[doug]

Hi Michael –

The current version of BatchPatch doesn not have SSH capability, as you know. That said, I don’t know of a way for you to use the current version of BatchPatch to remotely execute commands on linux systems.

We will consider adding SSH functionality to a future version of BatchPatch. Thank you for the suggestion.

-Doug

[doug]

I sent you an email.

-Doug

[doug]

Your settings are definitely correct.

When you’re launching BatchPatch, are you loading a .bps file or are you simply double-clicking the BatchPatch.exe and using an empty grid?

The behavior in BatchPatch is to abide by those ‘Auto resize settings’ for new empty tabs but not for existing .bps files. When you launch a .bps file all columns that are populated in the .bps file are made visible in the grid. To be honest, I’m not quite sure why this is the case. It might have simply been an oversight on our part, and I will discuss with the team to see if we can modify this behavior. However, can you confirm that you’re experiencing the behavior that I’m describing only for .bps files that you open? What I’m unclear on at the moment is if you are experiencing the issue when you launch an empty grid too or only when you load a .bps file.

Thanks,

Doug

[doug]

It sounds like maybe you just missed one of the settings under ‘Tools > Settings > Grid Preferences’

Note the section in the image below for ‘Auto-resize settings for windows and columns.’ You’ll want to have your settings match the settings in the image, and depending on your preference you might also want to consider unchecking the box that says ‘Allow BatchPatch to unhide columns automatically,’ or you might simply want to leave it checked but edit the columns that can be unhidden by clicking the “except these columns” button.

I hope this helps.

-Doug

[doug]

Andy – Can you confirm the exact error message that you’re receiving, in its entirety?

It’s hard to say if NIC teaming would cause this or not, though I wouldn’t expect it to cause a problem, in general. However, anything is possible, and perhaps it depends on the exact configuration of the team. Are you seeing this only on servers with NIC teaming? Is it occurring on *all* servers with NIC teaming? Is it occurring on the VMs or the actual host machines or both? Are they all producing the *exact* same error message? (note both the error number as well as the HRESULT number because the same HRESULT can be paired with different error numbers)

Does psexec and/or paexec work *without* BatchPatch? Are you able to simply use psexec/paexec at the command line from the computer that runs BatchPatch to one of these problematic hosts? As a test you could try something simple in the CMD window such as:

psexec \targetComputer IPCONFIG

paexec \targetComputer IPCONFIG

[doug]

We published an update today (2015-02-10) that should resolve this issue.

-Doug

[doug]

Hi Michael – I emailed you (as you had requested), but I never heard back. I deleted the posting where you asked me to email you because it contained your email address in plain text, and I didn’t want you to start getting spammed (trust me, your address would have been scraped quickly by numerous bots :).

-Doug

[doug]

Thank you for the suggestion. We will consider this for a future build.

-Doug

[doug]

ombra17 – The key information in the error here is “The network name cannot be found.” It sounds like either you have entered the name of computer that does not exist on your network, or perhaps you have mis-typed the name, or it could be a DNS issue or a DNS suffix issue. It could also be a non-existent remote working directory path on the target computer. Verify your working directory path in ‘Tools > Settings > Remote Execution > Remote Working Directory’. Make sure that path exists. In particular make sure the drive letter exists. So if your remote working directory is set to ‘Q:\Program Files\BatchPatch’, but there is no Q: drive on the computer, the ‘network name cannot be found’ error will be generated. If the Q: drive exists, then BatchPatch will be able to create the directory successfully (or if it cannot because of a permissions problem or something like that, then we would see a different error). However, the bottom line is that BatchPatch can’t get to or create the network path that is specified in the ‘remote working directory’ field.

If you take that same computer name and go to the cmd prompt and type “ping <ComputerName>” and it can’t find the computer, BatchPatch also will not be able to find it. You might need to use the FQDN or have your network adapter automatically append the appropriate DNS suffix. Alternatively you could use the IP address instead of the name.

-Doug

[doug]

Thanks for the update. This setting does not require a reboot or a restart of BatchPatch. I’m not sure how it’s possible that the concurrent file copy maximum is being ignored for you. I could certainly believe that the CPU is still spiking even with just one file copy taking place (my CPU still spikes but only to about 12% with 1 active copy, so it’s possible that yours still spikes to 100%), but I can’t figure out how it’s possible that the setting is being ignored and more than one row is executing the wsusscn2.cab copy at the same time even while the concurrent file copy maximum is set to 1. What *should* happen is only one row copies while all other rows say “queued file copy” or similar. Then when the first row finishes copying, the next row begins, and so on. In any case, we have fixed the CPU utilization issue. It should be published within the next month or two.

-Doug

[doug]

Thanks for the suggestions, Mats. We will consider this for a future build.

-Doug

[doug]

Newman –

The ‘Access Denied’ issue is caused by a problem with your permissions. Please see the following link for more information on resolving: BatchPatch Authentication in Domain and Workgroup (non-domain) Environments

The ‘Invalid namespace’ error generally indicates that WMI on the target computer is broken or corrupt in some way or another. Start with rebooting that target machine. Sometimes that’s all it takes to fix. If that doesn’t work, I would recommend doing some googling to troubleshoot WMI corruption and/or invalid namespace errors. A good starting point is here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/askperf/archive/2009/04/13/wmi-rebuilding-the-wmi-repository.aspx

I hope this helps.

Thanks,

Doug

[doug]

Hi Michael – I’m glad to hear that you like the product. 🙂

Thank you for the suggestions. I have a few questions below.

1. We will consider this for a future build. I understand what you are describing and why it would be convenient to have.

2. I understand that you currently use a “dummy” row setup to send a $grid before and after patching. This makes sense. However, I’m not quite clear on what you are suggesting/requesting. How is what you are requesting/suggesting different from what you are currently doing to accomplish the task? I’m curious to hear as much detail as you’re able to provide. Are you just saying that you want a simpler way to accomplish the same thing because creating “dummy” rows doesn’t feel like an elegant solution? (admittedly, it’s not particularly elegant, but it works 🙂 Or do you have something in mind that provides a different functionality?

3. I understand what you mean by “locking” the columns. We will consider this for a future build. However, in the meantime there are two ways to accomplish this task.

If you go to ‘Tools > Settings > Grid Preferences > Allow BatchPatch to unhide columns automatically’ you can either uncheck the box altogether so that BatchPatch does not automatically unhide any columns, or you can click on the button that says “except these columns,” which allows you to configure BatchPatch to auto-unhide only certain columns. If you uncheck the box altogether, this is the same as “locking” the grid, like you are suggesting. However, it applies to all grids, not just the active grid. Then you simply need to make sure the columns that you want to see are manually made visible before the patching begins. They will remain visible during the patching, but no new columns will be auto-opened.

Thanks,

Doug

[doug]

Jason – They should *not* remain open. In fact, if PsExec.exe is remaining open, then that means it is not finishing its work, and I would expect that you would not see progress in the BatchPatch grid either. The fact that you’re saying the connections are also remaining open on the target server as well is another indication that the process simply is not completing. The normal behavior is for you to start the action in BP, then psexec is launched for the duration of the action, and then psexec terminates and BP reports the status. If psexec doesn’t terminate, then BP will not update the grid with any changes, so essentially what I’m saying is that if psexec isn’t terminating then BP basically isn’t going to be able to complete most actions, including all Windows Update actions.

When you say that the connections remain open, consuming server resources and slowing/stopping BP, I think you might have it backwards. Obviously I haven’t looked at your server, so I can’t say for sure, but it seems like BP is “stopping” simply due to the fact that the psexec instances aren’t returning (or they aren’t returning quickly enough – not sure how long you waited or how quickly you expect them to return, but it depends on the action), but it’s not “stopping” because of a resource problem. It’s simply waiting for the psexec connections to close so that it can continue doing what it’s doing. If you’re installing 200 windows updates, it could take a couple hours, depending on the setup). 50 rows in a grid all running at the same time shouldn’t require a ton of resources. Maybe something like 100 megabytes of RAM for all the psexec instances. If the psexec connections never close, then BP simply waits, indefinitely for them to close. BP relies on the psexec processes to end because that’s how psexec works. If psexec is never ending, then it means it’s not working.

My question to you is has BP ever worked on your system? Is this a new problem? There is no configurable timeout for the psexec connections in BP. BP waits for them to close, otherwise BP can’t do what it needs to do. If none of them are returning then it does sound like there’s a problem, and BP basically isn’t working at all. I have never experienced nor heard of this happening before, so something might be jacked up with your system. As a start I would suggest you reboot the machine that’s running BatchPatch. After that you should make sure you have the latest version of psexec and then test running psexec at the command line to make sure that it is behaving properly. So for example you could run “psexec \targetcomputer IPCONFIG” in a cmd prompt. The normal behavior is for psexec.exe to open for just a handful of seconds. The target computer would see a psexesvc.exe in its processes list for that same handful of seconds. After the IPCONFIG command returns output to the cmd prompt, both psexec.exe and the target machine’s psexesvc.exe disappear. If psexec isn’t behaving properly when run from a cmd prompt, then BP certainly isn’t going to work.

I can’t really think of any reason why such a problem would occur. The only thought that comes to mind is what is the network connection like between the BP machine and the target machines? If there is very little bandwidth and a lot of latency, then perhaps that’s where your issue is. In that case you simply might not be able to execute 50 at a time. You might have to do just a few at a time. Not sure. It would require some experimentation. I’ve never run BP on such a severely limited network.

You probably already know this, but just in case you weren’t aware– you can kill all the psexec connections with a single command “taskkill /IM psexec.exe”

I hope this helps.

-Doug

[doug]

Yes, the setting will limit the number of rows that can copy files simultaneously from the BatchPatch computer to the target computer. This applies to cached mode as well as for software deployments.

The reason you don’t experience the issue with the KB copies is because we use a different underlying method for the WsusScn2.cab file copy. We are able to reproduce the problem that you encountered. As soon as there is more than one WsusScn2.cab copy happening, the CPU hits 100% and the copy rate decreases drastically by 100x!

We have isolated the cause of the problem, and we expect to have it fixed in the next release of the software. In the meantime, I think your best bet is to set the concurrent copies to 1. Even though it will only do one copy at a time, the overall copy rate should still be much faster. Also, once you’ve done one check for updates using the latest WsusScn2.cab file, BatchPatch will not re-copy that file to targets until Microsoft releases a new WsusScn2.cab file. So, after the first run, you could switch the concurrent file copies value back to 6, if you want, so that the KB files can be copied simultaneously to more than 1 host.

-Doug

[doug]

To close the loop on this, I did a bit more testing/research.

First, there was a missing ‘where’ clause in your command. So, the proper command would be:

WMIC product WHERE name="Notepad++" call uninstall /nointeractive

If we execute the new command *with* the WHERE clause, we then get the following output:

No Instance(s) Available.

Essentially that means that nothing where name=”Notepad++” was found. So, I ran another query:

wmic product get name

The list turned up *without* Notepad++, which explains the previous “No Instance(s) Available” message. It seems that the Notepad++ installer does not register itself with the system in such a way that we can use WMIC to uninstall it.

[doug]

Hi John –

Generally when you execute a script remotely on a target computer using BatchPatch, that script will only have access to resources on the target computer. The script will *not* have access network resources. This is why your script isn’t completing.

You *might* have luck if you explicitly supply credentials for the row in BatchPatch using ‘Actions > Specify alternate credentials’ Let me know if that works. It might, but it might not.

Assuming the above suggestion does not work, then the way to do this is successfully is to *not* rely on any network resources for the installations. You would need to write your script so that it does not include network locations and instead just includes the relative paths/locations. Then put all files in a single directory and use the BatchPatch ‘Deployment’ feature with the ‘Copy entire directory’ option.

There’s an example of this type of usage at the following link. Hopefully you can use this as a template/example to model your script/deployment:

Deploy Multiple MSU files in a single action

I hope this helps.

One other option that you might consider is to create a separate deployment in BatchPatch for each application that you want to install. Save each deployment in the BatchPatch deployment window. Once each deployment configuration has been saved you can then create a ‘Job Queue’ that installs each deployment that you previously created, sequentially. You can then also save that job queue for future use. This would give you a one-click way to install all the apps in a single action.

-Doug

[doug]

Thank you for making us aware of this issue. We are looking into it. I will report back here when I have more information.

For the time being it seems that limiting the concurrent file copies to just 1 will prevent this from happening. See ‘Tools > Settings > General > Concurrent File-Copy Operations Maximum.’ Setting this value to 1 should both prevent the CPU from pegging at 100% and also dramatically speed up the copy. The overall benefit should be positive, even though less concurrent copies are taking place.

Thanks,

Doug

[doug]

Mats – I tried to uninstall Notepad++ at the command line, using the syntax you provided, WITHOUT using BP. So, I launched a command prompt as administrator, and then I ran the following command:

WMIC product name="Notepad++" call uninstall /nointeractive

It did *not* uninstall Notepad++ and instead gave the following output:

ERROR:

Description = Invalid query

That said, since I cannot uninstall Notepad++ *without* BP using the command you provided, I certainly do not expect to be able to uninstall Notepad++ *with* BP using that same invalid command. Before you ever try to use BP to perform a remote action, you should confirm that the syntax you want to use works when you’re at the command line *not* using BP.

---

---

To successfully uninstall Notepad++, use BatchPatch Remote Command 1/2 (Remote Command 3/4 will not work with this syntax), and enter the following line:

"C:Program FilesNotepad++uninstall.exe" /S

[doug]

Booster – If you run BatchPatch as admin, then yes you will be able to self-update. If it is *not* launched as admin, the self-update will fail. However, in either case, the reboot will always fail. BatchPatch will never reboot the machine that it is running on.

-Doug

[doug]

I corrected the title. 🙂

[doug]

Thanks for the suggestion. We’ll consider this for a future build.

-Doug

[doug]

Olivier – Thank you for the detailed explanation. Everything you said makes sense. The idea to show the job steps is very good, and we will plan to add it in a future build.

With regard to the VM reboot issue, I now understand what you are describing, but at the moment I’m not sure what we can do about this. For the time being, your solution of adding a 10 minute wait period is good. Your suggestion to maybe add a check for pending install/reboot makes sense, and we’ll look into it, but the problem is that there isn’t really a formal way to ask Windows if it is in the middle of doing a post reboot patch and if it’s about to reboot itself. In any case, we will look into this issue more to see if we can figure out a good way to address it. However, for now you should stick with your 10 minute wait step.

Thanks again,

Doug

[doug]

booster –

The actions are all printed in the ‘All Messages’ column as they are executed, so that you can tell what is happening. Is this not sufficient? What more is it that you are looking to see? Please be as detailed as possible in your description. The only way that we can update/improve the app based on your feedback is if you are very clear about what you would like to see that is not currently available/visible in the app.

When you say that you had problems with ‘Wait for host to go offline and come back online’ I’m not sure I understand. You’re saying that if the host reboots as part of the patch process itself, then BP tries the next job step while the host is offline. Under what circumstances does the host reboot without BP being responsible for initiating the reboot? I am not aware of such a thing to exist with Windows Update. When using BP, the row in BatchPatch should either say “Reboot Required” or “No reboot required,” but it sounds like you’re saying that you’re facing a situation where it is reporting “No reboot required” but it’s rebooting on its own without BP initiating the reboot? I have never experienced this behavior. Am I understanding correctly?

Thanks,

Doug

[doug]

Yes – At the very least we will def re-word it to be more clear so that it’s not just ‘create’ but also ‘edit’ or ‘modify.’

Thanks again,

Doug

[doug]

Thanks for the suggestion. You can currently modify remote and local commands directly from the Job Queue window, but to edit a deployment you have to go to the deployment window separately. We will add your suggestion to the list.

-Doug

[doug]

Hi martbasi –

We will consider adding functionality to a future build that enables exporting/importing job queue information. In the meantime, this info is saved in the following location:

HKCUSoftwareBatchPatchSavedUserDefinedJobQueues

-Doug

[doug]

Remote Command 3 will work, yes.

-Doug

[doug]

Hugo – I’m not sure that this is really a question about BatchPatch so much as it’s a question about environment variables. I’m not an expert on environment variables.

BatchPatch can execute remote commands, as you know. So it’s just a question of finding the correct command to execute.

I did a quick google search on environment variables, and from what I found the “SET” command only sets current session variables. If you want to set a system variable you have to use “SETX” instead. It also says that updates made with SETX will only be visible to the next logon session, which essentially means that if you use BatchPatch to add/update a variable on ComputerX, then on ComputerX you will not see this change until/unless you logoff and log back on to ComputerX to verify it.

That said, in BatchPatch I simply highlighted my target host(s) and created a remote command with the following syntax:

SETX client myfqdn

I then executed the command in BatchPatch and it reported “Exit Code: 0 (SUCCESS).” So, I logged on to the remote system to verify it was there. On the remote system I opened a cmd prompt and typed “SET” and I could see the value that I set previously was visible.

-Doug

[doug]

That is a fantastic workaround that I wasn’t aware of! Thanks for mentioning it.

-Doug

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