The Configuration Manager Support Team Blog

KB: System Center 2012 Configuration Manager client PXE boot may fail if the Management Point is in an untrusted forest

J.C. Hornbeck — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:20:24 GMT

Just a quick FYI on a new Knowledge Base article we published today. This one talks about an issue where PXE boot mail fail for a client if one of the Management Points is in an untrusted forest. This is really an issue/explanation regarding how Distribution Points select Management Points in alphabetical order but you can get all of the details in the article below:

KB2858397 - System Center 2012 Configuration Manager client PXE boot may fail if the Management Point is in an untrusted forest (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2858397)

J.C. Hornbeck | Knowledge Engineer | Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

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Announcement: Cumulative Update 1 for the Configuration Manager Client for Linux and UNIX

J.C. Hornbeck — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 18:55:00 GMT

I am happy to announce the release of Cumulative Update 1 to the Configuration Manager clients for Linux and UNIX. This release delivers the following additional capabilities and features to the System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP1 release...(read more)

Now available: Cumulative Update 1 for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP1 clients for Linux/UNIX

J.C. Hornbeck — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 22:12:58 GMT

~ John Thekkethala | Senior Program Manager

I am happy to announce that we have released Cumulative Update 1 to the System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Service Pack 1 clients for Linux/UNIX.

This release delivers the following additional capabilities/features to the System Center 2012 SP1 release.

Support for managing additional operating systems: AIX, HP-UX, Solaris 11, CentOS, Debian, Oracle Linux and Ubuntu.
Open Management Infrastructure CIM server (OMI Version 1.0.6.5) that enables customers to create their own inventory providers.
A simplified common Universal Agent that supports a broad set of Linux distributions.
Miscellaneous bug fixes.

The release is posted on the Download Center here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36212

To find more details on what’s new in this release go to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg682132.aspx#BKMK_LinixUNIX and look under the subsection titled What’s New in Cumulative Update 1 for the Client for Linux and UNIX

A complete list of supported Linux and UNIX distributions and the installation packages can be found in Supported Configurations for Configuration Manager. Look under the subsection titled Computer Client Requirements \ Client Requirements for Linux and UNIX Servers \ Supported Distributions of Linux and UNIX.

John Thekkethala | Senior Program Manager | Microsoft

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ConfigMgr 2012 support tip: Clients never reboot even when required in a deployment

J.C. Hornbeck — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:28:16 GMT

- Adeel Mohd | Senior Consult-Escalation Engineer

I recently came across an interesting issue that I had never witnessed before in System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (ConfigMgr 2007) and while troubleshooting I learned it had to do with one of the new features included in System Center 2012 Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr 2012). If you’re new to ConfigMgr 2012 then you might take a minute to read through this one and learn how this new feature may affect client reboots in your software deployments.

Consider this scenario:

You deploy Software Updates or any type of deployment to a specific collection that has a maintenance window configured. The deployments succeed, however the client machines do not reboot inside or outside of their maintenance window even though a reboot is required per the deployment. In such a case, the only option left is to reboot the machines manually which can be very painful in a large environment.

When analyzing Rebootcoordinator.log we saw the following entries:

ServiceWindowsManager has allowed us to Reboot – means the Maintenance window has permitted to reboot
System restart turnaround time is 36600 seconds - means the total time of maintenance windows on the client is 610 minutes
Scheduled reboot from agent UpdatesDeploymentAgent - means updates were deployed and a reboot is required

Then straight after that the log shows the following entries:

ServiceWindowsManager has not allowed us to Reboot
ServiceWindowsManager says that we will not be able to Reboot in the future
We may not Reboot ever. Sending 'System May Never Reboot' Status Message

When we checked the Computer Restart client setting under the Administration node in the console (New in ConfigMgr 2012) we found that the total time of all applicable maintenance windows was 610 minutes and the time configured for the restart temporary notification interval and for the final countdown interval was also 610 minutes. This was our problem.

As a rule, the value for the restart temporary notification interval and the value for the final countdown interval should be shorter in duration than the shortest maintenance window that is applied to the client computer. In our case the shortest maintenance window was configured for 30 minutes.

To resolve this, we opened the console and went to Administration –> Client settings –> properties-> Computer restart settings and changed the value for temporary notification interval and for final countdown interval to 15 minutes. This was less than the shortest maintenance window of 30 minutes and it fixed our issue. So if you have a deployment that’s not triggering a reboot when you think it should, make sure your temporary notification interval and final countdown interval is less than the shortest maintenance window for the targeted client. Chances are this will fix your issue.

Adeel Mohd | Senior Consult-Escalation Engineer – PRO Support Middle East & India

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KB: Patching a passive cluster node using a Configuration Manager 2007 Software Update fails with exit code -2068578304

J.C. Hornbeck — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 17:42:18 GMT

Just a quick FYI on a new Knowledge Base article we published today. This one talks about an issue where using ConfigMgr 2007 to patch the passive node of a cluster fails with exit code -2068578304. You can get all of the details in the article below:

KB2855474 - Patching a passive cluster node using a Configuration Manager 2007 Software Update fails with exit code -2068578304 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2855474)

J.C. Hornbeck | Knowledge Engineer | Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

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Introducing the Pull-Distribution Points

J.C. Hornbeck — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:00:00 GMT

Hi everyone, welcome to the second blog in the series “New Distribution Points in Configuration Manager SP1”. In this second post I am going to talk about “pull-distribution points” You may ask why we introduced this new...(read more)

ConfigMgr 2012 Tip: Clicking Create Report Fails With 503: Service Unavailable

J.C. Hornbeck — Thu, 30 May 2013 18:35:21 GMT

Microsoft’s own Santos Martinez (Premier Field Engineering) recently wrote a great blog post describing his experience troubleshooting the inability to create custom reports in System Center 2012 Configuration Manager. What he ran into was the issue where you get “The Request Failed with HTTP status 503: Service Unavailable” when clicking on Create Report. He does a really nice job explaining his troubleshooting process and what he did to eventually fix reporting in his environment so whether you’re hitting this exact scenario or not it still makes for a good read. You can check out his post at the link below:

System Center 2012 Configuration Manager: 'Create Report' doesn't work, so what do I do now?

J.C. Hornbeck | Knowledge Engineer | Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

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Announcement: Configuration Manager Documentation Library Update for May 2013

J.C. Hornbeck — Thu, 30 May 2013 15:00:00 GMT

The Documentation Library for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager and the Configuration Manager 2007 Documentation Library have been updated on the web and the latest content has Updated: May 1, 2013 at the top of the topic. We value customer...(read more)

New HOTFIX available: Site assignments do not work in a System Center 2012 Configuration Manager site environment

J.C. Hornbeck — Wed, 29 May 2013 20:28:06 GMT

We published a new hotfix today for ConfigMgr 2012 to correct the following issue:

Consider the following scenario:

You have a Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager site environment.
You import a third-party root certification authority (CA) certificate by using the Configuration Manager console.
There is an ampersand (&) or other nonalphanumeric character in the CertificateIssuers string.

In this scenario, site assignments may not work.

You can find the complete article as well as download information for the hotfix here:

KB2841764 - FIX: Site assignments do not work in a System Center 2012 Configuration Manager site environment (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2841764)

J.C. Hornbeck | Knowledge Engineer | Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

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KB: Modifying a Configuration Manager 2007 service window may cause an unexpected delay in a software update deployment

J.C. Hornbeck — Mon, 20 May 2013 19:22:34 GMT

Just wanted to let you know about a new Knowledge Base article for ConfigMgr 2007 that we published today. This one talks about a fairly rare issue that you may run into if you modify the properties of a maintenance window right after creating a new software update deployment. The update still gets deployed, it just may happen a little later than you might expect.

You can get all of the details here:

KB2850370 - Modifying a Configuration Manager 2007 service window may cause an unexpected delay in a software update deployment (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2850370)

J.C. Hornbeck | Knowledge Engineer | Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

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