's better than nothing.