Bits & Other Bytes

As some of you may have noticed, HPE released Insight Remote Support (IRS) version 7.6 this week.  Among other things, the interface is now rebranded with the new HPE logo and icon, it has better security logging, and add support for a bunch of new HPE Networking and HPE StoreEasy products.

If you have already set the “Automatic Update Level” in IRS to “Automatically Download and Install”, you may already have 7.6 successfully deployed to your server.  It’ll be pretty obvious to tell too – if you see the HPE logo shown above on the login page or as the desktop shortcut icon, you are already at version 7.6.

For some reason however, a couple of my IRS 7.5 servers have failed to auto-update to 7.6.  Trying to install the 7.6 update from the Software Tab in IRS by clicking the Start Update also fails.  Normally at this point, I’d simply go to the Software Depot, download 7.6 and manually run the setup – except that 7.6 isn’t available in the Software Depot as the Software Depot download page generates an error message as of this writing (2016.04.02).

So – after some troubleshooting and poking around the log files, I determined you can download the 7.6 package update from the same spot that IRS downloads it:

https://services.isee.hp.com/SWM/packages/ProdUpgPkg/2016-03-31T154720/ProdUpgPkg+7.6.0.27.zip

Unzip this archive to C:\TEMP and then from a command prompt run:

msiexec /i "C:\TEMP\ProdUpgPkg+7.6.0.27\lib\hprs7kit.msi" /lv "%HP_RS_LOG%\hprs_7.6.0_install.log"

Now – if your servers were like those same servers I have, this will fail too.  Taking a look at “%HP_RS_LOG%\hprs_7.6.0_install.log“, you’ll find that pg_dumpall.exe couldn’t connect to the database as the connection was refused.  This results in database.sql being missing, which causes the install to puke with an error code of 1603.  database.sql is the Postgres database dump of your production IRS database that the installer attempts to make.  Now just above the 1603 error in “%HP_RS_LOG%\hprs_7.6.0_install.log“, you’ll find the actual command line for pg_dumpall.exe, which should be (depending on the vintage of your original IRS install) either:

"C:\Program Files\HP\RS\postgresql_9_win32\bin\pg_dumpall.exe" --host=localhost --port=7950 --username=postgres --file="C:\ProgramData\HP\RS\DATA\PERSISTENCE\UPGRADE\database.sql"
-- or --
"C:\Program Files (x86)\HP\RS\postgresql_9_win32\bin\pg_dumpall.exe" --host=localhost --port=7950 --username=postgres --file="C:\ProgramData\HP\RS\DATA\PERSISTENCE\UPGRADE\database.sql"

Manually running the appropriate version command line from above will result in you being prompted for the postgres user password 6 times.  Unfortunately, this password is undocumented, but by doing some detective work (I won’t be sharing how I found what it was), I’ve determined it to be “edit – removed 2016.04.05 as per a request from HPE“.  So enter this password when prompted each of those 6 times, and you’ll find C:\ProgramData\HP\RS\DATA\PERSISTENCE\UPGRADE\database.sql is created.  Now you can go back and run the installer again from the command prompt:

msiexec /i "C:\TEMP\ProdUpgPkg+7.6.0.27\lib\hprs7kit.msi" /lv "%HP_RS_LOG%\hprs_7.6.0_install.log"

Your upgrade should now complete successfully, and all that is left is to log into IRS, go to the Software Tab and check for updates, and install any remaining updates.

As always – Use any tips, tricks, or scripts I post at your own risk.