What's a port conflict in Auvik?
Auvik needs a particular port on the Auvik collector to gather network information, BUT another application on the collector host machine is using that port, and as a result, Auvik can't.
How do I know if I have a collector port conflict? How do I avoid it?
If you've installed the .ova or Ubuntu flavor of the collector, then you have already avoided a port conflict. Since those will be dedicated machines (or virtual machines) for Auvik collecting, all of the required ports are available for Auvik to use as it will.
I used the windows collector, do I have a port conflict?
Note: While these troubleshooting steps are specific to the Auvik Collector, the information on using netstat and stopping processes can be used to troubleshoot port conflicts for other Windows programs and processes.
Do you get configuration polling alerts on certain vendors of devices even though Auvik has a successful login? Then it's possible you've got a port conflict.
Here's how to find out…
In this example we're looking at ftp and tftp, the most common causes of Windows collector port conflict.
On your Windows collector host machine while your collector is running and connected:
- Open a windows command prompt
- Type the following: netstat -an|find ":21 "
Note: Ensure there is a space after the number 21
The response should be an entry that contains:
TCP 0.0.0.0:21
This machine is listening for any IP address on the network, on port 21. This is what we'd expect to find on an Auvik collector.
Now check port 69:
- Type the following: netstat -an|find ":69 "
The response should be an entry that contains:
UDP 0.0.0.0:69
This machine is listening to ports 21 and 69.
Is it Auvik that's listening on 21 and 69?
We can check this with this command:
- Type the following: netstat -ab
Scroll back in the output and look for entries like these.
Note: The application that 'owns' that port is displayed after the entry.
TCP 0.0.0.0:21
[AuvikAgentService.exe]
UDP 0.0.0.0:69
[AuvikAgentService.exe]
You would not expect to experience issues on this machine as the required Auvik entries are present.
If you've found some lines that look like the above, things look good for Auvik and these ports BUT if a different application showed up under those specific entries, then you may have a collector port conflict.
We can verify this way as well.
Warning: Some if these steps require a shutdown and restart of the Auvik service itself, it will generate an alert and temporarily halt monitoring.
- Navigate to c:\auvik
- Type the following: AuvikAgentService -stop
- Wait about 20-30 seconds, then type: netstat -an|find ":21 " AND netstat -an|find ":69 "
If that command results in any response
- Type the following: netstat -ab
Take note of what application owns that port now that Auvik is shut down.
If it goes as expected, port 21 and port 69 will be free for Auvik to use, and won't appear on in our netstat output when the collector is shut down but, if an application OTHER than Auvik came up as the port 'owner', and/or the port was still listening after you shut the collector off, you may have an application running on that Windows host machine that is 'hogging' the port in question.
You can find out what application that is by issuing the netstat -ab command , decide how critical that application is on the collector host machine and apply one of our two options. You can disable or uninstall the application on the host machine, or you can deploy a new collector on a different host and power this one down.
Now restart the collector by issuing this command.
- Navigate to c:\auvik
- Type the following: AuvikAgentService -start
- Wait about 20-30 seconds, then type: netstat -an|find ":21 " AND netstat -an|find ":69 "
Those two ports should be back in the list.
Then:
- Type the following: netstat -ab
This should show entries that match the above showing that Auvik is the application listening on those ports. Port conflicts most often happen on ports 21 and 69, but any port number can be swapped out in the commands above if you want to verify.