KACE Product Support

Thanks for the quick feedback. It will definitely help. Glad to see some issues were resolved.
Yes, we really sped up inventory on windows 7

-- The 5.3.x agent is still NOT deleting the MI files after installation. This was an issue in the initial release of 5.3. The release notes state that it was fixed. NOTE: Support just told me that on the zip file will be deleted – not the contents of the zip or the folder.
From Support today: Any files that were downloaded to the Kace data folder for a Managed Install should be removed if that option is selected. One note to keep in mind is if a zip file is downloaded and files are extracted, the extracted files will not be deleted, only the zip file that was downloaded will be deleted.
diverdaveman1 you could use a script to clean that up or deploy the MI in a script and add a task to delete files when done. installing in a script is pretty simple. Was an enhancement /bug opened for you on that?

-- If you have an MI (Java) set to install at after logon before desktop loads and another MI (VNC) set to display a message window before installing, the MI (VNC) with the message window will popup while the MI (Java) is trying to install. Neither will install until you act on the MI (VNC) with the message window. The PC is idle while the user try’s to figure out what to do at this point.
What is your deployment order on those?


-- Bootup splash screen company name and text is all lowercase even though we have upper case characters.
I believe this is a known issue that was deferred

-- The Asset History on an Inventory item is being truncated within the GUI. The last line states: "And XX more software items found in inventory." – We need to know ALL software that was found.
If you run a report or follow the detail link is it shown there?

Thank you for your response:

diverdaveman1 you could use a script to clean that up or deploy the MI in a script and add a task to delete files when done. Installing in a script is pretty simple. Was an enhancement /bug opened for you on that?
Yes – a bug was reported - see Ticket TICK:144499
I could create a script for that, but I and others should NOT have to since this was working in other versions. Plus the fact that KACE only deletes the Zip file - if anything, it should leave the Zip file - it's has the smallest footprint vs. the actual extracted files.

What is your deployment order on those?
The deploy order is Java = 2 and VNC = 10. Should the deploy order really come into play here? I never have seen this happen in previous versions. I know the deploy order works well, but my users should not see the Pop-up window until after the desktop loads - especially when an installation is already in process.

I believe this is a known issue that was deferred
I'll be honest here: This is scary to know that something this small can't be caught in QA or beta testing. What else is like this or broke 'under the hood' that we won't see for days or weeks to come?

If you run a report or follow the detail link is it shown there?
Once again - this worked in previous versions. Why change items that are working? Our Admins should not have to run a report on every machine to find out what's in the list. KACE is really convenient to use or at least it was.

This isn't a crack on you (GillySpy) by no means - but KACE has to do much better in the QA department - look at how awesome it was prior to 5.3 and 5.3 was a known dud.

Yes, I know I'm ranting, but I have good reason to. 5.3 crippled some of our installs - that's why we're still on 5.1.

Thanks for your time,
Dave

1) MI file cleanup: i agree on the cleanup. It's easily argued that noone should be in that folder storing other things as well. some customers might argue that the zip is a transport and don't want both hanging around. But then I would say 'why not just leave the zip enabled on that computer then?'. i try to give solutions for today and tomorrow. the ticket should facilitate the "tomorrow" as I can't really do that via the forums well.
2) IMO, the deployment order should matter. If they had the same order then i could see one blocking another. or if VNC had a earlier order that would be obvious. But with your order I would say that it should not affect the Java . It appears those alerts may be asynchronous with the deployment or grouped incorrectly. I would open a ticket on that too. Make sure that bug numbers are assigned and that support gives you that number. A ticket is 6 digits long and a bug number is 5 right now (sometimes bug numbers have a letter code in front as well)
3) I think this was known before this patch but not all issues can be fixed. There will always be some open issues when a release comes out. It's an overlapping cycle of reports and fixes and releases. The 5.3 agent on windows was a complete rewrite so alot changed. This definitely opened the door for more issues to appear. Hopefully it was a new step forward, but any regression issues we default to a higher priority
4) i don't know here, this is just an educated guess, but some customers have huge assets lists so shortening it on the detail page was likely a step to speed up that particular page. Would it help if the most recent entries were shown in full but older ones had to make another request for that info?

You're not ranting, It is valuable feedback. Ranting would be post all over the place and a nonconstructive burn off of emotion and energy -- not moving forward in a constructive way. I think you are being constructive which is why I'll gladly try to address your concerns as much as I can. In I.T. it can feel like we are beating our heads against the wall and jumping from the frying pan into the fire sometimes but history will call us true optimists. I think and those that stick with a tried-and-true philosophy will survive the ebb and flow the best.

Keeping your agents on 5.1 is a valid answer for some customers. We do support the 5.1 agent running against the 5.3 server (as there was no official 5.2 agent release that is still within the two release paradigm).

-- The Asset History on an Inventory item is being truncated within the GUI. The last line states: "And XX more software items found in inventory." – We need to know ALL software that was found.


Another difference between 5.1 and 5.3 is previously one time stamped entry would show all changes collected during an inventory update in the Asset History but now they are split into two separate entries with an identical time. The top entry lists items removed and the next entry lists items found. I can live with that. The problem we are seeing is when there are many entries the last one is teasing us that more items could be listed but aren't.

Here's a sample of what was displayed when there were too many entries in one Asset History entry. I don't know how many items found or removed will cause this anomaly. This was on server 5.3.47927 but apparently is still in 5.3.53177.

37 items were listed as removed (only the last 3 entries are shown in this sample) for a total of 54 items removed:

... (34 other items were listed as removed)
Software item Adobe Shockwave Player 11.6 11.6.0.626 removed from inventory.
Software item Adobe Flash Player 10 Plugin 10.3.183.10 removed from inventory.
Software item Adobe Flash Player 10 ActiveX 10.3.183.10 removed from inventory.
And -27 more software items removed from inventory.

The link to "Show All History" shows other information but not the missing details about the other 27 items.

This was also discussed before: http://itninja.com/question/update-existing-office-2003-installation-with-additional-feature6

Issue 1733 is fixed. Adding a DWORD registry value works on the new agent.
Issue 1754 does not appear to be fixed. Still not picking up Uninstall strings.

I have noticed the inventory performance improvement too.

I never got a bug number but was told the problem I described in TICK:170167 would be fixed with the next patch. With 5.3.53177 do User Alert dialogs obey the user's choice to either Cancel or Sleep? This is broken for me on server v5.3.47927 and client v5.3.47657. I had to disable the user alert dialogs for shutdown scripts. Without a KBOX alert users on Windows 7 are not seeing the little flashing icon on the task bar "Interactive Services Detection." If they do see the icon the name doesn't tell them to click it but if they do they are asked if they want to see a message trying to get their attention and then when they view the message it is the PsShutdown script alerting them they have 5 minutes to cancel or the computer is shut down. We can't upgrade our server and clients until March so am curious if anyone has tried that on the new version.

Also, when you enter search criteria in Internet Explorer, does the enter/return key work now or do you still have to click the "Search" button?

Has the issue with managed installs not applying custom inventory rules been corrected? This has really burned us on some products such as Java that don't take too kindly when it tries to reinstall itself. http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6947907

you guys are making it really hard without bug numbers. You should be given (or can get) a bug number because that is how it will show in the release notes. many tickets could be tied to one bug number. I'll see what i can look up. I was out all day today. Please ask for bug numbers. It also makes the audit trail more complete. We are working to have bug updates more automated but it only works if you have the bug # in your tickets so demand bug numbers in your tickets please.

My apologies, I was never given a bug number. The ticket number was 163889 however. We're new to KACE (as of this past September or so) and their support and I didn't realize I needed to ask for that. I will attempt to grab a bug number

Anyone got a bug number for the "text all lowercase" issue? :


Bootup splash screen company name and text is all lowercase even though we have upper case characters.

I believe this is a known issue that was deferred

It might seem like a small thing but when your users already think Kace is a bad product (with the myriad of other issues already being mentioned on these boards) it's the visual queues like this that help to reinforce that impression. And it reflects poorly on IT. :(

I'm really starting to regret deploying this product.

The initial 5.3 agent had an issue with Managed Install files not getting deleted when the install finished. It was working fine by 5.3.47657, I do not know why it was still listed as a known issue. I did not notice if it was just failing to delete the extracted files or just not deleting. I have been able to verify that the 5.3.53177 agent does in fact only delete the .zip file or other downloaded file and not the contents that have been extracted from a zip. This will not work for us. One of the reasons for deleting the files after the install completes is to free up the disk space. Having those files not delete will cause issues for some of our older machines that have limited hard disk space.

On a different note, it was mentioned at the Konference that the 5.3 agent had an issue where it ignored the bandwidth limits on the replication shares. We were told that this would be fixed in the L10N AP1 agent, but I do not see it in the release notes. Any word on that issue?

I've been communicating with support on the deletion of MI files/folders for a few days now. At this point, they are trying to help but it's not enough. Right now their solution is to create a script that will remove these files/folders.

My problem with a script is it could run while an MI is attempting to install, possibly removing needed MI files and could cause a corrupt installation.

All - if this is a problem for you, please submit a support ticket. Hopefully KACE will listen to numbers.

Dave

ORIGINAL: GillySpy

you guys are making it really hard without bug numbers. You should be given (or can get) a bug number because that is how it will show in the release notes. many tickets could be tied to one bug number. I'll see what i can look up. I was out all day today. Please ask for bug numbers. It also makes the audit trail more complete. We are working to have bug updates more automated but it only works if you have the bug # in your tickets so demand bug numbers in your tickets please.


Ok I finally got a bug number for this incident. It is K1-8544. Apparently it was not resolved with this patch