GPO Tool for 8.0 uses new path (4244866)

As part of the Dell to Quest rebranding, the agent path has changed from Dell\KACE to Quest\KACE.

This has been mentioned in the 8.0 release notes, however, we want to use this KB to warn users of the potential impact that this can have when using other methods to deploy the agent.

NOTE: If the devices currently have the 7.2 agents installed, the Agent Auto Updates method is the preferred method to update existing agents to 8.0.

1. The KACE SMA Windows Agent GPO Provisioning Tool (version 1.0.117 ) does not check for the agent under the Quest path.Therefore, when you start to deploy the 8.0 agent, you will need to recreate the GPO using the new tool (version 1.0.122) that can be downloaded here. Otherwise, the previous GPO will fail to detect the new KACE agent and continue to deploy the 8.0 agent over and over every time GPO is applied.

1. It has come to our attention that a number of our customers also have created their own health check programs to check to if the agent is installed and/or running, these types of health check programs may also need to be updated otherwise it may fall under the same issue as the GPO tool and the agent will continue to get installed over itself.

There are several ways to find out if the agent is being reinstalled on your environment:

• The C:\ProgramData\Quest\KACE\user\ampinstaller.log file will contain lots of entries such as the following:

These entries mean that then agent is being installed.

• On both C:\ProgramData\Quest\KACE\konea.log and C:\ProgramData\Quest\KACE\user\KAgent.log you will see signs of the agent services stopping/starting:
  • Konea.log:

2018-08-27.11:30:15-0600|INFO |konea.go:252:func2                      | ======== Stop Konea  ========|{"pid":12544}

2018-08-27.11:30:16-0600|INFO |konea.go:247:runKonea                   | ======== Start Konea ========|{"pid":6512}

• KAgent.log:

[2018-07-11.14:04:10][OLS:ServiceMain                 ] OfflineScheduler Service Main Thread stopped agent processing

[2018-07-11.14:06:04][OLS:ServiceMain                 ] OfflineScheduler Service Main Thread start

• Application Event Logs will show MsiInstaller installing the agent from a temporary directory:

This will cause tasks to be interrupted (such as patching, causing the Log Upload Failed error), additional bandwidth consumed every time the GPO is refreshed, and can cause an older version of the agent to be re-installed on devices.

To check the version of the GPO Tool, it’s installed under C:\Program Files (x86)\Quest\Kace SMA Windows Agent GPO Provisioning Tool. Right click K1GPOAgentProvision.exe and go to Properties. On the Details tab, it should show version 1.0.122.0:

Any older version will require to remove the GPO completely, and start the process from scratch. The following article provides the information regarding the GPO setup and download source:

Group Policy Object (GPO) Provisioning Wizard Tool step-by-step