Kaseya Community

Improper System Shutdown with Patch Management

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Mar 12, 2009 2:37 AM

Hi,

I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed this. We use Kaseya (2008 SP1) to do patch management for the servers and workstations we manage. I've not noticed it on workstations, but then I'm not the person who logs into all of them each morning. However I do often login to the servers, which are set to get their patches at about 3am on Monday mornings and restart if need be.

What I notice is that on MANY systems where Kaseya is doing patch management and rebooting servers when I log into them after they have rebooted I get the notice saying the previous shutdown was unexpected and it asks me for the reason.

I strongly believe that Kaseya isn't waiting long enough to reboot the servers. It happens on all types of servers, SBS2003, Server 2003, simple file print servers, SQL Servers, etc.

Has anyone else noticed this? Is there any way to increase the time Kaseya waits for a system to shut down? What is Kaseya doing to shutdown the servers, does it issue the shutdown command then kill some system process if it doesn't shutdown in X seconds?

Can this be changed so it does wait longer?

As an example, on a Server 2003 machine with SQL 2005, on Monday
At 2:43:12 AM I can see that KB967715 was installed.
At 2:43:33 AM AgentMon.exe initiated a restart.
At 2:45:15 AM I am told the previous system shutdown at 2:42:37 AM was unexpected.

The times seem odd, that it thinks the shutdown at 2:42 was unexpected when the update wasn't installed until 2:43. So maybe it is being shutdown alright, but I still can't help thinking that Kaseya is forcibly killing some process to ensure the system reboots.

I never get this message when I manually reboot (having updated or not).

Patch management for servers is set to "Reboot immediately after update." Would it help to set it to "Warn user that machine will reboot in 2 minutes (without asking permission)"?

Any one else notice this? Any thoughts?

--Saul

Legacy Forum Name: Improper System Shutdown with Patch Management,
Legacy Posted By Username: PSaul

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Mar 12, 2009 8:08 AM

for our server sites, we set the patches to not reboot after a install, and schedule all servers to reboot once a week at 6am instead.
this allowed for more predictable results that rebooting after updates - particularly when there is more than 1 update that requires a reboot.

Legacy Forum Name: Patch Management,
Legacy Posted By Username: swansby10goals

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Mar 13, 2009 10:12 AM

When running servers like SBS you need to initiate you own shutdown script and not use the kaseya one.

Exchange for example can take quite some time to stop and close its services.

You may want to consider stopping all of its services via a script before initiating a reboot so that it is done as cleanly as possible.

Legacy Forum Name: Patch Management,
Legacy Posted By Username: XeviouS

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Mar 15, 2009 1:31 AM

Saul,

You said this was happening on MANY systems? Many like 3 or 4? Or many like 30 or 40?

We have about 150 Agents deployed to servers, and I have rarely seen this problem - only a handful of times. Of the 150 servers, probably 70-80 of them are running SBS2003, and 5 are running SBS2008.

Lloyd

Legacy Forum Name: Patch Management,
Legacy Posted By Username: lwolf

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Mar 24, 2009 7:23 AM

I configured Kaseya to send me an email for servers that need rebooting.

Legacy Forum Name: Patch Management,
Legacy Posted By Username: ReedMikel

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Mar 31, 2009 5:18 AM

Hi all, Sorry all for the late response, I do appreciate people's responses though. Been very busy, but I just logged onto a server and noticed this problem again. So I though I should reply. The same server that caused me to post initially.

Xevious: I've never had a problem rebooting this or any other server when using the Start | Shutdown method or using shutdown.exe (built-in, resource kit or psshutdown). Somehow it is only when Kaseya does the shutting down that it complains it wasn't shutdown properly. I'm guessing Kaseya does its own thing to force the shutdown, perhaps not using the standard shutdown APIs

lwolf: I can't saw for sure how many systems, but more than 3 or 4. I'd guess more like 15 or so, but I don't deal with all the servers. But I know other techs here have mentioned it as well. It's not just SBS, it's also member servers.

I have a feeling that we will either need to write shutdown batch files and have Patch Management call the batch file if it needs to reboot (if Kaseya can do that). Or just schedule it to reboot every week and tell Kaseya not to worry about rebooting servers.

I've never had to stop Exchange/BES/SQL/IIS or anything else to get a clean shutdown. If often do to speed up the reboot process, but I don't really care if it takes an extra minute or two when it's happening at 2am. I would rather not have to get an email and do it manually.

Is it possible to have Kaseya call a script or batch file instead of rebooting as the Patch Management Reboot Action? I don't see it.

--Saul

Legacy Forum Name: Patch Management,
Legacy Posted By Username: PSaul

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Jul 21, 2009 3:49 AM

We too have seen this consistently on about 15 servers (mostly SBS). We put in a support request to Kaseya just now to see if they have any other suggestions.

Legacy Forum Name: Patch Management,
Legacy Posted By Username: donjjones

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Jul 21, 2009 11:01 AM

I wonder what command/tool Kaseya uses for the shutdown command that is part of their script language? Knowing that might give you some insight as to what is happening...

Legacy Forum Name: Patch Management,
Legacy Posted By Username: ReedMikel

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Dec 18, 2009 4:02 AM

ReedMikel
I wonder what command/tool Kaseya uses for the shutdown command that is part of their script language? Knowing that might give you some insight as to what is happening...

I don't know, but I suspect it is not a proper Win32API shutdown method; I recently came across an issue where it wasn't just annoying ("what was the reason for the unexpected shutdown?") but serious (users could not connect). See here:

http://community.kaseya.com/api/forums.ashx/forums/30/threads/10468/posts/51787

I'm looking at bypassing Kaseya's defective Reboot action for patch management entirely. I'd like to be able to fix it for ALL reboot actions, but I'll start with this. Maybe they'll fix it in K6.

--Saul

Legacy Forum Name: Patch Management,
Legacy Posted By Username: PSaul

I Need Improper shutdown system Event id in windows xp Operating system Details

kaseya agent system unexpected shutdown.

Shutdown

Unexpected Shutdowns on patch reboot. (6008 Event ID) COME ON KASEYA!!

Shutdown script

Improper System Shutdown with Patch Management