Modifying Global System Options

To modify a few basic system defaults, such as the minimum refresh time and the Fixlet visibility perform the following steps:

On Windows systems:

  1. Launch the Administration Tool from Start > Programs > IBM BigFix > IBM BigFix Administration Tool.
  2. Select the System Options tab.
  3. At the top, you can set the global Minimum Refresh. The default is 15 seconds, which is a good balance between responsiveness and low network load. If you find that these communications are impacting your network, you can increase the minimum to 60 seconds or more.
  4. External sites are visible to all console operators by default, but you can change that in the section marked Default Fixlet Visibility. Click the lower button to make external content invisible to all except Master Operators. On the IBM BigFix console, master operators can show hidden external content sites by clicking the Show Hidden Content button available in console toolbar.

On Linux systems:

  1. From the /opt/BESServer/bin command prompt start the command line:
    ./iem login --server=servername:serverport --user=username --password=password
  2. From the /opt/BESServer/bin command prompt run the following command:
    ./iem get admin/options  > /appo/options.xml
  3. In the /appo/options.xml file:
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <BESAPI xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
            xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="BESAPI.xsd">
        <SystemOptions Resource="https://nc926065:52311/api/admin/options">         
            <MinimumRefreshSeconds>15</MinimumRefreshSeconds>                 
            <DefaultFixletVisibility>Visible</DefaultFixletVisibility>         
        </SystemOptions>
    </BESAPI>
    edit the following keywords to set the minimum refresh time in seconds and the external sites as visible to all the console operators or to only the Master operators:
    <MinimumRefreshSeconds>15</MinimumRefreshSeconds>                 
    <DefaultFixletVisibility>Visible</DefaultFixletVisibility> 
    If you change the value assigned to these keywords, you must restart the IBM BigFix console active sessions to activate changes.
    Note: On the IBM BigFix console, Master operators can show hidden external content sites by clicking the Show Hidden Content button available in console toolbar.
  4. Upload the modified file by running the following command:
    ./iem post /appo/options.xml admin/options