KNOWN ISSUE: Managed machines are not rebooting on the scheduled reboot time

TECH33944
Last Updated March 29, 2008
Copy Article Title/URL
Feedback
Subscribe
This can be seen in a couple of ways, the following errors occur in the logs, computers are not rebooting at the scheduled times, Tasks or polices with custom schedules do not run at the scheduled time or the Software Update Cycle does not run at its scheduled time.

CEThread processing failed. Error=0x8000FFFF Descriptioin=(null)
CAeXTaskProcessor::DoProcess failed. Failed to execute handler failed. Catastrophic failure.
CAeXTaskProcessor::ExecuteHandler failed. Failed to DispEventAdvise on AeXNSTaskHandlerEventsImpl. Error -2147418113 Catastrophic failure.

For example:

A schedule has been defined to reboot managed machines on Sunday at 3:00 a.m.  When the scheduled time arrives one of the above errors appears in the logs and the reboot schedule on clients changes to the following Sunday to reboot again at 3:00 a.m.  
The exact cause is still unknown at this time. There is a problem with the 6.0 task scheduler that we have seen intermittently and been unable to reproduce consistently. The problem is compounded by repeating custom schedules.

This means the schedule fires for only some of the updates, which are then installed. Normally, any overdue custom schedules will be processed when the update cycle starts however, because the updates have a repeating schedule they are not recognized as being overdue so they will not be installed.

Possible workarounds to ensure that all computers reboot during their scheduled window include:

The best choice is to not use repeating schedules.

Another possibility is to define a repeating reboot schedule (i.e. every 5 minutes for 20 minutes starting at 3:00 a.m.). If the initial reboot attempt fails, then the agent will make up to four additional attempts before reaching the end of its window.

 

There was another similar issue explained in KB 52542 that should also be researched..

 


Applies To
Notification Server 6.0.6074
Patch Management Solution 6.2 Service Pack 1
Software Delivery Solution 6.1.1058

Source: DEFECT
ID: SYD 31311
Description: Logged in sydd2 (Altiris - Sydney) database
Imported Document ID: TECH33944
Legacy ID: 37706

Thanks for your feedback. Let us know if you have additional comments below. (requires login)

    © 1995-2019 Symantec Corporation