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Wednesday 9 January 2008

eTrust ITM 8.1 fails to update

I've been grappling with a strange problem with eTrust ITM 8.1 for a couple of weeks - the software installs just fine, but the signature updates never apply. The problem occurs on a whole batch of machines that aren't exactly related, but which were all bought in early 2005.

The eTrust Distribution log shows the following:
Completed Time Type Code Description
09-Jan-2008 08:46:11 Information 0 1) Selected component "eTrust Antivirus Arclib Archive Libra...
09-Jan-2008 08:46:11 Information 0 2) Selected component "eTrust Antivirus Base"
09-Jan-2008 08:46:11 Information 0 3) Selected component "eTrust Antivirus Realtime Drivers"
09-Jan-2008 08:46:11 Information 0 4) Selected component "iGateway"
09-Jan-2008 08:46:11 Information 0 5) Selected component "eTrust ITM Common"
09-Jan-2008 08:46:11 Information 0 6) Selected component "eTrust ITM Agent GUI"
09-Jan-2008 08:46:11 Information 0 7) Selected component "CAUpdate"
09-Jan-2008 08:46:11 Information 0 8) Selected component "eTrust PestPatrol Base"
09-Jan-2008 08:46:11 Information 0 9) Selected component "eTrust PestPatrol Clean"
09-Jan-2008 08:46:11 Information 0 10) Selected component "eTrust PestPatrol Engine"
09-Jan-2008 08:46:11 Information 0 11) Selected component "eTrust PestPatrol Realtime"
09-Jan-2008 08:46:11 Information 0 12) Selected component "eTrust PestPatrol Signatures"
09-Jan-2008 08:46:11 Information 0 13) Selected component "eTrust Vet Engine"
09-Jan-2008 08:46:11 Information 0 Checking updates for "eTrust Antivirus Arclib Archive Librar...
09-Jan-2008 08:46:11 Information 0 Downloading from "SERVERNAME:42511"
09-Jan-2008 08:46:09 Information 0 The distribution program started the download process.
Show 10 Show 25 Show 50 Show All Page 1 « ‹ 1-16 of 16 › »
Note that there are always 16 lines in the log.. the update process starts but never completes, and there's no error message.

After working with our reseller we discovered the problem - it's not a problem with eTrust, but instead a very strange permissions issue that has happened with those PCs. What has happened is that the computer's SYSTEM account (which the eTrust services run under) doesn't have access to write to that part of the disk, despite having permissions explicitly set.

In the case of eTrust, the fix is to open up the Services control panel (Start.. Run.. services.msc), and then.

  • Double-click on the eTrust ITM Job Service
  • Click the Log On tab
  • Change the credentials from the "Local System account" to the local Administrator account on the PC (i.e. username Administrator, password to whatever you set it to).
  • Restart the service
  • Either reboot the machine, or terminate the ITMDist service
  • Tell the machine to download updates again.
In the cases I have seen, the update works correctly after the Administrator account has been specified. There does seem to be some problem with the SYSTEM service not working properly.

Of course, you can also do this all remotely with the Computer Management tool and something like PSKILL (from PSTools), so you don't have to be sitting at the machine to do it.

As I said, I don't believe that this is an eTrust problem, it looks as though Windows is borked somehow, possibly an issue with SIDs or something. I have a feeling that other software misbehaves, possibly including Active Directory policies. I have no solution other than a complete rebuild, but if you're struggling to get eTrust updating properly, then I would definitely look at the user rights for the service.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

You are my f***ing hero. I've been screwing around with this for a few days and your solution worked like a charm. Saved me from having to call CA tech support and struggle trying to make them understand what the problem was. Thanks.

Unknown said...

Thank you for the hint.
Changing the acoount of the ITM Job Service didn't solve my problem.
But I found that the c:\windows\temp folder was filled with updates of eTrust. I added Everyone R/W permissions (all except Full Control) and tadaaaa, the update was successful !

Thx !

Pieter

Craig said...

tried this solution because i had this sort of problem, but it was actually because the virus I thought I had removed by scanning the hdd offline had come back and was interfering with etrust, 6 hrs wasted!!

Unknown said...

Thank's heaps... Changing the Service Account of the Job Service Solved my issue...

I have been trying to work this out ever since installing CA on Windows 7. It seemed to always stop at the materitm.xml list.

My Hero