A private agent is a monitoring location that your organization has installed on a computer outside of the Dotcom-Monitor network, typically a computer within your network. A private agent is unique to your organization and monitors only your devices.

The status of a private agent depends on the equipment it is installed on and is not managed by Dotcom-Monitor.

Troubleshooting steps

First, please ensure that the computer hosting the private agent is online, and the private agent is running.

Make sure the agent is up to date:

  1. Open the Start menu > Programs > Dotcom-Monitor > Agent Version Manager.
  2. If the latest version identified is not listed as Active, click the Activate button. If it is listed as active, click the Reactivate button.

Check whether the service is running:

  1. Open the Start menu and type into the search bar: Services (open the Windows Services).
  2. Verify that there is at least one service with a name like Dotcom-Monitor Private Agent.
  3. Verify the service is started.
  4. If the service is not started:
  • If possible, restarting the machine should also restart the service and clear out anything that may be interfering, such as multiple instances of an application running at once.
  • You can try to start it manually by right-clicking and selecting Start.

Note the Log On As column. It should either list Local System or a username that has administrative permissions on your system. If the username is not Local System, you can verify that the proper username and password are entered by right-clicking the service and selecting properties. Then select the Log On As tab and re-enter the username and password.

If you begin receiving alerts that a private agent has not reported, make sure that you have one or more devices monitoring using the private agent. If there are no devices using the private agent, it will not have anything to report, so it could trigger a false positive.

Check Proxy Settings

If the machine that the private agent is installed on requires a proxy to connect to the internet, you can update the proxy settings of the Private agent by launching the version manager from your start menu under the Dotcom-Monitor folder. The proxy settings are available under the advanced settings by clicking the ellipses in the upper right corner of the version manager.

Private_Agent_Proxy_Settings

If you do not know your proxy settings, you can find the info by opening your browser and selecting internet options. Select the Connections tab and go to LAN Settings. From here, you can enter a Proxy IP address and Port.

proxy_settings

Verify the Agent Is Sending Data

The private agent uses stateless communication with the dotcom-monitor servers. Every minute it checks with our server if there is something that needs to be monitored. If yes, it takes the tasks, performs monitoring and uploads data. Otherwise, if there is nothing to monitor, it goes back to sleep for 1 minute.

There is no persistent connection to our servers that will allow us to detect “immediately” if the connection breaks.

The way we do “monitoring” of private agents is we look at the responses that it uploaded to our server. If it did not upload anything for X minutes, we trigger an “unavailable” alert. X is a configurable number and you can set it to 1 min or 60 minutes. It is configured from the Private Agents list under the Manage menu.

Here are a few other options to check on a private agent besides the email alerts:

  1. You can create a device that is monitored only by the private agent 24×7 every minute. For this device, you can create a shareable dashboard. The dashboard will have a unique URL that could be accessed from anywhere. The dashboard will show you the last time the device was checked.
  2. If you have 2 private agents running behind your firewall, technically they can check each other. The private agents listen on port 17000. So, if you setup a Telnet check on Port 17000 from one private agent to another, it will alert you if service would go down.
  3. If you want to automate using a script, you can use the XML feed and pull last check time for the private agent in XML format. If the last time check is too old, your script can raise a necessary alert.

Browser-based Monitoring Is Not Working

If browser-based monitoring is not working and RDP is present, make sure that the “Always prompt for password upon connection” security policy setting is not enabled on your machine (Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Security). Otherwise, disable this policy setting for the machine.

Did You Turn It Off and On Again?

If none of these options has helped activate the agent, try to uninstall and reinstall the agent.

Additional troubleshooting information may be available in the Windows Event Viewer, accessible by opening the start menu and typing event in the search bar and selecting Event Viewer.  Open the Applications folder and look for any red error messages regarding Dotcom-Monitor services. This information may be useful to share with Dotcom-Monitor support.

For further help, please log in to your dotcom-monitor account and submit a support ticket.