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Online status does not cahnge when computer goes offline

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DoesNotCompute

Just started turnin gon WOL on some of our computers, to wake them up before PDQ doployment.

This seems to be a catch 22.

When the computers are powered of they stay with the online status to Yes (green).

Even if I do a full scan of the computer (witch offcause fails, and gives the correct scan status "Target computer offline") it wil not change its Online status to No (Red)

The offnline computer does not answer to ping.

When i atempt to wake the computer with the buildt in tool in PDQ inventroy tool it wont even try, because it says it is online.

So how does PDQ inventory determine the Online status (it is obviosly not by ping, and it does not update according to the scan status, witch just verified it is offline)

Se the the attaced file.

 




online status.png
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  • Avatar
    DoesNotCompute

    I can partly answer my own question :)

    File -> Preferences -> Heartbeat, was set to a high interval.

    However when you do a scan on a computer i assumed that the Online status would also update, it did not.
    Running manual Heartbeat on the computer changed the online status to what was correct.

    I have now lowered the heartbeat interval. And auto Heartbeat is enabled.

    Still, when a scan determines the computer it is offline, the Online status should have changed to No. And vice versa

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  • Avatar
    Corellian, Shane

    Online status (the green dot) is determined by one of two methods.

    1) Heartbeat (as you had discovered). The Heartbeat is nothing more than a ping sent from the console computer to the target.

    2) Inventory Scan. If you scan a computer that currently shows as Offline (red dot) but the scan attempt works (meaning the target was actually online) then the online status will change to a green dot.

    A few points to remember:

    • If your computers do not have ICMP Echo Request enabled (in other words if they are online but are not allowed to respond to a ping) then they can appear offline but have their status change to online when they receive a successful scan.
    • The Offline Policy (Preferences > Scanning) is important. If you have your Policy set to Do No Scan then each scan attempt will first try to ping the target computer. If the target does not respond then the scan won't be attempted.
    • If you scan a computer and it shows Online and then goes back to Offline shortly after then the Heartbeat probably didn't receive the ping response in time. By default the Heartbeat will wait over 1 second for a response before moving on to the next computer. Slow response time can be linked to slow DNS resolution or network problems related to high latency.
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  • Avatar
    DoesNotCompute

    Thanx for the reply Shane.
    Just a comment to your 2) paragraph.

    My observations was "the other way around". Computer was showing online, but was currently off. (This was becaue of the rather long Hearbeat interval)

    Regardless, I tried to scan the the computer, the scan correctly then identified that the computer was offline. I just thought that PDQ Inventory then should update the online status (it did not). Only after manually query the heartbeat (Ctrl+H) did it update the online status. Since PDQ Inventory already know of the online status, why not just update it :)

    I have now have set the hearbeat interval much lower to conquer this issue. 300 sec.

    A related issue regarding the online status is the Wake command:

    I probably shoud put this on the request list.. but here it hoges: the Wake command should first try to check if the computer is online. IF not, then wake it.

    Now the Wake command trusts the Online status 100%. So if the staus is online it wont even try to wake it (even if it actually is of)... With my interval 300 sec, this could mean it wont wake the client, because Invetory tells is it online, even thoug it might not be.

    I added a custom tool to help with this, it does not check for ping first, but just "brutally" tries to wake the computer, without checking its satus:

    E:\PDQ Deploy\HelpTools\WOL\WolCmd.exe %TargetMACAddress% %Target% 255.255.248.0 9

    However you can not trust the Wake command in PDQ Inventory will work correcly unless it is run directly after a heartbeat test. :) Just a tip.

     

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