Remko Weijnen's Blog (Remko's Blog) » SQL Server

Deleting scheduled Altiris tasks from SQL

Remko — Tue, 03 May 2011 08:27:30 +0000

I needed to delete around 50 scheduled tasks from several machines in Altiris because something went wrong in on of the first jobs.

It would have better if the jobs were configured to fail on error and not continue but they weren’t.

Deleting the jobs from the Altiris console is very, very, slow. First the console asks for confirmation (after showing the hourglass for a long time):

Then the actual delete can take a few minutes and then the next server and so on.

I decided to delete the tasks directly from SQL.

I know this is not preferred but I think in the end it’s safe enough because I found a stored procedure called del_event_schedule which looks like this:

ALTER procedure [dbo].[del_event_schedule]
@schedule_id int
AS
begin transaction

DELETE FROM event_schedule WHERE schedule_id = @schedule_id

IF (@@error != 0)
rollback transaction
else
commit transaction

So al it does is a (transacted) delete from the table.

First I created a query that selects the current scheduled tasks:

SELECT computer.name, event.name
FROM dbo.event_schedule
INNER JOIN dbo.computer ON dbo.computer.computer_id = dbo.event_schedule.computer_id
INNER JOIN dbo.event ON dbo.event_schedule.event_id = dbo.event.event_id
WHERE dbo.computer.computer_name LIKE ‘VCTXA070%’
AND dbo.event_schedule.status_code IS NULL
AND event_schedule.start_time IS NOT NULL

This selects the computer name and task name for all computers that match VCTXA070% that have not yet started (status_code is null).

The start_time check prevents deleting recurring tasks like this one:

Since this gave me the correct results I deleted them:

DELETE FROM event_schedule
FROM dbo.event_schedule
INNER JOIN dbo.computer ON dbo.computer.computer_id = dbo.event_schedule.computer_id
INNER JOIN dbo.event ON dbo.event_schedule.event_id = dbo.event.event_id
WHERE dbo.computer.computer_name LIKE ‘VCTXA070%’
AND dbo.event_schedule.status_code IS NULL
AND event_schedule.start_time IS NOT NULL

If you want to delete completed tasks as well you can just leave out the status_code check:

Apply IP Configuration from a Database

Remko — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 08:27:27 +0000

I am currently deploying 64 Citrix XenApp servers with Altiris. The deployment consists of an OS Image, OS Configuration and finally Citrix XenApp and Applications.

In the OS Configuration part the IP configuration needs to be applied and I decided to do this with a database.

The database consists of 2 tables; one table with the per host settings and one table with the global settings (such as DNS).

In the Altiris job both tables are read from an embedded VBScript and assigned to the NIC.

Database configuration

I created a database (SQL Server) called IPManagement with 2 tables:

The globalconfig table has a name and a data field:

And contains only the DNS settings:

The hostconfig table has fields for hostname, ip address, netmask and default gateway:

Some sample data:

Altiris Configuration

In Altiris I have added the database as a custom data source, this can be done via Tools | Options | Custom Data Sources:

The Script:

The final step is the VBScript, which use the Custom Token feature to retreive the data from the database:

‘Set Network Configuration
‘vbscript
IPAddress=Array(Trim(" %#IPManagement*"select ip from hostconfig where hostname=‘%NODEFULL%’"% "))
NetMask=Array(Trim(" %#IPManagement*"select mask from hostconfig where hostname=‘%NODEFULL%’"% "))
Gateway=Array(Trim(" %#IPManagement*"select gateway from hostconfig where hostname=‘%NODEFULL%’"% "))
DNS=Array(Trim(" %#IPManagement*"select data from globalconfig where name=‘dns1′"% "), Trim(" %#IPManagement*"select data from globalconfig where name=’dns2′"% "))

Metric = Array(1)

strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration where IPEnabled = True",,48)

For Each objItem in colItems

If Left(objItem.IPAddress(0), 6) = "10.250" Then
   WScript.Echo("Found Adapter, current adres is: " & objItem.IPAddress(0) & " Desired Address is: " & IPAddress(0))
   Ret = objItem.EnableStatic(IPAddress, NetMask)
   WScript.Echo("EnableStatic returned: " & Ret)

   If Ret = 0 Then
      Ret = objItem.SetGateWays(Gateway, Metric)
      WScript.Echo("SetGateWays returned: " & Ret)

      Ret = objItem.SetDNSServerSearchOrder(DNS)
      WScript.Echo("SetDNSServerSearchOrder returned: " & Ret)
   End If

End If
Next

WScript.Quit(Ret)

Note that I had to do a little trick using the Trim statement and a space to get a correct assignment to the variables. Without the space Altiris doesn’t properly recognize the custom token.

The array is necessary beasue the EnableStatic and SetGateways Methods require array parameters even when there’s just a single entry.

SQL Query to get the Full Path of an Altiris Job #3

Remko — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 18:50:32 +0000

Last time I showed a User Defined Function to the Full Path of an Altiris Job given it’s id (event_id). Note that Altiris calls a Job an Event so the terms Event and Jobs are interchangeable here.

To complete it we first need to prepend the server and share name to the path.

I looked into the Altiris database tables to find the best place to get the servername and it seems that the hostname column of the mmsettings table is a good way.

In my database there was only one row in the table but I restrict the results by adding top 1:

SELECT TOP 1 hostname FROM mmsettings

Then I looked into the available tokens for one that returns a job id but we can only return a job name or a computer id. Since a job name is not unique I decided to use the computername and find the active job for this computer.

When a Job is scheduled an entry is added to the event_schedule table. If you look into this table you will notice a column status_code which is NULL initially and when the job start it will get a value of -1 which indicates the job is active.

When the job has finished the status will always be 0 or higher.So we can determine the active job by querying the event_schedule table for the computer_id and status_code = -1.

DECLARE @EventId int
SELECT @EventId = event_id
FROM event_schedule
WHERE computer_id = @ComputerId
AND status_code = -1

But I found out that during the phase where the Custom Tokens are evaluated the status_code column is still NULL.

However if we query for status_code is NULL we may get back more than one row if there a several jobs scheduled for this computer. So again I used the TOP 1 statement to limit the results:

DECLARE @EventId int
SELECT TOP 1 @EventId = event_id
FROM event_schedule
WHERE computer_id = @ComputerId
AND status_code IS NULL

This is the final UDF:

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[GetActiveFullPath]
( @ComputerId int)
RETURNS nvarchar(4000)
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @EventId int
SELECT TOP 1 @EventId = event_id
FROM event_schedule
WHERE computer_id = @ComputerId
AND status_code IS NULL

DECLARE @str nvarchar(4000);
WITH t1 (folder_id, name, parent_id, level)
AS
(
– Anchor member definition
   SELECT folder_id, name, parent_id, 0 AS Level
   FROM event_folder
   WHERE folder_id IN (
      SELECT folder_id FROM event WHERE event_id = @EventId)
   UNION ALL

– Recursive member definition
   SELECT t2.folder_id,t2.name, t2.parent_id, Level+1
   FROM event_folder AS t2, t1
   WHERE t2.folder_id = t1.parent_id
)

– Statement that executes the CTE
– STUFF and FOR XML are used to Concatenate the Values and seperate them by \ character

SELECT @str = STUFF((SELECT ‘\’ + name from t1 order by level desc FOR XML PATH(‘‘)),1,1,’‘)

– Prepend Servername and Share
SET @str = ‘\\‘ + (SELECT TOP 1 hostname FROM mmsettings) + ‘\eXpress\‘ + @str
RETURN @str;
END

And we use it like this in the Job:

set JOBFOLDER=%#*"SELECT dbo.GetActiveFullPath(%ID%)"%
if not exist %JOBFOLDER% MD %JOBFOLDER%

I didn’t find the share name in any of the tables so I hardcoded it as eXpress. If there’s a better way please let me know!

I would be very interested in your comments, do you find this approach usefull or do you have suggestions? Please leave a comment!

SQL Query to get the Full Path of an Altiris Job #2

Remko — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 09:00:43 +0000

Earlier I described a SQL Query to get the Full Path of an Altiris Job, today I will describe how we can make a User Defined Function (UDF) in SQL so we can call it easier.

I am using an UDF because it allows us to specify parameters, in this case a single parameter (the EventId (or job id).

This is the SQL that creates the UDF:

CREATE FUNCTION GetFullPath
( @EventId int)
RETURNS nvarchar(4000)
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @str nvarchar(4000);
WITH t1 (folder_id, name, parent_id, level)
AS
(
– Anchor member definition
   SELECT folder_id, name, parent_id, 0 AS Level
   FROM event_folder
   WHERE folder_id IN (
      SELECT folder_id FROM event WHERE event_id = @EventId)
   UNION ALL

– Recursive member definition
   SELECT t2.folder_id,t2.name, t2.parent_id, Level+1
   FROM event_folder AS t2, t1
   WHERE t2.folder_id = t1.parent_id
)

– Statement that executes the CTE
– STUFF and FOR XML are used to Concatenate the Values and seperate them by \ character

SELECT @str = STUFF((SELECT ‘\’ + name from t1 order by level desc FOR XML PATH(‘‘)),1,1,’‘)
RETURN @str
END
GO

After you have executed this, you can find the UDF in the Programmability Section of SQL:

To call this UDF you need to use the two part name (dbo.GetFullPath) as described here.

Example:

Next step will be to prepend the \\SERVER\Share part which we can do in the UDF as well.

SQL Query to get the Full Path of an Altiris Job

Remko — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 21:22:56 +0000

I wanted to query the full path name of an Altiris Job, this sounds easier that it is though.

Consider the following hierarchy:

Now I want to assemble the full Path, in this case: RPA\Getronics\PKG_p007.Citrix_Components.

This is important because I want to automatically create the corresponding directory structure which would be: \\SERVER\eXpress\RPA\Getronics\PKG_p007.Citrix_Components.

Altiris stores the Job (04.DeliveryServicesConsole) in the events table and in this table is a column folder_id. We can then lookup this folder_id in the event_folder table where each folder_id has a parent_id (which can be null in case of a root folder).

So we need to traverse the tree from the bottom up until we find the root folder. SQL Server has a mechanism for recursive queries called Common Table Expressions.

Using this mechanism I made the following query:

WITH t1 (folder_id, name, parent_id, level)
AS
(
– Anchor member definition
SELECT folder_id, name, parent_id, 0 AS Level
FROM event_folder
WHERE folder_id IN (
SELECT folder_id FROM event WHERE event_id = 2000112)
UNION ALL

– Recursive member definition
SELECT t2.folder_id,t2.name, t2.parent_id, Level+1
FROM event_folder AS t2, t1
WHERE t2.folder_id = t1.parent_id
)

– Statement that executes the CTE
– STUFF and FOR XML are used to Concatenate the Values and seperate them by \ character
SELECT STUFF((SELECT ‘\’ + name from t1 order by level desc FOR XML PATH(‘‘)),1,1,’‘)

The output is: RPA\Getronics\PKG_\p007.Citrix_Components

I added the Level column to be able to sort on it (descending) to get the proper path order, else it would have been p007.Citrix_Components\PKG_\Getronics\RPA.

Next steps are to prepend the \\SERVER\eXpress part and make the query parameterised so I can call it from within a job using the %JOBID% token.

To be continued…

Altiris AxSched ignores the DSN parameter

Remko — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 21:48:47 +0000

I was playing around with the AxSched tool that comes with Altiris, in my case the version that comes with v6.9 build 453.

I could not make it connect to the Deployment Server from my test machine, it seemed like the /dsn parameter I used was totally ignored.

I also tried the /d and /db parameters but they didn’t have any effect at all, the message was always:

Error opening database connection:
SQL Server does not exist or access denied.
ConnectionOpen (Connect()).

So I opened AxSched in Ida Pro and set a Breakpoint to the place where the SQL Connection seems to be made:

Ida nicely hints us that the ConnectionString is in the ECX register so we only have to inspect it to see it’s value.

Actually AxSched does several attemps and the used Connection Strings are:

DRIVER={SQL Server};DSN=;SERVER=;Trusted_Connection=yes;
DRIVER={SQL Server};DSN=;SERVER=;UID=sa;PWD=;Trusted_Connection=no;
DSN=Altiris eXpress Database;
DSN=Altiris eXpress Database;Trusted_Connection=yes;
DSN=Altiris eXpress Database;UID=sa;PWD=;Trusted_Connection=no;

So I bypassed by adding a DSN with the name Altiris eXpress Database and then it works.

Why is my scheduled job not executed in Altiris?

Remko — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 19:34:15 +0000

Earlier today I wrote about my Altiris Job Builder tool but when I tested the actual produced build job I noticed something weird: the job was scheduled but not executed.

I then tried to manually push a job to this server and that one executed fine.

When I clicked the Job I could see that it was scheduled:

But when I clicked the Server it wasn’t there:

Then I fired up SQL Server Management Studio and made a query on the computer table:

Interesting results no? At least it’s clear what happens, AxSched schedules the job for the first computer that matches the given computername.

And in this case the computer is longer present in the console (it’s group_id is NULL). I assume this happened because I redeployed the Virtual Machine.

So we can fix the error by issueing a SQL Statement, let’s check first:

Yep, that query is ok, so we can delete it.
CAUTION: BEFORE YOU CONTINUE MAKE A BACKUP OF THE DATABASE

DELETE FROM computer WHERE name = ‘cxnrd02′ AND group_id IS NULL

or to clean all:

DELETE FROM computer WHERE group_id IS NULL

My assumption was right, this fixed the problem!

Altiris Job Builder

Remko — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:26:34 +0000

I have created a little tool for myself that I have call Altiris Job Builder, it retreives the Jobs from the Altiris database and shows them in a Treeview.

Then I can assemble a Master Build Job by dragging the needed Jobs to another Treeview on the right. Since it’s just for me it doesn’t have a fancy gui:

So why did I write it? Well I have divided my Jobs into Prerequisites and Packages, for instance IIS and Terminal Server and Java are prereqisuites for Citrix. But many prereqisuites are required for one or more other packages, eg Java is also used for certain applications.I don’t want to make copies of Jobs since that means I have to change it in multiple places. For instance say we upgrade to a new Java version we would need to update multiple jobs instead of one (which is very likely to wrong ).

So the idea behind this master build is to create a Master Build Job that fires off all the needed jobs for a certain package. I use AxSched in an integrated script job for that. So my tool generates something like this:

rem My Jobs\PKG\p003.Citrix_Prereqisuites\02.Java
AxSched %COMPNAME% -jid 2000266 /t %TIME:~0,5% /ulu

rem My Jobs\PKG\p003.Citrix_Prereqisuites\03.Web-Server
AxSched %COMPNAME% -jid 2000267 /t %TIME:~0,5% /ulu

rem My Jobs\PKG\p003.Citrix_Prereqisuites\05.TS_TerminalServer!
AxSched %COMPNAME% -jid 2000269 /t %TIME:~0,5% /ulu

rem My Jobs\PKG\p003.Citrix_Prereqisuites\08.VisualJ#
AxSched %COMPNAME% -jid 2000272 /t %TIME:~0,5% /ulu

rem My Jobs\PKG\p003.Citrix_Prereqisuites\06.CtxClient
AxSched %COMPNAME% -jid 2000270 /t %TIME:~0,5% /ulu

rem My Jobs\PKG\p015.Citrix_AddServer\02.InstallCitrix!
AxSched %COMPNAME% -jid 2000295 /t %TIME:~0,5% /ulu

rem My Jobs\PKG\p013.CitrixComponents\01.DeliveryServicesConsole
AxSched %COMPNAME% -jid 2000287 /t %TIME:~0,5% /ulu

rem My Jobs\PKG\p013.CitrixComponents\02.CMC
AxSched %COMPNAME% -jid 2000289 /t %TIME:~0,5% /ulu

rem My Jobs\PKG\p013.CitrixComponents\04.HDX
AxSched %COMPNAME% -jid 2000290 /t %TIME:~0,5% /ulu

rem My Jobs\PKG\p013.CitrixComponents\03.EnableFP2
AxSched %COMPNAME% -jid 2000293 /t %TIME:~0,5% /ulu

rem My Jobs\PKG\p014.CitrixHotFixes\01.HotfixRollup6!
AxSched %COMPNAME% -jid 2000292 /t %TIME:~0,5% /ulu

But lazy as I am I don’t want to manually copy/paste this into a job but rather insert it directly into the database. If we look at the eXpress database scheme we can see that there is an event table (a Job is really an Event in Altiris):

Only the event_id field is mandatory and it’s also the Primary Key of the table. However the event_id is not auto generated so if we insert a new record how do we now the right value for event_id?

One approach could be to read the highest value and increment that by 1 but that seems dangerous for various reasons. So I figured there was probably a Stored Procedure for adding a new Job/Event.

In the SQL Server Management Studio we can find Stored Procedures under the Programmability Node of the Database:

If you look into the available Stored Procedures you will see that there are del_xxx and ins_xxx events. We need the ins_event Stored Procedure:

In Delphi we can use the TADOCommand object to call a Stored Procedure:

function TForm1.AddEvent(const FolderId: Integer; const Name: String;
const Description: String=”): Integer;
var
cmd: TADOCommand;
begin
Result := -1;
cmd := TADOCommand.Create(nil);
try
cmd.Connection := ADOConnection1;
cmd.CommandType := cmdStoredProc;
cmd.CommandText := ‘ins_event’;
cmd.Parameters.Refresh;
cmd.Parameters.ParamByName(‘@name’).Value := Name;
cmd.Parameters.ParamByName(‘@folder_id’).Value := FolderId;
cmd.Parameters.ParamByName(‘@description’).Value := Description;
cmd.Execute;
Result := cmd.Parameters.ParamValues[‘@RETURN_VALUE’];
finally
cmd.Free;
end;
end;

The ins_event Stored Procedure returns the new JobId in the @RETURN_VALUE parameter. This is very convenient because we need the JobId to add tasks to the new Job, in this case a script task.

But enough talk for today, I hope you find the subject interesting and I would be very interested to hear about other solutions or concepts for a Master Build Job.

The case of the failing Deployment Server Install

Remko — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 14:47:15 +0000

I was trying to install HP Insight Control server deployment (previously called HP Rapid Deployment Pack) on Sql Server 2008 Express. I will just call it Deployment Server or DS from here.

I first installed SQL 2008 Express with Advanced Services and configured it to listen op Port 1433 as required by DS.

The installation of the first part (Deployment Server version 6.9.4) indicated a successfull install but the prereqisuites check of the Hotfix version 2.0 installer failed on the last step:

This was strange because I didn’t yet startup the console, so I decided to start it and close it as this would perhaps allow me to continue.

The next screen was a clear indication something went wrong:

I presumed that the ODBC connection was missing so I went to Adminstrative Tools | Data Sources (ODBC). But the ODBC connection was present. I then fired up SQL Server Management Studio which showed me the eXpress database was missing.
Note that on x64 versions of Windows there are two versions of the ODBC connections (tool): an x86 (32 bit) and an x64 (64 bit) version.

And even worse: the HP Installer does a silent install of Altiris DS but hides this error for us and just reports success!

My next step was to do a manual database install, this can be done by starting hpfeatures\ds\Server.exe.

Server.exe fortunately allows us to install only the database:

Database installer is unpacked to a subfolder in %temp% (in my case %temp%\apt1) it may be convenient to save this folder.

After a while the Database Installer presented and error message:

I looked into the install folder and noticed there were several .sql files (sql server scripts) and osql.exe. osql is a commandline tool that can execute sql statements and it can import .sql files.

Launching the supplied version of osql indicated that it was unable to connect to SQL at all. I did a guess that the problem was the instancename: even though you select Default Instance when installing the instance name is SQLEXPRESS instead of MSSQLSERVER (which is used in the full product).

I did a reinstall of SQL Express using a custom instance name of MSSQLSERVER and now osql could connect (it asked for credentials).

I reran the Database Install and now it worked.

In the end I am not sure if this error only happens when using the HP Branded version of Altiris or only when using SQL Express WITH advanced services but I hope this article will help you troubleshoot similar issues.

Script to clear SQL Transactions logs

Remko — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 11:11:15 +0000

Script to clear SQL Transactions Logs

Did you know that when you backup a SQL database with Backup Exec (with the SQL Agent) the transaction log is not cleared? This means that if you use the full recovery model your transaction log keeps growing and growing. I tested this with Backup Exec v11D and you can only create a seperate scheduled job to backup the transactions logs but not one to just clear it or truncate it after successfull backup.

Therefore I made a VBS script that clears SQL transactions logs, an option would be to schedule this as a post backup job.

This is the script:

‘ ClrSqlLogs.vbs version 1.0
‘ Author: Remko Weijnen (r dot weijnen at gmail.com)

‘ Script to clear SQL Transaction logs
‘ Parameters:
‘ strServer = SQL Server name
‘ strDatabase = Database name
‘ strLogName = The name of the log file
‘
‘ Script starts here:

‘ Force explicit declaration
Option Explicit

‘ Make variables public so they can be accessed from the sub
Public objCon, objCom

‘ Create database connection object
Set objCon = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")

‘ Create database command object
Set objCom = CreateObject("ADODB.Command")

‘ Clear logs
Call ClearLogs("MyServer", "MyDatabase", "MyDatabase_log")
Call ClearLogs("MyOtherServer", "MyOtherDatabase", "MyOtherDatabase_log")

‘ Cleanup
Set objCom = Nothing
Set objCon = Nothing

‘ Exit the script (just to be sure that code below is never Executed
WScript.Quit(0)

‘ The procedure that clears the log
Sub ClearLogs(strServer, strDatabase, strLogName)
Dim strConnection
‘ Build connection string
strConnection = "Driver={SQL Native Client};Server=" & strServer & ";Database=" & strDatabase & ";Trusted_Connection=yes;"

WScript.Echo("Connection String: " & strConnection)
‘ Open Connection to SQL Server and Database
‘ Trusted connection so the currently logged-on account needs permissions
WScript.Echo("Open connection")
objCon.Open(strConnection)

‘ Connect AdoCommand to the Active connection
objCom.ActiveConnection = objCon

‘ Execute DBCC SHRINKFILE
objCom.CommandText = "DBCC SHRINKFILE(" & strLogName & ", 1)"
WScript.Echo(vbTab & objCom.CommandText)
objCom.Execute

‘ Truncate Log
‘ WScript.Echo(vbTab & "BACKUP LOG WITH TRUNCAT")
objCom.CommandText = "BACKUP LOG " & strDatabase & " WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY"
WScript.Echo(vbTab & objCom.CommandText)
objCom.Execute

‘ Execute DBCC SHRINKFILE again
objCom.CommandText = "DBCC SHRINKFILE(" & strLogName & ", 1)"
objCom.Execute
WScript.Echo("Close connection")
objCon.Close
End Sub

ClrSQLLogs.zip (163)