SMP - Primary User

Published on Thursday, 27 September 2018
SMP

The Symantec Management Agent (SMA) calculates the Primary User based on the length of time a user has been logged onto a machine.

How is the primary user calculated?

  • AeXUserMonitorLog.xml stores the history of user sessions
  • SMA calculate primary user prior to basic inventory update
    • takes all the old sessions from XML, adjusts them to 28 day limit
    • takes all the current sessions from Windows, adjusts them to 28 day limit
    • sums up durations of all the sessions for each user and selects the user with the longest duration as the primary user
AeXUserMonitorLog.xml
  • install directory of the Symantec Management Agent

This is made up of

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<UserLog>
    <Log utc_lastloggedon="2018-09-11 19:18:14 -6:00" utc_year="2018" utc_month="9" utc_day="16" duration="398289" userID="MyDomain\John_Doe"/>
</UserLog>

This fills in the following Table:

Evt_AeX_Client_LogOn

The calculations use a value that can be updated in the Registry:

Default Value 28

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Altiris\Altiris Agent\Inventory\PrimaryUserRecordDays

Another table is then updated via Basic Inventory

Inv_AeX_AC_Primary_User
Key Type Value (some as example) Description
PrimaryUserRecordDays REG_DWORD 0x1c Sets 28 day limit, can be changed at any time. No SMA restart is needed
PrimaryUser REG_SZ altiris\jdoe48 Holds the currently selected primary user

SQL

You can use this information in your Reports by adding the Data Class 'AeX AC Primary User' or the above 'Inv' table.

SELECT * FROM Inv_AeX_AC_Primary_User

Example Data

_id _ResourceGuid Domain Month User Server Generated Year
# MyDomain October alex.hedley 2018

You can use the _ResourceGuid to join to the Computer table.

CMDB Rule

Tasks

Many people use this information to then set the "Asset Owner" to be the "Primary User".

This has been know to have issues:

HOWTO95240
How the Asset Owner association works
https://support.symantec.com/en\_US/article.HOWTO95240.html

TECH163941
CMDB task "Assign Computer's Ownership to be the Primary User" fails to work
https://support.symantec.com/en\_US/article.TECH163941.html

Tech

TECH251540
Understanding Primary User Calculation Methods in 8.x
https://support.symantec.com/en\_US/article.TECH251540.html

HOWTO7778
Primary User Calculation Methods NS 6.0
https://support.symantec.com/en\_US/article.HOWTO7778.html

HOWTO7796
Understanding Primary User in Notification Server 6.0 SP2 and SP3
https://support.symantec.com/en\_US/article.HOWTO7796.html

Forum

Change the primary user
https://www.symantec.com/connect/forums/change-primary-user

When is the Primary User calculated?
https://www.symantec.com/connect/forums/when-primary-user-calculated