Software Configuration Push Problems cont'd...

Another issue I discovered is the following:

1. I audit all of our devices to ensure the memory is above 3MB before pushing the software, to avoid causing their devices to delete all their mail. How to do this is another post in itself!

2. We send these users emails on how to clean up the device.

3. I got some emails back saying they had plenty of memory free already!

4. I checked and found that the Device information had not been updated in 6 months or more! I was working with old data for some users!

Here is my theory:

Once you get to a very small amount of memory on the BB, the Handheld Agent will stop reporting back to the server it's details on a daily basis. Fortunately there was an easy fix for most of these guys, and that is to set "Automatic BlackBerry Device Management Enabled" to FALSE, wait a few minutes, then set it back to true. What this does is delete all the device information for that user from the SQL database, then when you turn it back on it refreshes it directly from the device. If there is enough memory available you will get new info. If memory is still low you will not get any info back.

Interesting side note: The refreshed device information will only reflect when the Handheld Agent last collected the data, not the "right now" state. So if you get todays info it may be from 5 or 7AM, not from 11AM when you changed the settings.

Software Configuration Push Problems (SCPP's)

Ok here I am again after a long bout of laziness. Anyway I am working on deploying a piece of software to all our devices and am running into fun issues. Here is one of them:

8330 Curves on Verizon running 4.2 or 4.3 OS, for some reason, do not publish their hardware details to the BES. In fact they don't even publish it if you are connected over USB to the device via BlackBerry Manager. The Hardware ID is just 0x00000000.

This is a problem because when you push software it checks the device model against the device.xml file in the AppLoader directory above the actual software package. If it doesn't find it then you get an error in the POLC log about HHCM_DEVICE_NOT_SUPPORTED and to Update your device.xml.

The issue of course is not the device.xml, but that the Hardware ID is not there for this device.

I found that upgrading from 4.2 or 4.3 OS to 4.5 will publish all the gory hardware details and software pushes will work again.

I wonder if it is stupid Verizon wanting to hide the hardware from everyone but themselves (like they do with GPS) or just an bug in their version of OS 4.2 / 4.3. Either way seems it is resolved in 4.5.