Troubleshooting KACE 1000 client issues

I recently ran into some issues with installing the KACE 1000 client. KACE 1000 is the KACE Systems Management Appliance from Quest software.

In this example I want to push the agent to a specific client and that fails.

Check the logging

First step is to check the logging. Go to settings, Provisioning, Provisioning results. There you find the logging of the deployment tasks.

k1000_provisionerror

When you want more information you can easily click the specific task and see more details :

k1000_provisioninglog

Try installing the agent manually

You can save youreself a lot of time troubleshooting the issue when you try to install the agent manually. This way you can quickly troubleshoot the problem and often (when you have multiple clients with problems) the solution you’re going to find is also the answer for your other clients.

Go to the machine you want to install the client on. Open File Explorer and browse to the following directory:

kace1000_clientlocation.png

In my example I want to install the client on a Windows device. (There are also Linux and Mac clients)

Use the agent_msi_provision script to manually install the K1000 client. The script automatically tries to detect the K1000 server. Sometimes (due to DNS problems for example) it fails to determine the K1000 server. You can use the command line option %1 for specifying the K1000 server. So use the following command agent_msi_provision 192.168.1.41 In my example the IP address of the K1000 in the demo environment has the .41 IP Address

Wait a minute and check in the Devices windows of the K1000 for the specific client.

Check network connectivity

When that doesn’t work (the first step often doesn’t :-)) check the network connectivity. Can you ping the client <> K1000? Are the right firewall rules in place? You can decide to temporary disable the firewall (and after adding it to K1000 use the K1000 options to enable the firewall again). I don’t encourage disabling firewalls, so use this tip only for troubleshooting.

net stop wuauserv
sc config wuauserv start=disabled (to keep it disabled after a reboot)

Turn on Network discovery and turn on file and printer sharing.

k1000_networkdetection

Check sharing and security settings

The installer uses the default ADMIN$ share to connect to the client to install the software. Go to the client and browse to the \\clientname\ADMIN$ share. Can you see the files using the account you specified in the K1000 provisioning task? No? Check if the shares are available.

k1000_adminshares

User account control (UAC) must be configured in one of two ways: Turn UAC off or set user account control: run all administrators in admin approval mode to enabled.

Ofcourse the specified user in the provisioning job has to exist and has local administrator rights.

Install the client using winrm method

I found installing using the winrm service to be a quick fix for me. You can easily enable that on the provisioning task :

k1000_enablewinrm

For this to work, the winrm service has to be enabled and running :

k1000_winrmservice

Wrap up

So in a nutshell :

  1. Check the logging
  2. Try troubleshooting installing the K1000 using manually install
  3. Appropiate account? (UAC disabled?)
  4. Check network connectivity (DNS/Firewall/same domain?)
  5. Fall back to WinRm method

 

 

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