User interface problems

User interface problems in BigFix Inventory are mostly related to information that is incorrectly displayed in the application or to errors that arise in the non-English-language versions of the software. However, you can easily recover from these problems.

After restarting the computer, the BigFix Inventory user interface cannot be launched.
When you restart the computer on which you have BigFix Inventory installed, you must start the DB2® database before starting the application. Otherwise, you will not be able to log in to BigFix Inventory.
If you restart your computer, complete the following steps before starting the application:
  1. Switch to the DB2® instance owner: 
    su - db2inst1
  2. Start the database: 
    db2start
  3. Restart BigFix Inventory: 
    /etc/init.d/BFIserver restart
On a low-resolution monitor, the user interface is not displayed correctly.
The minimal supported screen resolution is 1360x768 pixels. Recommended screen resolution is 1920x1080 pixels.
On Linux, text columns in reports are not alphabetically sorted.
Text columns in BigFix Inventory are sorted differently on Linux, and Windows. If you click a column header, the values are sorted in a case-sensitive way on Linux (all the names with capital letters are displayed first) and case-insensitive on Windows (capitalized and non-capitalized words are mixed and sorted in alphabetical order).
On the Catalog Audit report, the values are displayed in an incorrect time zone.
Values that are related to dates and time are based on the time zone that is set in your operating system. However, the Daylight Saving Time is not considered. Thus, values are set to an incorrect time zone.
When you leave a page while modifying data, there is no warning that the data will be lost.
When you modify data, for example, in one of the panels from the Catalog Customization menu, the data will be lost if you change the view or close the page. No warning is displayed. Ensure that you save all data before navigating to another view.
The Import is now running message is not refreshed even after the import is complete.
The page with the Import is now running message is not refreshed and the message is still displayed even when the import is complete. To solve this issue, you can hover over the Reports menu and check the percentage status of the import on the bottom of the drop-down list. You can also refresh the page manually.
The PDF reports are missing a part of text or the font is incorrect.
To ensure that text in PDF is properly displayed, the following font families or their substitutes must be installed in the operating system with BigFix Inventory installation:
  • Windows: Arial, Verdana
  • Linux: Times, Lucida
Non-latin characters may require additional font familes, depending on selected language:
  • Windows: SimSun, Mongolian Baiti, Microsoft Yi Baiti, Microsoft Himalaya, Batang, MS PMincho, Tahoma
  • Linux: ZYSong, Baekmuk Batang, Kochi Mincho

Limitation: Style of latin and non-latin characters may be different.

The PDF reports open in the same browser tab as BigFix Inventory.
The generated PDF reports open in the same tab as BigFix Inventory. Because of this issue, you might be forced to stop any activity in the application until the PDF opens. To solve the issue, change the settings in your browser.
The PDF reports that are downloaded by using Firefox are corrupted.
Although the PDF reports are correctly displayed in the browser, the downloaded file is corrupted. The problem occurs in Firefox. To solve the issue, use a different browser.
Autocomplete suggests irrelevant results.
In some cases, autocomplete might suggest irrelevant results. For example, when you type HCL® as a publisher and then start typing the software product, autocomplete will list all possible software products instead of only those that belong to HCL®.
When you open links to product details in new tabs, an error is displayed
When you open the All Metrics or the IBM PVU Subcapacity report and open links to products that are displayed on these reports in new tabs, an error is displayed. The problem occurs because information about the time range for which the metric quantity should be displayed on the report is lost while opening the links in new tabs. To solve the problem, refresh the page.
Paths for Korean and Japanese locales contain incorrect delimiter.
Paths for Korean and Japanese locales use a backslash (\) as a delimiter, instead of won (₩) or yen.
There is a missing space before the colon (:) for French locale.
When a colon is used in text, there is a missing space before it although it is required in French language.
The string on the Browse button on the Catalog Upload panel is not displayed in languages other than English.
This error is caused by the web browser internal configuration and does not depend on BigFix Inventory.
Some Chinese characters are not displayed correctly.
To solve the problem, install the Zhong Yi Song TrueType font for the GB18030 standard:
  1. Obtain the fonts-chinese-zysong package.
  2. Install the package by running the following command:
    rpm -ivh fonts-chinese-zysong-0.1-5.el5.noarch.rpm --nodeps
The new font was installed in the /usr/share/fonts/zh_CN/TrueType directory. The characters should now be displayed correctly.
Messages are displayed in multiple languages.
The language in which some of some messages are displayed depends on the settings of the BigFix Inventory server. To change the language settings on the server:
  1. Open the jvm.options file that is in the installation_directory/wlp/usr/servers/server1/ directory.
  2. Add the following lines to the file and specify the language to be used.
    -Duser.country=country
-Duser.language=language
    For example:
    -Duser.country=US
-Duser.language=en
  3. Restart the server.
Names of roles and computer properties are not translated.
Starting from version 9.2.3, the language in which names of roles and computer properties are displayed depends on the language that was chosen during the installation of the BigFix Inventory server. For earlier versions, the language depends on the language that was set in the web browser during the creation of database connections after the installation.

If you need to change the language in which these items are displayed, you must do it manually. To change the name of a role, go to Management > Roles, select the role that is displayed in a wrong language, and change its name. To change the name of a computer property, go to Management > Computer Properties, select the property that is displayed in a wrong language, and change its name. In both cases, wait for a scheduled import or run in manually for the changes to take effect.

The changes that you make apply to all users regardless of their language settings.

'We're sorry, but something went wrong.'
For more information about the error, check the server log file tema.log in the installation_directory/wlp/usr/servers/server1/logs/ directory.
Migrated to SUA9 report column is blank.
When you migrate Software Use Analysis 2.2 endpoints to 9.2.16, the Migrated to SUA9 column in your software inventory and computer reports is blank. Check whether the SUA 2.2 Endpoint Migration analysis is activated.
  1. In the BigFix console navigation tree, click Sites > External Sites > BigFix Inventory v10 and click Analyses.
  2. Select the SUA 2.2 Endpoint Migration analysis, right-click on it, and then select Activate.
Unable to log in with users from Microsoft™ Active Directory

If you are having problems with your Active Directory users, append the user name with a domain, for example username@domain.com. Adding a domain is required starting from Software Use Analysis 9.2.0.2, but it also concerns Active Directory servers that were configured in previous versions. See the following cases for more information about how this change might impact your existing users.

Active Directory with Global Catalog

Global Catalog enabled
  • If you added users through User Provisioning in BigFix Inventory, new users are created whenever you log in with a user name and a domain. You can delete all Active Directory users that have only the user name specified because you will not be able to log in with those users.
  • If you added users manually in BigFix Inventory, you must create them again, this time also specifying the domain. You can delete all Active Directory users that have only the user name specified because you will not be able to log in with those users.
Active Directory without Global Catalog

Global Catalog disabled
If you did not use the Global Catalog, you must have specified a domain in the Search Base field. This domain is automatically added to all users in BigFix Inventory and no action is required from you.
URLs that point to the product web user interface do not work.
If you enabled single sign-on in BigFix Inventory, the link that is available in the Start menu on Windows™ might not work because an extra "https://" prefix is added to the url.

You can access this link on Windows™ 2008 by clicking Start > All Programs > BigFix Inventory > Web Interface. This URL is defined in the WebUI file that is in the following location: C:\Program Files\ibm\BFI\admin\resources\WebUI.

To fix this issue:
  1. Open the WebUI file in a text editor, for example Notepad++, and remove the extra "https://" from the beginning of the URL.
    Note: The default shortcut path is https://localhost:9081. If LTPA SSO is enabled, it needs to be updated to https://virtual-junction-host-name:9081.
  2. Clear the cache in your web browser.
  3. End all your browser processes.
  4. Restart the system on which your browser is installed.
When opening an exported CSV report in Microsoft Excel, some data is corrupted.
Due to formatting issues in some versions of Microsoft Excel, the data might be displayed in incorrect columns. This problem mostly concerns components that have a comma in their name, which results in wrong formatting.
To fix this problem, complete the following steps.
  1. Open Microsoft Excel.
  2. In the navigation bar, click Open, and navigate to the folder that contains your report.
  3. Change the valid file extensions to All Files (*.*) to see the report.
  4. Open the file.
  5. In the Text Import Wizard, select Delimited, and then choose Comma as a delimiter, and a quotation mark (") as a text qualifier.
After clicking Finish, the data will be divided among appropriate columns and displayed correctly.
The CSV format of the report shows blank field values

When you download the CSV format of a report after selecting all columns from the Configure view, some fields show blank values. This issues is because of the limitation in MS Excel worksheet (MS Excel limitations). It is suggested to download the reports with the deafult columns to view the values.

You can use this parameter is Advanced Server Setting to change the default value of the character.

Loading any report takes substantial amount of time in case of huge deployments.
In case of huge deployments, it can take a lot of time to generate a full report. Thus, if you do not need to view a full report as a default, you can use the work around and filter the report to limit the list of items.
  1. Open a report and wait until it loads.
  2. Hover over the Manage Report View icon Manage Report View icon, and click Configure View.
  3. Set up adequate filters so that the report view is simple and limited to a few entries and click Submit.
  4. Hover over the Manage Report View icon Manage Report View icon, and click Save As.
  5. Name the report and save it as default.
This simple report that you created is now set as the default view. You no longer need to wait for the full report to load. You can further filter the data to view only the information that you require.
A new computer has an empty computer name and operating system in BigFix Inventory
To solve the problem, go to BigFix console > Computers, right-click on the computer and choose Send Refresh. Repeat the steps for 3 times. Then run data import in BigFix Inventory.