Smart groups not updating reliably

[tanderson]

Good morning,

We're seeing an issue where a good number (but not all) of our smart groups aren't updating properly. For example, I have a smart group created to contain our Lion systems. If I look at the smart group list, the number may be 1143. If I click the edit criteria link and then click save, the number will change. It could change by a few, could change by 100.

This is causing issues with our policies because systems aren't running them because they aren't in the groups. We're running 8.52 and I've talked to support and they recommended upgrading to 8.6 which we are going to do. Just wondering if anyone else has had this problem and if 8.6 helped.

Thanks,
Tom

[alexjdale]

I still see this with 8.6. In fact, one of our Smart Groups sorts systems by binary, and my "8.4" Smart Group was showing systems that had been updated to 8.6. I had to Edit the policy and Save it for it to update.

This is a big problem, I also see it with my Smart Groups that look at number of SWUs available on a system, which is a pretty important thing to know. It does seem pretty consistent, and only happens with certain groups checking on certain attributes,

Does anyone have any insight here?

[Bukira]

i am having the same issue with a lot of our smart groups, running 8.6

[Jason_Lieble]

Hey everyone. Thanks for voicing your concern on the current status of smart groups. Just wanted to let you know that we are aware of the issue and are taking some great steps to improve them.

While I can't give any sort of time frame or quick fix on this, I can confidently say that this has a lot of attention internally here.

[blutz]

I'm also having issues with Smart Groups not updating properly. I just noticed it actually, but it explains why I'm having certain computers drop different config profiles.

[tcam]

I'm having issues with smart groups as well, I created one to see if an app is installed or not. when I look at the computer in inventory, inventory shows that the app is not there, but the smart group dose not list the computer.

deleting and re-creating the smart group didn't fix the issue.
I had to uninstall the JSS client, and then re-add the computer using Recon to get the computer to show up in the smart group.

[nsdjoe]

Any news on an ETA for a fix for this? We're finding that a computer will be in a smart group one day and then drop off the next (even though it still fits the criteria for the Smart Group). We can't rely on the accuracy of any Smart Group and its becoming a significant problem during our 10.8 deployment in our school district. What's the latest?

[bonaccij]

We are also finding this issue on our JSS. We have 26 groups that represent individual locations here and in Europe. We are in the middle of trying to deploy software and are finding difficult because different machines disappear every day. Where are we internally with this issue. This seems to be an ongoing issue and there have been 2 releases since this was first noticed/mentioned. Are there actually eyes on this, or is this something you are looking to push out to version 9?

[tomt]

Any additional info on this would be great since I am also seeing machines being dropped from Smart Groups for no reason and then magically re-added the next day. These are simple groups like "Has Adobe Photoshop CS5" or "Lion Machines".

[nortonpc]

I do have a ticket open for this. I will let you all know what I hear back.

For us it is smart groups that are checking for SWUs. The inventory search is fine but Smart groups grow overnight. They will reset if I save it again but then continue to grow.

[dpertschi]

Is this still an issue in 8.64 ?

EDIT: support says it is.

[JPDyson]

I've witnessed this today; we just updated to 8.71, so I've been watching for computers that still have the old binary. I created a Smart Group based on JAMF binary version "not current" (with no value supplied). This initially returned a report that matched it's counter-report, looking for JAMF binary version "current" (both reported accurately and accounted for the correct total number of machines).

However, I go back and look at group membership, and it shows computers that have a current binary - that is, computers which received the updated binary after creating the group were not removed from the group. Editing the Smart Group criteria (changing "not current" to something else, then back, and clicking Save) resulted in the group count/membership updating correctly.

I tried using alternative criteria (manually specifying the version with "is" or "is like") to the same effect. Actually, those were the criteria I first tried, then I noticed this problem and tried the "not current" evaluator with the same result.

[ctangora]

I've found that this generally happens when you duplicate a smart group. To solve this I would just go back in, touch a field in the logic, then save it again.

Generally once this is 'fixed' it stays working properly, I've only really seen this happen on duplication, not on a fresh creation. Are you seeing these issues on new smart groups or only duplicated smart groups?

[JPDyson]

This was a newly-created smart group which initially had one criteria, and wasn't updating reliably. I then modified the criteria, after which it updated, but then later failed to update reliably again.

[acdesigntech]

I was on the phone with JAMF support about this very issue. They said the exact defect they noted was in the update from Casper 8.1 since the AND/OR logic on how the JSS handles smart groups was apparently changed.

I've created several smart groups since the upgrade, so I'll keep an eye on it and see what they end up populating with...

It's wreaking havoc on the reports I send to management - hope they get this fixed soon...

[JPDyson]

If you click Edit and then click Save on an SG, it will update properly - it's a work-around for getting accurate reports, of course.

I have not observed it in my (simpler, non-clustered) development environments. Anybody here NOT clustered and experiencing the bug?

[tanderson]

Yeah, I noticed the edit/save workaround too which helps if I'm checking something but sometimes forget to do that. We're still seeing the issue and no clustering here.

[tomt]

Wondering if there has been any further developments on this issue? Running JSS 8.73. This has been happening for almost a year now. Machines will randomly drop out of a smart group and then, just as randomly, drop back in.

Just now I had a two week old machine randomly drop out of "CS6 Installed" and "Mavericks Clients". These are very simple groups that were created fairly recently.

[msierra]

We're running 9.21 and have these issues. In our case, we create a SG and using the operators (is, like, etc..) does not return accurate results.

[mks007]

We're running 9.21 and have these issues. Create a SG and using the operators (is, like, etc..) does not return accurate results. But if you remove the brackets they seem to get better results.

[mks007]

We're running 9.21 and have these issues. Create a SG and using the operators (is, like, etc..) does not return accurate results. But if you remove the brackets they seem to get better results.

[NightFlight]

EDIT: Redacted. My smart group criteria was changed out from under me by another admin. They are working quickly and snappy as expected in 9.8

Hurray for simple issues!