There may be times when the Addigy agent suddenly stops communicating or has never able to communicate. There are many reasons why this may happen, and this article aims to help provide some general troubleshooting and diagnostic steps to resolve an unresponsive agent.
Before Continuing
Before getting into the nitty-gritty, there are a few points that must be noted.
If a device has a working MDM connection, it can show online in Addigy regardless of the agent state. MDM will continue to work as normal even if the agent is unresponsive (they are two separate processes). You may also see behavior where the device is intermittently online, which is typically the MDM audits successfully reporting.
The best way to tell if the agent is unresponsive is to navigate to Devices > GoLive on a device > Scripts and run a simple command such as "ls". Once you Send the command, go to History and verify the status of the command.
If the command successfully executes (green), the command executed and the agent is working. If yellow, the command is queued and is unable to execute.
Note: The red status means the command failed. If this is what you are seeing, be sure to expand the command and view the status/output by going to the script history window.
Diagnosing and Troubleshooting
Reinstalling the agent
It could be that the agent had a bad installation or that some important binaries are missing, and reinstalling the agent can help remediate this.
1. The first method we recommend is to use the Reinstall agent action via the Devices page. This can be located by going to Devices > Expanding device actions > Re-install Agent. This command goes through MDM, so the device in question must have an active MDM connection.
2. If #1 does not help or if the device does not have MDM, the second option is to locally reinstall the agent using the Install with Terminal command located on the Add Devices page. Be sure to choose the Location of the device (which can be found on the device's GoLive page). If you select the wrong policy (location), you risk causing additional issues on the device.
Below are screenshots of what a regular agent installation via terminal looks like depending on your processor type.
Silicon:
Intel:
There may be more insightful output if the device is encountering issues, which can help pinpoint the issue. If none of the steps outlined in this article help, be sure to include a screenshot of this output in a support request to our support team.
Temporarily disable any apps that are potentially interfering
We have seen certain types of apps interfere with the agent in the past. Specifically, anything that can interfere with network traffic (VPNs, Firewalls, etc) and anything that can block processes running (Antiviruses, Antimalware, etc). If apps of these kind are being used, it's good to try temporarily disabling those to see if the same issue persists. Additionally, placing the device on a hotspot or otherwise known neutral network can help rule out any interference being caused by the network.
If disabling these does resolve the behavior, please be sure to review and whitelist our ports and directories.
Complete Port Usage for Addigy
Addigy Antivirus and Antimalware Exclusion Recommendations
Ensuring the agent launch item is running
LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons are plist files with instructions set to run either at login (LaunchAgent) or at device startup (LaunchDaemon). We store a few different LauchDaemons and LaunchAgents on macOS devices that help start and maintain the communication of our agent on the device.
The most crucial plist we have is the com.addigy.agent.plist, which is a LaunchDaemon. If this LaunchDaemon is not running, the agent will not communicate. To check if this is running, the below command can be executed (requires admin credentials):
sudo -s launchctl list | grep "com.addigy.agent"
If the process is running, you will receive an output similar to the below screenshot. If it is not running, the output will be blank.
If the output is blank, you will want to run the below command to start the process:
sudo -s launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.addigy.agent.plist
Conclusion
If the steps detailed in this article have not helped remediate the issue, please gather relevant logs by running the attached script locally on the device.
The logs will be generated in the /Library/Logs directory.
The script can be executed by using the below command (be sure to change the directory):
sudo sh "/directory/to/script/Local Addigy Device Logs with SysDiagnose.sh"
Once you have these logs, please reach out to our support team with the following:
- Relevant device logs
- Affected serial numbers
- Screenshot of the output from the agent reinstall command