Extension Attributes Not Filling In On Some Machines.

[McAwesome]

We've recently become much more proactive in pushing updates to our users' machines. One thing we've set up is a handful of extension attributes that report back the installed version of the various programs. Most machines are reporting back flawlessly. Here's what one of those machines looks like:

Since this data had been populating for a couple of weeks, I decided to start targeting smart groups to it. Adobe Flash, for example, is targeted to machines where "Adobe Flash Player " is not <current version>. I then targeted an ongoing policy to push the newest Adobe Flash to machines in that group on Startup, Login, Logout, Network State Change, Enrollment Complete, and Recurring Check in. The policy is set to update inventory, so machines that are in the group should be removed from it after the policy runs. So for every new version, the machine should run the policy once and then stop being targeted by it.

When I came in this morning, I found that one machine had run the policy 40 times over night. It wasn't the only one to run it multiple times. I went into the extension attributes on it and found something very odd.

This machine had been checking in just fine, but it wasn't actually updating the extension attributes. Others are updating some, but not all of them. I did a search for "Adobe Flash Player is "(blank value) and found that roughly 18% of our machines were not updating that field. I haven't checked the rest yet, but I'm guessing it's about the same.

I can't figure out why most machines are filling stuff in just fine but these ones are not. OS version isn't a factor(happening to machines on 10.6-10.10). Affected machines are a mix of form factors. We're using JAMF 9.72.

Does anyone have any idea why some machines would update the Extension Attributes while others would not?

[mm2270]

Have you checked to make sure the Macs are submitting inventory to the JSS successfully? IOW, check the last Update time field for the affected systems to see when they last submitted full inventory. Since Extension Attributes are dependent on the inventory collection you need to check that.

Keep in mind inventory collection and just running policies are not actually the same thing. i've seen cases of Macs failing to push up an inventory collection to the JSS, but still able to run normally policies just fine.

[McAwesome]

@mm2270 It's mixed. Some machines are out of date but others are checking in just fine.

[davidacland]

Just to confirm, do you mean the EAs aren't up to date but an inventory has successfully completed like in this screenshot.

As a test, I would un-enroll and re-enroll one of them and see if it updates.

[McAwesome]

Yes, that's what I'm meaning. Inventory will complete without errors but fields do not fill in. The machine I took the screenshot of actually completed inventory each of those 40 times.

I haven't had a chance to check if re-enrolling resolves the issue. Will update when I've tested that.

[mm2270]

Wow, that's pretty strange if they are in fact submitting inventory. I can't say I've ever seen that happen. Typically Extension Attributes either work, or don't. If they don't, its often OS related in some way, like the script needs to be reworked for an old/new OS or something. Working on some Macs and not on others all on different OS versions is very odd.

If you have access to one of the affected systems, can you run a manual recon with the verbose flag and see if anything interesting appears in the output?

sudo jamf recon -verbose

[McAwesome · Accepted solution]

I just got back from testing it on two machines(10.9.5 and 10.6.8). Neither updated after running it, though neither returned any errors. Re-enrolling the 10.9.5 machine fixed it, but didn't affect the 10.6.8. I talked to the user of the 10.6.8 machine and they can't think of any reason why it was kept back, so I'm just going to update/reimage/whathaveyou that machine.

So I guess that marks this solved. Re-enroll on newer OS's, reimage on older ones.