Heroix Longitude Component

Some customers on 64 bit operating systems have seen intermittent problems with the Longitude statistics server stopping. The problem has been traced to the JVM code and we are still working on a resolution for the issue.

The Longitude upgrade manager monitors the other Longitude components, and will restart the statistics server automatically. However, there will be a short period of time during which Longitude will be unable to collect data.

Until a complete fix is available, taking the following steps will minimize the statistics server down time:

In 6.2 you may notice the Web UI displaying times for the GMT timezone. This can be fixed by doing the following:

1. Determine your time zone:
   • For Eastern Time: America/New_York
   • For Central Time: America/Chicago
   • For Mountain Time: America/Denver
   • For Pacific Time: America/Los Angeles
   • If your time zone is not listed, please post a request for your location.
2. Navigate to the Longitude directory and open ApplicationManagerMain.lax with a text editor

We have seen some cases in Longitude 6.2 in which the CPU on a Longitude agent will spike when collecting data for Internet Macros. The Firefox instances used to collect data for the Internet Macro do not close correctly, leaving orphaned Firefox processes on the agent.

Until a patch is available, this problem can be addressed by restarting the Longitude Statistics Server component. This should kill the orphaned Firefox processes, but you may need to check the Longitude server directly and close dialog boxes for Firefox errors.

To prevent "out of memory" issues during an upgrade, you can increase the maximum amount of memory the Upgrade Manager is allowed to use. This is done by modifying the Longitude\ApplicationManagerMain.lax file. Edit the file to add in or modify the line in bold below, between the LAX.NL.JAVA.LAUNCHER.MAIN.METHOD and the LAX.NL.VALID.VM.LIST sections. After the edit, please restart the Upgrade Manager service.

__________________________________________________________________________

# LAX.NL.JAVA.LAUNCHER.MAIN.METHOD
# --------------------------------

Longitude can be configured to collect data through an agent installation - this is useful if you need to collect data from devices at a remote site, on the other side of a firewall, or where you would need to use an alternate set of Windows credentials. However, especially for agents at remote sites, there can be a delay in collecting monitored data if the Management Console loses contact with the Longitude agent.

The Upgrade Manager may fail to start during the Linux Agent install. If this occurs you will see an error in the Manage Upgrades function on the Management Station regarding connecting to the Upgrade Manager on the agent. You can start the Upgrade Manager on the agent manually by running the following command from the Longitude/bin directory:

firenze_appman start

The first time an application is registered for a managed device, the agent used for that collection is assigned to that managed device. All subsequent applications registered for that managed device will be made using the assigned agent, regardless of the agent selected when the application is registered.

To change the agent used to collect data from a managed device, you must remove all applications from the computer, and then use the new agent when registering the first collection again.

****Note:

For Longitude versions 6.1.2 and below, the rule engine tasks may stop running as scheduled when the Management Station is collecting data from an agent installed on a 64-bit version of Windows. 64 bit Windows is only supported for Longitude 6.2 and highter.

If the Management Console is configured to collect data from a Longitude 6.1.2 or earlier agent running on 64 bit Windows, the rule engine on the Management Station will stall after a period of hours. Longitude will continue to collect and archive data, but no alerts or events will be created based on that data.

Longitude automatically introduces a skew factor of up to 10% of the interval in order to spread the load of data collection. However, users can introduce a specific offset by using the skew parameter in the schedule XML file for a Longitude collector.

Longitude schedule files are located under Longitude\applications\Application Name\collections, with each collector in the application having an associated application_collector.xml file. For example, the Windows CPU collection has a collection file:

When there is a Longitude upgrade available, Heroix will send a notification e-mail with the details of the update to the contact on file for your company.

You can also check the New Patch field in the Manage Upgrades function to see if an update is available. If you are not set up to upgrade automatically (the default), a New Patch number that is different from the Current Patch number indicates that there are upgrades available to you. The Upgrade Patch Description field includes notes about the changes that the patch includes.