ePolicy Orchestrator 4.0 Patch 2 / SQL 2005 / VMware - FAILURE: In LaunchAppAndWait
Monday I attempted to update our ePolicy Orchestrator server from 4.0 Patch 1 to 4.0 Patch 2.
Our ePO 4.0 Server resides as a guest on a VMware server with a remote SQL backend. This is dissimilar from our old ePO 3.6.1 Server, which had its own instance of SQL 2000 locally. Also, this time we are (well, were) using Windows authentication instead of SQL authentication, which we had in the past.
Patching the ePO Server has generally been a painless process, but this particular patch was over 150MB, so I had a sinking feeling that this wouldn't be one of those times...
Turns out, I was right. I got partway through the install - everything's looking good... then BAM... out of the blue:
Setup has encountered the error:
FAILURE: In LaunchAppAndWait while trying to run the following program:
""
And, yes, those are empty quotes. Weird, I know.
A little digging in C:\Docume~1\username\Local Settings\Temp\NAILogs\EPO400-Patch-MSI.LOG shows a bit more to the error:
FAILURE: In LaunchAppAndWait while trying to run the following program:
"C:\PROGRA~1\McAfee\EPOLIC~1\jre\bin\java.exe" ... blah ...
Some Googling gave a bit more information in the form of a McAfee technote, appropriately titled "ePO 4.0 Patch 2 fails to install on a VMWare image containing ePO 4.0 and SQL Server 2005 / SQL 2005 Express" and located here:
https://knowledge.mcafee.com/article/60/615839_f.SAL_Public.html
The issue apparently results from the use of Windows authentication for SQL 2005, specifically when used on a VMware server. In order to complete the patch, ePO must be configured to use an account with dbowner rights (note that it is *not* required to use sa despite the KB using that as an example).
The following steps will resolve the issue:
- Log in to your ePO Server at http://servername:port/core/config
- Change the user name to an appropriate SQL ID
- Set the password accordingly
- Remove the domain listed next to User domain
- Click Test Connection
- If the test completes successfully, click Apply
- Restart the "McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator 4.0.0 Application Server" service
- Reapply the patch
- Verify that the patch applied and all extensions were checked in successfully via the logfiles as per the patch 2 readme file
- Verify that dashboards, etc function as intended.
At this point you should be able to reverse the steps above to return ePO Server to use Windows authentication if you so desire.