Agent is failing to upgrade and the kernel status shows Not Connected

[#1]

Version:

1. 6.0.x, 7.0.x

Issue:

Specific agent(s) are failing to upgrade while other agents on the system upgrade with no issues.

The agents failing to upgrade shows the following status on the Bit9 console:

Policy status: Unprotected

Upgrade status: Reboot Required

Reboot of the agent machine does not resolve the issue.

Symptoms:

- After the machine reboots, the Parity service is not running but manual start is successful.

- When running dascli status on the agent machine it shows:

          Version Information

          CLI:        7.0.1.1892 3/14/2014 10:24:44 AM (Patch 13)

          Agent:      7.0.1.1892 3/14/2014 10:24:44 AM (Patch 13)

          Kernel:     Not Connected

          Server:     7.0.1.1964 4/24/2014 7:56:30 PM (Patch 14)

- The upgrade log files: %programdata%\Bit9\Parity Agent\Logs\ParityAgentInstall_<timestamp>.log bounce back between 2 types of messages.

Some logs shows:

          MSI (s) (64:18) [16:26:39:750]: Running as a service.

          MSI (s) (64:80) [16:26:39:859]: Message context already initialized, returning ERROR_INSTALL_ALREADY_RUNNING

- While other logs show the following:

          MSI (c) (28:40) [16:26:39:390]: Failed to grab execution mutex. System error 258.

          MSI (c) (28:40) [16:26:39:812]: Cloaking enabled.

          MSI (c) (28:40) [16:26:39:812]: Attempting to enable all disabled privileges before calling Install on Server

          MSI (c) (28:40) [16:26:39:828]: Incrementing counter to disable shutdown. Counter after increment: 0

          MSI (c) (28:40) [16:26:40:000]: Decrementing counter to disable shutdown. If counter >= 0, shutdown will be denied.  Counter after decrement: -1

          MSI (c) (28:40) [16:26:40:000]: MainEngineThread is returning 1618

Cause:

Something is holding the windows installer service in use or locking it during the attempt to install the Bit9 patch.

Solution:

Use the Microsoft Fixit tool to resolve the issue:

1. Go to: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17588/fix-problems-that-block-programs-from-being-installed...
   
2. Select Windows > Install or Upgrade Software or Hardware > Install or remove Programs > “Fix problems that programs cannot be installed or uninstalled”

Following this, the upgrade of the agent will complete successfully.