Hi Mark,
Unfortunately, I don't think we've had a 32bit version for many years because Microsoft no longer put out the updates we needed to support it.
Any old versions we might have backed up somewhere would no longer function with all of the changes we've made to the service since then.
I'm one of those people that is trying to hang on to Windows 7 for as long as I can but had to go 64bit since most developers moved on as well.
@markl said in Agent Disconnected:
Hi, I have 2 agents that got disconnected this morning. I tried restarting the Echo, restarting the PC, but still it is disconnected. Can you help me please?
ID: 128664, 128694
128664
This one in Wxxx, Canada seems to have always been connected directly to the Internet and not on your LAN side. I see the PC seems to have always been connected directly to the Internet with a public IP which is dangerous.
That said, you obviously know better than I do what your intended use is so I just felt it important to mention.
128694
This one looks normal in terms of it's connection. I can see it's got private IP so is running on a PC inside your LAN/network. This one is in Vxxx, Canada.
Both seem to have stopped running today, the 27th but both look normal in every other way, sending the correct information, communicating etc then they stop.
Some thoughts I have;
Usually, when an agent stops communicating out of the blue, it means something has decided to block it.
I see the providers are different so no need to suspect if something there might have changed.
Are you using something on both PCs that might have decided to block communications between the agent and OutagesIO? Firewall, virus scanner, something along those lines is the number one thing we see that would stop the service.
While your Windows version might be a bit different, can you check to make sure something didn't block the Echo Networks service.
I tried restarting the Echo
What happened when you restarted the services? No complaints from the system or anything?
If you simply cannot find a reason for this and confirm there is nothing in your PC firewall or LAN/provider firewall that suddenly started blocking, then I would suggest trying a re-install.
Go to the dashboard of the agent, pick Manage then pick Re-install and follow the prompts in the same way as you first installed. Make sure that you uninstall any previous version just to help ensure the installer works perfectly. Make sure you have full administrator rights when you re-install the software.
Do this on both after you've checked the above and we can go from there.
Yes you are right, 128664 is connected directly to the internet with >a public IP, as I am checking whether the outage is caused by our >ISP, or by our MSP. So I agent run within our LAN, and 128664 >runs directly to the internet.
I suspected something along these lines but prefer to point them out just in case someone is not aware.
What you are trying to diagnose is exactly why OutagesIO came to life. When we offered MSP services, customers would point the finger at our managed services before thinking it might be their Internet connection. We needed a way to remotely know where and when problems were happening not only for the customer but to get help from the ISP.
I already reinstalled now, and it is working. Hopefully it will not >disconnect again.
An agent shows Inactive on average around 30 seconds of not being able to communicate. If it remains Inactive for up to 30 minutes, it will then show Disconnected.
In either of these statuses, it's best to ping something like tpw.outages.io and app.outagesio.com from the command line on the same PC before doing anything else.
This helps to see if there is a path problem or if the agent is no longer running. Restarting the service if there is an actual outage in progress will lose all of the data that the agent is keeping until it can send it to your dashboard.
We have seen plenty of cases where a firewall or virus scanner or even a physical firewall will block the agent after a while but not initially making things a bit more confusing.
We've also seen software conflicts so I hope you aren't experiencing any of those things as they are hard to diagnose.
Keep us in the loop please.
Hi,
I just checked and now the status is back.
Yes, this is because we sent it another reboot command to see if would do the same thing again and it didn't.
What you are seeing should be addressed in the next agent version release.
Initially, we thought that the multi-threading function of the agent code which handles a number of simultaneous functions might be not sending some data now and then.
However, situations like what happened here help to confirm that what may actually be happening is that if the agent is not able to send something for what ever reason, it could give up so the data could eventually be lost if it doesn't re-try.
It is supposed to always re-try but there is something in the libraries or method we are using that somehow prevents this re-try now and then. Could even be CPU overload causing the re-try thread to be lost.
The new version should be ready to test internally this week some time. How long that testing takes depends on what we see as problems if they come up as this is a rather heavy re-write.
To be transparent, we're not trying random things, we're actually working on this in the lab.
So far, we are able to find some small things we can improve on but have not been able to replicate this. On our 2016 test, it's working non stop, the service does not get turned off. Therefore, we need you to try things on your server that we don't have access to in order to get some feedback otherwise, it's hard to help.
Right now, we could use more logs from your server so the agent developer can have some leads.
We really want to see this working for you. We think it's important because we aren't really supporting servers and maybe we should.
Most Enterprise customers use hardware agents because they don't have to deal with any of this. They install the agent, power it up, it's done. The agent self updates when and as needed and we can even troubleshoot them from remote.
We have to keep in mind that every server out there is different from others. Even if your are all the same to each other, they are not the same as other win2016 servers. Combinations of settings, software installed, countless things make every server unique.
Anyhow, we appreciate your patience and if you are willing to continue, we are working on it in the background.
Can you let me know which version specifically please.
Standard or standard with desktop or dc or dc with desktop?
Only the top-most entry is shown. So it would be interesting to see if the others have the same “fault offset”
Why don't you change the apps to admin in the properties box (compatibility tab \ run as administrator) and see if that helps.
That's great, thanks. Any more logs or information you might see that can be shared?
We're going to try testing on a 2016 here as well.
If the same key could be used, that would work but right now, I don't see how agents can be installed without a unique key as they would not know which reports to write to.
I've got it in my notes as something to bring up.
However, something like this would only be available in our Enterprise level service as the lower levels aren't really built to handle so many agents.
Hi, you could purchase one of the bundles, 6 months or one full years and those are also discounted.
I just looked into it and sure enough, Ed had moved the remainder of the package over to the new agent. Hope it all makes sense now.
Hi,
It looks like Ed was waiting for you to reply so he could take care of that for you. Let me check with him so we can get this done.
No, nothing is coming in from that agent, it is not communicating at all.
It's not possible to update agents without the keys. As I mentioned, it's because those keys are what are used to assign the software side that you install to the reports on OutagesIO.
That would be a nice idea for the Enterprise side of our service but I'm not sure how it could be done. The software still has to know which reports/member owns it.
Once we have a solid agent, it usually doesn't change much unless MS changed something that forces us to have to update.
I'll bring it up as a topic however.