Backup Exec Agent Installation/Upgrade Failure

[Ongion]

I've recently taken over administration of a somewhat troublesome BE system and have been going through all of the backed-up servers and updating their agents. For some reason, these all had varying version numbers and non-uniform settings. Fun times. This being said, the updates have now been successfully completed on every single server via some simple scripting/checking and the use of the "Removeaaofo.cmd" and "setupaofo.cmd" batch files... with the exception of ONE troublesome machine. This is a server in a DMZ outside of the normal domain and as such has some pretty tight restrictions regarding external access. As such, the agent requires a manual install (i.e. can't be done reliably via scripts or via the BE server remote agent update utility). Although this tightening of security is potentially related to the issue, there are 4 other servers with essentially the exact same configuration and I have had zero problems updating these via the same process. Anyway, on to the issue itself. "Removeaaofo.cmd" seems to do its thing as per usual. Files are deleted, services removed, processes killed, registry cleaned up etc... as far as I can see (keeping in mind my knowledge of BE isn't the greatest), everything seems to have been cleaned up nicely. However, I then run "setupaofo.cmd" (as has essentially been done on every single other server) and the trouble starts. It sits there for about 5-10 seconds as usual and then pops up with a JIT Debugger window indicating that "An unhandled exception occurred in Setup.exe []" along with an Application Error Event with something to the effect of: "Faulting application Setup.exe, version 12.5.2213.0, faulting module Setup.exe, version 12.5.2213.0, fault address 0x00020957." I've tried cleaning up any lingering files/folders, cleaning up the registry, installing to/from different locations, as different users, with and without reboots, etc... and the same error occurs every time. Oddly enough, however, installing simply via Setup.exe appears to work fine... program installs, no errors... runs OK and appears to publish OK... BUT shows that the installed version of BE Agent is only 12.5.2213.0 (as per the above error) rather than the desired 12.5.2213.163 (which should be the version of the agent/updates copied to the server). I assumed that this was due to the Setup.exe only installing the base release of the agent with updates being applied via some other commands in the "setupaofo.cmd" batch file. Oddly, though, a quick glance at that file shows the additional commands there being "/AOFO: -s" which, as far as I can tell, is simply a silent installation with AOFO included. So on to my questions with regards to these issues. 1) How does the "setupaofo.cmd" apply updates? Is this simply a part of the behind-the-scenes "silent" installation process? 2) Is there a way to reliably apply updates manually... especially in the case of upgrading from 12.5.2213.0 to 12.5.2213.163? The naming convention doesn't seem sequential and there appears to be some interaction with a DLL file among other things, making me a bit hesitant to just start running the updates randomly. 3) Any further advice re. logs or programs that could be used to track down the cause of this fault? Or is there any further information I could give to assist?44jf This server appears to also have the following installed and running on it, just in case any of these are relevant: - .NET Framework v2 SP2, v3 SP2 and v3.5 SP1 - SQL Server 2005 (though this is not being backed up via an SQL agent or similar... it's simply being dumped and the file is being backed up as a normal file) - MSXML 4.0SP2 (KB954430 and KB973688) and MSXML 6 SP2 (KB973686) - SQLXML4 The machine is running Server 2003 SP2 (32-bit). Sorry for the huge post -- just trying to get as much info in there as possible. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

[sksujeet]

1> Yes aof o is silent install that runs on the backround and can be checked using the event viewer of the task manager activities.

Also just to add that aofo installation is not needed, infact it will not install if it is the fresh install and not an upgrade. From 12.5 onwards it will automatically use VSS provided by the MS for the ws 2003 and later. But if you are backing up ws 2000 or xp then you have to install aofo on those remote servers.

2> If you install from cd or download it then it will install 12.5.2213.0  as that is base release and .163 is updated version after the SP and HF. In case you want to install the updated version then make sure you copy the raws32 or rawsx64 depending on the server if it is 32 bit or 64 bit. It is located at c:\programfiles\symantec\backup exec\agents. Copy the folder to the remote server where you want to install the raws and run the setupaa.cmd.

[Ongion]

Thanks for the reply but that doesn't really address/answer any of my issues described above. I'm aware that it's a silent install and am aware that it's still "running" but was curious how this seemingly magically turns the install in to a Setup + updates install rather than just being a plain ol' Setup install... and, consequently, why using the batch file with -s results in an install of version 2213.163 rather than just 2213.0. Whether AOFO is installed or not doesn't seem to matter. The same error is encountered regardless (I think I left that out, woops). And yeah... I have been copying the RAWS folders from the BE server and they have worked 100% fine on every single other server with the one exception being the particular machine in question. And backing up of this machine IS working OK using just 2213.0 but it would be good to update it so that it's running the same uniform version as every other server... and the attempt at upgrading this particular server to 2213.163 -- as I have already done with every single other server -- is where the problem lies.

[Ongion]

Sorry to bump... but I wouldn't imagine that manually updating an agent should be too difficult a query? Thanks.