Known Issue: Agent config.ini file may become corrupted on Unix-like operating systems and cause agent operations to go haywire (IOK-930635)

[#1]

Summary

FlexNet Inventory Agent preferences in the /var/opt/managesoft/etc/config.ini file on Unix-like operating systems can intermittently and randomly end up with blank or missing values, causing the agent to stop operating correctly.

Symptoms

Common symptoms of the issue occurring on a device are:

1. Logging from various agent processes starts to appear in a file named /var/opt/managesoft/log/managesoft.log
2. Logging appearing in one or more files under the /var/opt/managesoft/log/ directory includes a message like the following:

   ***   FlexNet Manager Platform cannot access the directories describing your FlexNet Manager Platform applications.
   Please review your application directory settings.
   See log file for more details.

Other varied symptoms may also be evident, and generally involve one or more agent processes not operating as expected. For example, this might include:

1. Inventory data that is gathered in NDI files is incomplete, such as missing expected file inventory details.
2. Uploads or downloads are performed using incorrect beacon details, or are not performed at all due to beacon details not being configured.
3. The last line in log file(s) may appear to be incomplete, or contain multiple logging messages appearing on a single line.
4. The /var/opt/managesoft/etc/config.ini file has substantially different content compared to the same file from another computer that does not have problems.

Cause

This issue occurs when the filesystem containing the /var/opt/managesoft/etc directory is full (or very close to full), and a running FlexNet inventory agent process attempts to make changes to the configuration details stored in the /var/opt/managesoft/etc/config.ini file. Details in the config.ini file can be lost/corrupted due to the agent failing to robustly handle a condition when the filesystem runs out of space.

Remediation

This issue can generally be remediated on a device by re-initializing the agent configuration.

One approach to do this is to:

1. Uninstall the agent
2. Execute the following command to remove all cached agent configuration details: rm -rf /var/opt/managesoft
3. Reinstall the agent.

Alternatively, the following steps can be used to re-initialize the agent configuration without performing a re-installation:

1. Execute the following to apply default configuration settings:

   /opt/managesoft/bin/mgsconfig -i /opt/managesoft/install/default.ini

2. Execute the following to bootstrap the agent policy from an identified beacon URL:

   /opt/managesoft/bin/mgspolicy -t Machine -o DownloadRootURL=http://your-beacon/ManageSoftDL

Note that this 2nd approach will not apply any custom configuration settings which may be used in your environment, such as configuration applied by your agent installation process.

All commands above should be executed with root rights.

Fix status

This issue has been fixed in the following FlexNet Manager Suite releases: 2023 R1.3 / Sep 2023 (Cloud), 2023 R2 (On Premises)

Other information

Affected components: Agent

Master issue ID: IOK-930635

Also known as: ITAM-118

[Big_Kev]

Hello Flexera

We have seen this issue from various clients' non-windows machines. Unfortunately after talking via support we heard the root cause was not yet determined. Hence this severity of the issue can be wide on any of non-windows client machines they can just suddenly stop working...(regardless which version of Inventory agent we used , we seen this from agent version 2020 R1 - 2022 R2). 

This KB simply asking re-install the agent certainly is a way to mitigate the issue, however as we don't know when this problem can randomly & suddenly happen again. It's out of the user control and eventually present the poor quality of the product. 

Lastly SAM team requests IT team to reinstall agent repetitively for working around the issue is bad. I am wondering why this defect has been open for that long but still not able to determine the 'cause'.

I wish Flexera can invest development resource to get this defect resolve soon.

Best Regards

Kevin 

[durgeshsingh]

I agree with  Kevin comments.

[DiannaB]

This is a big issue in our environment as well, and it impacts our SLAs.  Would really appreciate it being prioritized and fixed.