Large Amounts of Windows Scheduled Tasks

[Migration User]

Hey team,

So we've been having some pretty regular ongoing issues with scheduling tasks in our NS. (v7.0.7416)

Generally it works, but sometimes you just can't schedule at all. I've been in contact with tech support, but wanted to post here too.

One of the things I noticed recently is that we had over 1,300 Windows scheduled tasks.

There were two main types (apart from the standard NS tasks).

NS.Update Client Configuration {GUID}; and

NS.Run [SOFTWARE RESOURCE NAME - INSTALL COMMAND] (Portal) on Schedule {GUID}

Both of these tasks have schedules that are in the past, have no last run time and have no next run time.

If I delete all of them (which was recommended by Symantec), and then run the NS.Weekly task, they all get generated again! (We have 450 again, and I'm sure it will go up).

I also tried running the NS.Scheduled purge of completed Software Portal tasks and nothing happened.

Seems similar to this:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH45949&key=57898&basecat=KNOWN_ISSUE&actp=LIST

Is this meant to happen? I have a feeeling it relates to another issue:

Some of the Update Client Configuration tasks also get the error:

 "NS.Update Client Configuration.{32d87133-612c-474a-8af1-a216ba771993}.job" (ScheduleProcessor.exe) 6/04/2011 11:00:48 AM ** ERROR **

The attempt to retrieve account information for the specified task failed; therefore, the task did not run. Either an error occurred, or no account information existed for the task.

The specific error is:

0x8004130f: No account information could be found in the Task Scheduler security database for the task indicated.

 

 

According to Microsoft, this can happen when:

 

 If you are running many Task Scheduler jobs each day by using a user account on a multiprocessor computer, and if some of the jobs run multiple times a day, the jobs may intermittently lose their credentials and not run successfully.  

 

The resolutions is to use newer version of Mstak.exe and Mstask.dll, but the ones on our 2003 box are newer than the verisons suggested below.

 

This is only happening to a few of them though. They are all running under the NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM account.

 

Has anyone come accross these issues?

 

Cheers

Rhys

[Ludovic Ferre]

Hello Rhys,

The fact that the schedules get re-created point to entries in the database, meaning someone (or something) created the resource with an associated schedule.

Did you track back the schedule guids to entries in the DB and policies or software resources?

[Migration User]

Thanks for the reply. This is probably a silly question, but do you have any suggestions on how to do this exactly?

I'm familiar with the database, but I don't know how I would go about finding what these are linked to (such as policies or software resources).

Thanks for the assistance.

[Ludovic Ferre]

Hello Rhys,

Pick the guid from the schedule task name and pop-it on the logviewer (yes, you read that right). Not anywhere on the logviewer, pick any entry that contains a guid in there and click the link (it should resolve the guid to it's name as a pre-requisite - else you'll have to revert to a db search).

This will bring up the Item viewer window, which allows you to put any guid and click the green <<play>> icon. From there you can see all the item details, on the various tabs, including the xml state, inventory data, resource associations etc.

This should contain enough data to show you were the schedule is used (which should allow you to remove it etc).

[Migration User]

You can also access Item Browser from the menu of the Altiris Log Viewer.

[Migration User]

Sorry this took so long to reply too, we've been busy on other projects.

I will use our PuTTY software resource as an example.

We have a scheduled tasked named the following:

NS.Run PuTTY 0.60 - Install - Silent (Portal) on Schedule.{1c64062c-aa27-4371-8313-9c98a06e5143}

It has a schedule in the past and a next and last run time of never.

I pump the GUID in the the Item Browser and get the following information:

 SUMMARY:

Item Name: Run PuTTY 0.60 - Install - Silent (Portal) on Schedule
Item GUID: 1c64062c-aa27-4371-8313-9c98a06e5143
Alias
Description
Notification Server GUID: dc87ee89-eb29-4903-be33-de0752d491c1
Security GUID: 1c64062c-aa27-4371-8313-9c98a06e5143
Attributes: 0
Created: Created by '[OUR_SERVICE_ACCOUNT]' at 9/02/2011 1:46:39 PM
Modified: Modified by '[OUR_SERVICE_ACCOUNT]' at 9/02/2011 1:46:39 PM

INTERFACES:

Bunch of references to ItemManagement, not sure how important it is.

CLASSES:

Class GUID: 2c8d08c3-a9ba-4e39-a6ea-08701fba4a6e
Class Assembly: Altiris.TaskManagement, Version=7.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=99b1e4cc0d03f223
Class Type: Altiris.TaskManagement.UI.TaskSchedule
Created: Created at 23/03/2010 2:48:03 PM
Modifed: Modified at 23/03/2010 2:48:03 PM

XML:

Sorry - I can't put this XML in the formatted block for whatever reason:

<item>

<scheduling>

<enabled>True</enabled>

<schedule tz="Local" start="2011-02-09 13:48:00 ">

<trigger type="Once" exact="True" at="13:48:00 " />

</schedule>

<sharedSchedule>{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}</sharedSchedule>

</scheduling>

<ScheduleTask TaskToRunGuid="df1b6c05-47dc-4830-b00a-5f3cd4cb2c38">

<executedBy>[OUR_SERVICE_ACCOUNT]</executedBy>

<userRoles>S-1-1-0,S-1-5-11,S-1-5-21-1073839035-2167165158-3016016862-1009,S-1-5-21-1812313140-23586534-3256013527-15263,S-1-5-32-544</userRoles>

<assignedResourcesIncludedInXml>False</assignedResourcesIncludedInXml>

<params>

<param name="@AssignedResources" type="Altiris.Common.GuidCollection, Altiris.Common, Version=7.0.7416.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=d516cb311cfb6e4f">

<ArrayOfGuid xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" />

</param>

<param name="@OverrideMaintenanceWindows" type="System.Boolean, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">

<boolean>true</boolean>

</param>

</params>

</ScheduleTask>

</item>

 

It has no collections, associations or inventory.

It only has one reference, and strangely enough it is to a resource with the same name [PuTTY 0.60 p Install - Silent (Portal)]. I double click that and bring up the iterm browser for that resource.

This other resource seems to be more interesting. It has more interfaces, classes and references that the original resource.

This new resource also has references to:

PuTTY 0.60 - which looks like the actual software resource

Quick Delivery - which looks like the actual quick delivery NS resource; and 

Run PuTTY 0.60 - Install - Silent (Portal) On Schedule [with a GUID that matches my first resource].

I looked at the Quick Delivery resource above in item viewer, and it has references to every single portal and quick delivery task in our environment! Which I guess makes sense.

So, this was all very interesting and whatever, but I'm still unsure how to resolve my original problem - which getting rid of all these unnecessary scheduled tasks which are breaking my NS.

[Ludovic Ferre]

So the scheduled tasks are created by a Quick Delivery job running in the portal.

One would thus assume that the Portal task that creates the schedule on the server (why on the server?) also does the maintenance and cleaning up, but then it doesn't look like this is really happening.

I would push this thru support if I were you, as this smells like a defect.