ERAS & Client Connection Issues...

I'm not new to NOD32, but I am new to NOD32 in a business environment using ERAS & ERAC. I just purchased our package on the 27th and I am trying to get it set up and running on our small network of 4 clients and a server but I cannot get the clients to update definitions off of the server nor will they connect to the ERAS. So far my testing is on one Vista system and one XP system but both return the same message when trying to update: "Could not connect to server.". Also, see the attachment of the log.

Server is Windows Server 2008 Standard SP1 (32bit)
Two clients are Windows Vista Business SP1 (32bit) laptops
Two clients are Windows XP Professional SP3 (32bit) laptops

On the server side I have installed ERAS & ERAC (both version 3.0.39) and both seem to be working correctly. I set up the mirror on the server pretty much following the ESET Remote Administrator Installation Manual PDF and the server is updating okay and I confirmed this by physically checking the files in the mirror location. I also set up an XML configuration file for the clients using the "ESET Configuration Editor" making sure to set up both a LAN and INTERNET update profile and everything appears to be set up correctly after going back and checking and reapplying the configuration multiple times in the client using the Import/Export function.

I have had success with installing the Antivirus on the server and it updates & communicates with the server with no problems using the same XML configuration. Whether it is just because it is really communicating with itself or not I do not know. Both of the clients that fail to update can see the server fine by PING and over the network attaching to shares and same for the reverse of the server seeing the clients.

One thing I noticed in my services MMC is that the "ESET HTTP Server" service was set to "Manual". I tried setting this to "Automatic" and then starting the service but I am not able to. I don't know if this is an issue or not?

Where do I start to troubleshoot this?

 

Is there a firewall on the server running RAS? By default updates happen over TCP 2221 and RAS reporting happens over TCP 2222. If you are running a firewall, add an exception for the era.exe and ehttpsrv.exe which should get things open automatically or add in exceptions for ports 2221-2223 (2223 is the management console port). The Eset HTTP Server service is what the Nod32 client uses to initiate its update, manually trying to start it from services.msc won't do anything. The services that should be running are ESET RA HTTP Server and ESET Remote Administration Server.

 

Yep, that was it. The Windows Firewall was blocking it. Sometimes it is so easy to overlook the obvious when it comes to connection issues. However, I would think there would be something referenced in the manual about making sure ports are open; although it does stress the port numbers quite a bit so I guess I should think to check that myself.

One other thing I didn't add before was that I also couldn't connect to the ERAS with ERAC from my laptop and allowing the exception in the firewall does indeed correct that as well.

Just for future reference the location of these files are:
C:\Program Files\ESET\ESET Remote Administrator\Server\era.exe
C:\Program Files\ESET\ESET Remote Administrator\Server\ehttpsrv.exe

Now one other little question. I just downloaded updates for both ERAS & ERAC (v3.0.105) but what is the best way to install them? Just install them over top of the current install or should I actually uninstall the current versions and then reinstall the new ones?

 

Hello JReese,

Installing over the top should be fine.

Thank you,
Richard