Nexthink Collector ?

[dpertschi]

No mention of this one on the forum yet, so either this software is perfect (hahaha) or I’m on an island.

I may need to mass deploy and maintain the Nexthink Collector. Never heard of it before, but it looks like a client side agent (ugh) that collects and sends analytics to a central repository.

Anyone here have experience with this one you can comment on?

[emccammack]

Did you ever get this resolved?

[dpertschi]

Yes, we deployed it out to about 1200 machines. It did require 'repackaging' as you have to specify the address of the server that the agent will be reporting to, and we have four different ones.

No ill effects that I've witnessed with the agent. The vendor has only just recently released an El Cap version (sigh).

Can't comment on the usefulness or uselessness of the analytics collected. I do know that like any cross-platform solution, the Mac features are less robust than the other platform.

[ooshnoo]

@dpertschi

How exactly did you repackage it? Composer? Did it require a reboot?

[dpertschi]

I put the csi.app into /tmp/Nexthink and dropped that into Composer.
Then I added a postflight script like:

/private/tmp/Nexthink/csi.app/Contents/MacOS/csi -address 10.x.x.xx -port 998

Somewhere I found a word doc., Installing The Collector On Mac OS, which covers this pretty well.

From there I'm just pushing that package via policy. My notes fail me on the rest, not sure if that needed a restart or it just started talking to the server. I have to package the 5.4.2 version soon. I'll post back anything useful or different.

[sachinkpshindep]

I have tried your steps, but pkg is failed since this command gets permission denied:

can u guide how u created the nexthink package.

[cindySingh]

Hi, we deployed it as it is, without any manual config and its working on all the clients. We did in December 2016. Probably, they have improved the installer by now. It did not require a reboot.

[Louise_R]

I'm curious if anyone has used this with sierra & high- sierra and if you have had issues with security updates and / or ktext user approvals ?

[allanp81]

@lradifera_cbs Yes, we've been running this for a while on Sierra without any issues and are currently trialling our High Sierra configurations and you have to whitelist the kext for it. Easy enough to do, it's already on that kext spreadsheet doing the rounds.

[iJake]

The latest version runs in the user space and does not user a kext anymore.

Starting from V6.17, the Mac Collector runs in user mode and it does not need to ask the user for explicit permissions to install any kernel extension. The fact of running in user mode comes with the added benefit of making unnecessary to reboot your macOS devices after updating or uninstalling the Collector.

[Louise_R]

@allanp81 @iJake thank you for the replies and information. I feel a little better about it now.

[Gkrishna]

Hi Folks ,

Is that a licensed one or freeware , for recent version of nexthink needs any manual configuration before packaging it .

kindly suggest

[Gkrishna]

@dpertschi can i have that word doc which you have for nexthink collector.

[Bhughes]

Anyone know how to check the version of Nexthink once deployed? I deployed it via the same method @dpertschi describes above.

I cannot find a way to determine the version of Nexthink, once installed. The csi.app is the only thing that shows any versioning... that I can find.

[dpertschi]

You can read the version from the driver in a extension attribute

#!/bin/sh
# Reports the installed version of the Nexthink agent, or Not Installed

if [ -f "/Library/Extensions/nxtdrv.kext/Contents/Info.plist" ]; then
    VERSION=$( /usr/bin/defaults read /Library/Extensions/nxtdrv.kext/Contents/Info CFBundleShortVersionString )
else
    VERSION="Not Installed"
fi
echo "<result>$VERSION</result>"

[Bhughes]

Thanks @dpertschi ... however, I am on v6.22.1.25 - I don't see a nxtdrv.kext in /Library/Extensions

[mgshepherd]

This method should work on your version @Bhughes. I'm not a script master so I'm open to any suggestions if script needs to be modified.

#!/bin/sh
# Reports the installed version of the Nexthink agent, or Not Installed

if [ -f "/Library/Application Support/Nexthink/config.json" ]; then
    VERSION=$( /bin/cat /Library/Application Support/Nexthink/config.json | grep -i version | cut -d '"' -f4 )
else
    VERSION="Not Installed"
fi
echo "<result>$VERSION</result>"

[Bhughes]

@mgshepherd that works like a dream, thanks!!!