Resolving shutdown issues with NightWatchman
Before executing a power-down action, NightWatchman will poll its 1E Agents to determine what their respective client statuses are when a user is logged on to the system. If a client fails to shutdown, the agent will write the cause to its Nightwatchman.log on the client.
The events that are likely to prevent NightWatchman from executing a power-down action are:
Log off actions:
Keep Active (
LOGOFFACTION=ACTIVE) – users are given the opportunity to postpone a log-off. If they are not present and the countdown timer dialog expires, log-off will occur. Log-off will be stopped if any scripts generate an error.Passive (
LOGOFFACTION=PASSIVE)– log-off is not actioned if a user is logged on.
Maintenance Window – prevents a client from shutting down if a maintenance window is in progress.
Configuration Manager pending jobs – defines the power-down behavior according to pending Configuration Manager jobs. Pending Configuration Manager jobs which can prevent a power-down are:
SMS running deployments: WaitingDisabled, WaitingDependency,WaitingEnvironment, ReportStatusAtReboot, AdvancedDownload, WaitingContent, Ready,Completed, WaitingRetry, WaitingServiceWindow, Paused, Resuming, Running, AdvancedDownload, Unprocessed, ReportStatusAtReboot, Completed, NotExist, NotifyExecution, NotifyReboot, NotifyLogoff, Failure
(WaitingDisabled, WaitingEnvironment, ReportStatusAtReboot, AdvancedDownload are pre-configured to allow a shutdown to continue)
SMS running software updates: None, Available, PendingSoftReboot, PendingHardReboot, WaitReboot, InstallComplete, Error, WaitingServiceWindow, WaitInstall, Installing, Verifying
Registry keys: You can modify the these registry keys by adding a comma separated list of Configuration Manager jobs to ignore – the list of values are detailed in SMS running deployments and SMS running software updates above.
HKLM\SOFTWARE\1E\Nightwatchman\AllowedShutdownJobStates– contains a list of deployment jobs that will not prevent the shutdownHKLM\SOFTWARE\1E\Nightwatchman\AllowedShutdownUpdateStates– contains a list of update jobs that will not prevent the shutdownHKLM\SOFTWARE\1E\Nightwatchman\ConsideredApplicationEvaluationStates(on SCCM 2012 Apps) – contains a list of jobs that will prevent the shutdown. See Nightwatchman fails to shut down a system due to SMS\ConfigMgr jobs in progress for further details.
Last man standing – prevents a power-down event if the client is on a subnet
Process exceptions – before a scheduled NightWatchman event takes place, it checks to see if any of the the processes in the list are running and will abort the event if found.
1E Nomad download in-progress – you cannot shutdown a machine if it is a designated Nomad master and there are peers actively downloading content from it
Machine capabilities – adjusts the type of action based on machine’s power capabilities (for example, by design, if a machine is in a hibernate state, it cannot be shutdown or if a particular hardware does not support the power-off setting).