Turning on the Diagnostics for the IDex Agent

Note: Before enabling Diagnostics please make sure the IDex Agent is installed on ALL Domain Controllers as this is the most common reason for issues with IDex Agent.  You may need to enable diagnostics on all Domain Controllers when diagnosing issues.

The IDex Agent is an application that is installed on your Active Domain controllers. Any connection errors are written to the Windows Application event log. You can enable verbose logging for the IDex Agent.

The IDex Agent does not have a user interface where you can enable further diagnostics. Instead, you must enable diagnostics through a Windows Registry key.

Warning: It should be noted that enabling verbose diagnostics for the IDex Agent is expensive in terms of load on your Active Directory domain controller. Every event detected by the IDex Agent, whether a user event, a change in the Active Directory configuration, or any activity on the controller itself it logged to the Windows Application event log. This can rapidly take up hard drive space, so it is advisable to enable this for the shortest time possible.

Procedure

  1. Log into the domain controller that has the IDex Agent installed.
  2. Open the Registry Editor:
    1. Locate and expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\IDexAgent\Parameters.
    2. Right-click on DiagSettings, and select Modify.
      • If the key does not exist, you need to create it as a 32-bit DWORD.
    3. Make a note of the original Value Data so you can re-enter this when you no longer need verbose diagnostics.
    4. Change Value Data to be ffffffff.
    5. Ensure Hexadecimal is selected for Base.
    6. Click OK and close the Registry Editor.
  3. Restart the IDex Agent Service.
  4. Make sure that you turn off verbose diagnostics when finished.
    This can be achieved by removing the DiagSettings registry key or reverting back to the old value.  The Idex Agent service will need to be restarted to reflect the change.

Note:  The diagnostic data will be logged to %ProgramData%\Smoothwall\IdexAgent.  logons.txt will show the login event the Agent has detected - a HTTP Code of 200 in the logs shows the information has been successfully sent to the Smoothwall.

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