Updated Kace KBox 1000 agent uninstaller now available

My shop upgraded to Dell Kace KBox 1000 5.3.x recently, so I’ve had to update my uninstaller script to uninstall the new 5.3 agent as well as the older 5.1 agent.

I’ve posted the new script here on my GitHub repo, and I’ve also updated my previous post to include the script changes.

Building an automated KBox 1000 agent installer

I’ve historically had problems with deploying the Mac agent installer for our Dell Kace KBox 1000 to our Macs. Installing the package as part of our existing DeployStudio workflows has generally resulted in a broken installation. As a result, installing the agent has been a manual step done by our techs as part of setting up new or reimaged Macs for deployment. We recently upgraded to K1000 5.3 though and this KBase article came to my attention.

With some modification, you can use the commands listed in the KBase article along with the methodology referenced in this post, to repackage a KBox 1000 agent so that it’s deployable as part of an automated workflow. See below the jump for the procedure.

KBox agent removal script

At my job, we’re using Kace’s KBox to handle our inventory and patch management (we’d like it to do more, but that’s mostly what it’s doing at this point.) One thing that I’ve noticed is that the KBox agent tracks logins and logouts. Sometimes, this process goes awry and your login will hang for two minutes until the loginwindow process hits a timeout limit, forcibly kills that process, and allows the rest of the login to proceed.

The fix in this case is to uninstall and reinstall the agent. Kace provides directions on how to uninstall the Mac agent, but it looks like the directions weren’t updated for 10.6.x, so I knocked together this script to uninstall the agent on 10.4.x – 10.7.x:

#!/bin/sh

# Removes the 5.3 KBox agent

sudo /Library/StartupItems/AMPAgentBootup/AMPAgentBootup stop
sudo /Library/Application\ Support/Dell/KACE/bin/AMPctl stop 2>&1
sudo /Library/Application\ Support/Dell/KACE/bin/kagentctl stop 2>&1
sudo rm -rf /Library/Application\ Support/Dell
sudo rm -rf /Library/StartupItems/AMPAgentBootup
sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/AMPAgent.pkg
sudo rm -rf /var/db/receipts/com.kace.ampagent.bom
sudo rm -rf /var/db/receipts/com.kace.ampagent.plist
sudo rm -rf /Library/LaunchAgents/com.kace.AdminAlert.plist
sudo rm -rf /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.kace.ampagent.plist

# Removes the 5.1 KBox agent

sudo /Library/StartupItems/KBOXAgent/KBOXAgent stop
sudo /Library/KBOXAgent/Home/bin/kagentctl stop 2>&1
sudo /Library/KBOXAgent/Home/bin/SMMPctl stop 2>&1
sudo rm -rf /Library/KBOXAgent
sudo rm -rf /Library/StartupItems/KBOXAgent
sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/KBOX\ Agent.pkg
sudo rm -rf /var/kace
sudo rm -rf /var/db/receipts/com.kace.kboxagent.bom
sudo rm -rf /var/db/receipts/com.kace.kboxagent.plist
sudo rm -rf /Library/LaunchDaemons/kace.smmpagent.bootup.plist

Update 3-7-2012: I’ve updated this script to accomodate uninstalling both 5.1.x agents and 5.3.x agents. The updated script and script-only uninstaller is posted here on my GitHub repo for download.

Fixing one systems management tool’s agent with another systems management tool

One of the issues you can run across with systems management tools is doing an automated uninstall and reinstall of the agent software. The dilemma is that you can tell the agent to uninstall itself, but after that there’s no agent software on the machine to run the reinstall command. Most management tools include the ability to scan your network and install agents on machines automatically, but that may not be appropriate for all environments as you may have some machines where you don’t want to install the systems management agent.

I ran across a situation like that recently in my own environment. For details, see below the jump.