Patch Remedy box enabled

Patch Remedy 5 is the next generation of the Plugins4Automate Patch Remedy family of products.
This forum is used to support Patch Remedy 5 only, if your using a previous version of Patch Remedy please see the forum for that version below.
Inside you will find the documentation project for the plugin were you can get insights on how to operate and use Patch Remedy 5.
NetworkGuy3000
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Patch Remedy box enabled

Post by NetworkGuy3000 »

Cubert,

I did not set a schedule in Patch Remedy because we are using CWA patching but left the Patch Remedy check box enabled. My thought behind this was that Patch Remedy might still attempt to fix failed machines. Is this correct or does it not do that anymore? Having some users not getting the traditional reboot message we usually send and this is what I see in the logging:
_PatchRemedy.JPG
_PatchRemedy.JPG (60.24 KiB) Viewed 2359 times
It appears as though when they released the approvals Patch Remedy took control and did the patching but then didn't run the traditional message. Is that the way it's supposed to be?

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Cubert
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Re: Patch Remedy box enabled

Post by Cubert »

If a checkbox is empty for (PR)Auto Updates then the client or agent is set to run updates as needed. Make sure that you check to disable service. The Patch Remedy checkbox is safe to leave unchecked and no updates should happen as a result of Patch Remedy. That checkbox turns off and on patch remedy data collectors.

Can you send me a screen shot of the PR5 client view and the agent view where checkboxes are displayed. Just snap a image and post it here so I can see how your configured.

NetworkGuy3000
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Re: Patch Remedy box enabled

Post by NetworkGuy3000 »

It was configured with Patch Remedy unchecked, PR OS upgrades checked, and PR Auto Updates checked. I had to disable the Patch Remedy, because our users expect to receive a reboot message after updates. This seemed like unexpected behavior but the auto check boxes are still there, maybe just not working to disable it? Does this program allow us to find and fix failed updating computers anymore? Seems like some of the old functionality and reporting that was in version 4 is missing entirely from this "new" one. Let me know, if it doesn't do that stuff anymore?
_PR.JPG
_PR.JPG (9.49 KiB) Viewed 2337 times

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Cubert
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Re: Patch Remedy box enabled

Post by Cubert »

That would be correct, is that the agent or client box?

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Cubert
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Re: Patch Remedy box enabled

Post by Cubert »

Seems like some of the old functionality and reporting that was in version 4 is missing
Patch Remedy 1,2,3&4 were originally created to solve the WUA issues that XP and then Windows 7 experienced. So these first four Patch Remedy plugins were designed to find the issue that "LabTech patching" had and provide fixes for those issues.

Now that the prominent OS is Windows 10 as it is staring its move to Windows 11 and LabTech Patching is long gone with the advent of Automate 12+, you don't need a lot of those older tools. As we evolved, Patch Remedy now is looking at new issues and working in a manor that is complimentary to Automate patching with the ability to take over process if needed.

If you find you have a particular need that we can fulfill then let us know and we can make sure PR can do it.

NetworkGuy3000
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Re: Patch Remedy box enabled

Post by NetworkGuy3000 »

We checked the disabled box for the client and it still performed patch actions against the client outside of the policies set. At this point I've disabled it, doesn't seem to be a good fit for us.

dbitters
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Re: Patch Remedy box enabled

Post by dbitters »

I've had the same issue for the past year or the check boxes not being honored.
When we have (PR) auto updates disabled at the customer level, and Patch Remedy box enabled and not checked also at the customer level, I still see Patch Remedy trying to install updates on agents within that customer.

If I disable Patch Remedy by selecting the box to disable it at the customer level, then I no longer have updates trying to install outside of our various Group Policy configured schedules.

However, I would like to keep Patch Remedy enabled so it can still do data collection.
The only way this seems possible is to reenable Patch Remedy at the customer level over particular weekends when we need to get reports for a particular customer.

I would prefer to leave Patch Remedy enabled all the time for the data collection and reports, and not use it to run updates except when it shows that a system is not receiving updates for whatever reason.
I know its designed to do that, but for whatever reason, the clients still try to do updates via Patch Remedy even when that function is disabled.
I'm trying out the "P4A Patch Remedy Automation" properties to see if that has any impact on the issue.
If you have any ideas as to why this unexpected behavior may be happening, please let me know.

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Cubert
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Re: Patch Remedy box enabled

Post by Cubert »

If you go into any customer, check all boxes in disable services view, uncheck them all then recheck the AutoUpdates and OS updates so these services are disabled. Does the client try updating and if so how long did it take and how many agents under client effected?

This will help us understand if its happening during scans only or is something re-enabling agents afterwards.

dbitters
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Re: Patch Remedy box enabled

Post by dbitters »

Thank you for your response and suggestions.

As you mentioned, I will try all that and determine if the setting needs a reset.
I need to hold off for a bit because we had a few brand-new customers get onboarded, and then Patch Remedy started pushing updates when the logs showed the scan starting. Since that caused a bit of upset, I need to wait and try on some other customers I had already disabled.

However, I have to say that the Patch Remedy 5 interface is extremely slow compared to version 4. That is probably directly tied to the number of customers and agents. It is relatively quick and responsive if I click on customers with a dozen or fewer systems. For customers with up to 50 agents, it takes about a minute to finish clicking on a customer and have it display the checkboxes and the agent list. For customers with more than 50 or 100 agents, it can take up to 5 minutes. For customers with more than 100 agents, it can be up to 15 minutes. I can make this go a little faster by calling Labtech support and doing a full reboot on our server.
After I get past that, if I want to disable or enable the Patch Remedy box or the "Automatic updates" box, it takes the same amount of times I mentioned above for a second time.
This issue is directly tied to the number of agents, so I'm not sure what could be causing that. I thought it could be old database records since we've had the Patch Remedy for at least 5 years now.
This lag and slowness may be related to the checkboxes not being honored or possibly due to something with the database.

I'm thinking of a few additional ideas here to help out.
I'm wondering if you can add an option somewhere that determines what boxes are disabled or enabled by default for all customers when they are onboarded. Some partners may want Patch Remedy and updates enabled by default. However, in our situation, we would like Patch remedy and updates disabled for all new customers until we specifically enable them.
I'm also wondering if there is a way to refresh the Patch Remedy database to start over and clear out the 5 years of junk from past versions of Patch Remedy. However, I need to ensure our defaults are set to keep all options disabled if doing that. I'm only asking because it took me 4 hours to get through all our customers again this week and disable Patch Remedy on all of them because of the delays getting to each customer and then waiting for the disable to finish processing.
In fact earlier this week I was going through and disabling Patch Remedy on a block of customers, and it was so resource intensive that it killed our Labtech instance, and the Labtech support folks had to do a hard power off and back on to get our system back up.
I'm hoping that the issue is caused by junk in the Patch remedy database and there is a way we can flush that out to resolve it.

Thanks for your time and consideration on the above items I mentioned.

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Cubert
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Re: Patch Remedy box enabled

Post by Cubert »

Do you have our latest version?

The reason its slow on load is that its trying to load all clients and agent stats and base data. Users with 50 clients and 1000 agents works pretty well but when you get to several hundred clients and 5000+ agents it starts to get unbearably slow to load.

So to combat this we added a new "Tab" to the Client console view called Patch Remedy, It is an exact duplicate of the main patch remedy console but only for a single client.

You do not have to do anything differently when using the client view, for larger MSPs this is much easier to use.

Only available in Build 1.0.5.16+

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