Timeout (or other errors)

[EC2311]

Bug reporting acknowledgment

Yes, I read it

Professional support

None

Describe the bug

Sometimes, a timeout (or other error) may appear in log of agent.

The status of the inventory doesn't take care of error during inventory

-> and so : we think that inventory is complete, but it is not.

To reproduce

Do an inventory with timeout (on software for instance, but it can be other task)

The task may be either there, but not complete or maybe absent totally.

Expected behavior

There should be an information in the file (like partial = true) with the status of completion of inventory :
Partial = True (the same behaviour as actual, linked to postpone)
Inventory : Complete/Partial (new one linked to any error (timeout or other errors)) to inform that there is an inventory, but not full (an error happened)

Operating system

Windows

GLPI Agent version

v1.15

GLPI version

10.0.18

GLPIInventory plugin or other plugin version

GLPI Inventory v1.5.3

Additional context

No response

[g-bougard]

Sometimes, a timeout (or other error) may appear in log of agent.

Please, can you share such content you're talking about ? This would help to follow your idea.

I think I've an idea of what you're talking about. If I'm right, I will answer you we can't always be sure if a timeout is normal or not. Sometime it's an evidence there's a problem when you read the log, but honestly, it will be difficult to be 100% sure we are facing an inventory problem.

The problem is also we don't want to produce false positive when timeout can be normal. For example, on windows, few timeouts are normal when you try to get few WMI objects on windows server for AV inventory as these ones are know to not exist actually on this kind of computer and WMI api will answer with a timeout on that case.
Of course, we could specifically handle these understood timeout error.

Anyway, when there's a lot of error, we can't decide to change inventory property to set it as "partial". Agent reports an inventory following the state of the computer and tries to make it as complete as possible. The "partial" property has another purpose: it's used to limit the amount of data sent when agent finds some inventory part didn't change since the previous inventory.

So the "partial" property can't be used for your purpose. Indeed, GLPI actually don't care about the difficulties of any agent. This is probably a part of your problem. Maybe we should think to include found inventory errors with each inventory. Then we can think to ask GLPI to decide, maybe we a dedicated rule engine, to put an inventory error status on assets. This status then could help people to identify computers with real problems and investigate on their own.

[EC2311]

In fact the most of time it is linked to software inventory...
we have sometime 70 softwares inventoried although there are 205 softwares.
We can think it's complete and it's not.
I dont' know if its possible to have the number ot total softwares : 70 on 205 inventoried ? it will be already a good information ?

we are updating backend-timeout value from 180 to 600 (hoping it will be enough...)

[EC2311]

what is the difference between : this 'task execution time out' below

and the backend_collect_timeout ?

when installing the package (windows) with msiexec : does this parameter (backend_collect_timeout) is well set (into task execution Time out) ?

[g-bougard]

"Connection Time Out" is the value for TIMEOUT installer option.
"Delay Before the First Target" is the value for DELAYTIME.
"Task Execution Time Out" is the value for BACKEND_COLLECT_TIEMOUT.

All these values are described here: https://glpi-agent.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation/windows-command-line.html#command-line-parameters

[EC2311]

Thanks for your reply.
In fact, I request to update Task Execution Time Out from 180 to 600, and team updated taht into a value Task_Execution_Time_Out = 600 (in msiexec) : they thought the name of value was like screen, and it's not.
Perhaps put the real value in registry with brackets for the screen to avoid mistakes...