Summary

ndtrack may consume all available CPU resources for an extended period on a Linux computer while processing output from the “rpm --query --all --queryformat […]” command that is used to gather information about installed rpm packages.

Details

When this issue occurs, high CPU usage can be observed occurring between the following lines of logging appearing in the /var/opt/managesoft/logs/tracker.log file:

[Mon 28 Feb 2022 09:45:10 AM CET (G, 0)] {8429} Started package database update for package types 'IA,BEA,OUI,ISMP,IIM,RPM,DPKG,APK' into '/var/opt/managesoft/cache/packagedb.cdb'
[Tue 01 Mar 2022 06:17:30 PM CET (G, 0)] {8429} Error: A package list count not be found
[Tue 01 Mar 2022 06:17:30 PM CET (G, 0)] {8429} Package database update failed.  Return code -508952471

Note the timestamps - in this particular example the process ran for more than 32 hours.

The output being processed that causes a problem here is output from the following command that ndtrack executes during its normal processing on Linux. This issue is more likely to occur on computers where this command produces a large volume of output.

rpm --query --all --queryformat '%{NAME}%%%{VERSION}%%%{RELEASE}%%%{ARCH}%%%{INSTALLTIME}
[%{FILENAMES}
]%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%EOP
'

Workaround

This issue can be avoided by excluding "RPM" from the PackageDatabaseTypes preference value.

Note: Doing this will cause details of RPM packages to be excluded from gathered inventory. Hence application installations that would normally be recognized as installed based on this data will no longer be recognized.

For example:

ndtrack -t Machine -o "PackageDatabaseTypes=IA,BEA,OUI,ISMP,IIM,DPKG,APK"

Alternatively, commands like the following can be executed to permanently configure this preference setting for the agent:

cat <<EOF >tempconfig.ini
[ManageSoft\Tracker\CurrentVersion]
PackageDatabaseTypes=IA,BEA,OUI,ISMP,IIM,DPKG,APK
EOF

/opt/managesoft/bin/mgsconfig -i tempconfig.ini

rm tempconfig.ini

When run in this way, the process package database update step completes in <1 second:

[Mon 11 Apr 2022 04:07:50 PM CEST (G, 0)] {20730} Started package database update for package types 'IA,BEA,OUI,ISMP,IIM,DPKG,APK' into '/var/opt/managesoft/cache/packagedb.cdb'
[Mon 11 Apr 2022 04:07:50 PM CEST (G, 0)] {20730} Error: A package list count not be found
[Mon 11 Apr 2022 04:07:50 PM CEST (G, 0)] {20730} Package database update failed.  Return code -508952471