Linux Devices Share a UUID

Symptoms

• Multiple Linux devices are not seen in the console.
• The device_uuid value in the Automox agent log is identical for multiple devices.
• These devices were cloned from a gold image.

Cause

Devices can merge records in Automox when too many unique identifiers in the device fingerprinting process match. This can happen when a computer is cloned from another without prepping the gold image beforehand.

The devices may have different hostnames, IP addresses, and MAC addresses. However, some important identifiers (such as the OS's machine-id) may have been left unchanged when the original device was sealed and cloned.

When Automox generates an agent device_uuid (which differs from the OS UUID), and more than 40% of the device's variables match those of another device, Automox assigns the same Agent UUID to both devices. This can (and often does) cause problems.

Additional information: Automox UUID Generation Guide

Validate the device_uuid

The Automox agent log can be used to find the unique identifier used to report to the console. If this value is the same between two devices, there will be an issue with managing it.

• Open the amagent.log file: Display the amagent.log in the Activity Log for Linux and macOS
• Search for the "device_uuid" value to see the UUID issued to the agent.
• This UUID can be searched for on the Devices page in the Automox console.
• Compare the value with other devices that are not showing up in the console.

Validate the machine-id

Check the following variable between the systems to confirm this value is the same and is causing an overlap:

cat /etc/machine-id

If the two systems have identical machine-id values, they will struggle to have unique entries in the console. Follow the listed Solutions in this article.

If the two systems have unique machine-id values, the following steps may resolve the issue when run on each device:

systemctl stop amagent
cd /opt/amagent
./amagent --deregister
systemctl start amagent

Solution - Process Change

This situation can be caused by a missed step during generalization or preparation of the OS image before sealing.

Review Atuomox's recommended step on preparing an image: How to Create a Gold Image VM

Solution - Manual Fix

Stop the Automox agent, generate a new machine-id, and restart the agent service on each device:

systemctl stop amagent
rm -f /etc/machine-id
dbus-uuidgen --ensure=/etc/machine-id
systemctl start amagent

This will cause a new device fingerprint to be generated, and both computers should now report into the console.

Additional information on the machine-id value's use in Linux: (external) - machine-id(5) Linux manual page