Chocolately plugin Automate Issues

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nettko
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Joined: Wed Oct 27, 2021 3:22 am
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Chocolately plugin Automate Issues

Post by nettko »

Hi Support,

A couple of days ago our ConnectWise Automate Server performance and database maintenance could not be performed, in turn causing our Automate Server to shut down.

After further investigation ConnectWise Support have advised that all of the plugins4Automate that we have installed in our environment is preventing the maintenance from running on the Automate Server, and they have advised that we remove these immediately to prevent further issues with the Automate Server and database maintenance.

Here is what ConnectWise Automate Support have advised in their email:

Hello Troy,

The daily and weekly maintenance jobs are just called the Daily and Weekly Maintenance. If you go to Help>Server Status you will see two buttons called Do Daily Maintenance and Do Weekly Database Cleanup. They are just jobs that the database uses to clean data based on retention settings as well as removing any temporary tables from searches that still may exist.

We do not track the plugins that are installed, on partner's systems, and the Third-Party Plugins from Squatting Dog/Shannon Anderson being installed is not common. We don't have public documentation on this issue, the information currently is internal. There is a known issue that is tied to this issue that you can track at connectwise.com/knownissue and searching for CWA-3337.

The only reason I brought it up is because I noticed it after dealing with the Server Down issue you had.

This was a recent issue that was discovered. The method used by the plugin publisher for integration is no longer supported and causes issues where the daily and weekly maintenance no longer run if these plugins are in use. When these jobs are unable to run the database does get clogged with data that should be cleared. It does take time for these tables to build up, but when they do the server would experience performance issues and could lead to a server down scenario.

If you need more immediate assistance you can go to connectwise.com/chat to work directly with a resource

Thank you,

Patrick Allen
ConnectWise
Technical Support Analyst


Whilst I really like the Chocolatey and PowerShell Command plugins, it would appear they will cause us grief in the future.

Can you please advise if there are any plans to update both plugins to address the issues described by ConnectWise Support.

If not, can I please request a full refund for both plugins as it would appear they are causing issues in our Automate environment.

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Cubert
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Joined: Tue Dec 29, 2015 7:57 pm
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Re: Chocolately plugin Automate Issues

Post by Cubert »

Thank you Troy for posting here as well as the email sent to me. I can explain here the same manor as I did in the email I sent you back.
Good morning Troy,

all of the plugins4Automate that we have installed in our environment is preventing the maintenance from running” – how long did it take them to make that assessment?

I think the support tech doesn’t have all the facts correct, Plugins4Automate and Squatting Dog are not the same company. In the report below we are not mentioned nor is any of our plugins. If you go onto the Solutions Center for Automate you will find one of our plugins (CCleaner For Automate) being hosted and provided directly from ConnectWise marketplace so we have a relationship with ConnectWise and their Invent teams. No one at ConnectWise has approached us with any issues currently, but with that said we are dealing with a very large piece of software with lots of moving parts. I will inquire further about this locking issue now that it has been brought to light with the Invent teams. It looks it may have been seen in version 2021.10 and fixed with patch 21.0.10.241 as the status is closed and not an open problem.

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As for support guys, what ever is the most direct way to get in and out of a service ticket is usually taken. They really don’t have the time to investigate every possible reason for a problem, so if it means you loose several items from your server, then they see that is a reasonable resolution. However having a “method used by the plugin publisher for integration is no longer supported” is of interest to us. It’s unfortunate they didn’t reference what that actually was? We follow only the posted and documented methods CW has inside their SDK and Invent documentation.

Both Chocolatey and PowerShell have scripted data collections that take place daily and in some cases up to hourly depending on settings. You might turn off the automation within the plugins or adjust the automation timing to see if that has any effect on the system. There could be a resent update to Automate that could be interacting with plugins in some manor on your system or an update from us. We will need to troubleshoot the problem further to see if we are causing this and why.

Typically the backend maintenance services that drives our automation functions are forked off to their own processes, so if something in our code failed and was not “handled” then the forked process would die not all maintenance services in queues.

I would need to have the plugins re-enabled, configured for basic or minimal operation and monitored to see when the database maintenance runs what other logs are generated right at the same time. There are 4 logs I'm interested in.

2 per plugin, on the server in the logs directory for Automate. They will start with plugin_ChocolateyForAutomate and plugin_PowerShell There is the general log file and if any internal errors inside Automate happen like a SQL query failure then an _ERROR.txt file for the same plugin might exist.

We need to see if one, was our plugin in the middle of an operation? Two, did it experience any kind of failure if it was present. If you do have a failure then lets repeat tests with one or the other plugin disabled to see if plugin can be isolated. We are updating plugins and features almost daily across the 30+ plugins we manage. If it’s our problem we will get it resolved and updated in rapid fashion.


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