Report Date and Last Contact Time conflict with inventory

[gm7cadd9]

I have an issue where my inventory is not being updated. The scope for the inventory collection is set to all computers, about 2/3rds of them are working properly. What I am seeing is the last contact time is usually within the last hour, but for the 3rd of systems I have an issue with it says the last Report Date was 4+ months ago.

I know I can run recon to force a new inventory collection, but does anyone know what would have caused this or a better way to fix it?

http://imgur.com/Zzj2xNm

[mm2270]

Keep in mind that the Last Inventory Date only gets updated on the JSS when the Mac is able to successfully submit an inventory report. In other words, some of your Macs may be initiating an inventory collection on their regular schedule, but if something is preventing them from uploading the log file at the end, the date on the JSS won't ever get updated.
In contrast, the Last Check In Date is simply the jamf binary submitting a tiny bit of data back to the JSS just to say that it connected to the server to see if anything was waiting to run on the Mac. The two usually match up pretty closely, but its not a guarantee.

What I'd do is take a closer look at some of the Macs showing 4+ months as the last inventory, and see if there is a backlog of reports sitting in the /Library/Application Support/JAMF/logs/ directory. You can also initiate a manual recon one some of them and throw in the -verbose flag to see if its getting stuck anywhere along the way and timing out perhaps.

What version of the JSS are you using BTW?

[gm7cadd9]

v8.62 But upon further digging I appear to be having the same issue as these people here:

https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=5775

I ran a manual 'sudo jamf recon -verbose' and sure enough it stops at Adobe SpeedGrade CS6 so now I have a good path to go down.

thanks!

[mm2270]

You seriously need to upgrade to at least the 8.7 version, preferably 8.73. When we were on 8.6x we had all kinds of issues with Macs failing to submit reports. Partly because of issues like the Speedgrade one you mentioned, but also just because the jamf binary in that version was buggy and would hang on inventory collection. It was resolved in later releases.

That's why I asked what version you were on because your symptoms sounded strangely familiar. Do yourself a favor and upgrade your JSS to the last version of Casper Suite 8 when you can.

[gm7cadd9]

How would you compare the update process to the upgrade process, should I go to 8.73 or straight to 9.x? What sort of downtime/impact does it have to the client machines?

thanks again,

[mm2270]

Upgrading to 8.73 should be fairly seamless. Not much has changed between the version you have and that version to worry you. Have a good JSS db backup (verified) in place and a roll back plan just in case something goes wrong. And when its good for you, do the upgrade. There should only be minimal downtime during the upgrade.

Upgrading to version 9 on the other hand is something you will need to plan out much more carefully. Although the current 9.22 has matured a bit more,the interface is very different and there are still a number of issues with it, not to mention that some features present in the 8 series have been dropped in the 9 series, or haven't made their way back in yet.
In short, plan out your 8.73 upgrade, but take a bit more time before jumping to version 9. At least that's my opinion. Others may have a different view on this.