Known issues for firewalls

Checking connectivity

To run Vusers or monitor servers over a firewall, you must be able to establish a connection between the LoadRunner Agent, the MI Listener, and the Controller machine.

If you encounter connectivity problems after installing and configuring all the necessary components, check the table below for troubleshooting tips.

Check
Action
Make sure the firewall service is activated on the agent machine.

On the machine running/monitoring Vusers over a firewall, the LoadRunner Agent icon should display a red light icon .

If the icon does not have a light icon, it means FirewallServiceActive=1 is not set in the [FireWall] section of the Agent Settings. See Agent Configuration Settings dialog box.
Make sure port 443 is open.

On the agent machine, open a Command Prompt window, and enter: telnet <MI_Listener_IP>443
For example: telnet 111.111.111.1111 443

If port 443 is open, a new Telnet window opens.

If port 443 is not open, contact your network administrator.

Make sure port 443 is available.

If a web server is running on the MI Listener or MOFW machine, port 443 does not allow the access required by the listening and monitoring processes.

Contact your network administrator to change the web server port.
Confirm connectivity between the agent and the MI Listener when running the LoadRunner Agent as a service.
If the LoadRunner Agent icon has a red light when running the LoadRunner Agent as a service, do the following:

  • Make sure port 443 is open. See the troubleshooting tip above.

  • Make sure the Agent Settings and Agent Configuration are correctly set. See Agent Configuration Settings dialog box.

  • Start the agent as a process by running <Installation>\Launch_service\bin\magentproc.exe
    If you can run the agent as a process, there is an authentication issue with the Load Testing Agent Service.

    Browse to Service > LoadRunner Agent Service, and change the properties of this service to System User Account. Alternately, provide the user name and password of someone who has administrative privileges on this machine.
Confirm connectivity between the LoadRunner Agent and Controller when monitoring over a firewall.

  • Make sure you entered the servers that you want to monitor in the Monitor Configuration dialog box. (See Monitor Configuration dialog box.)

  • Start the LoadRunner Agent process on the MOFW machine. (See Configure the LoadRunner Agent over firewalls.)

  • On Controller, enter the name of the MOFW machine in the Load Generators dialog box, and click Connect. After about a minute, data from the MOFW machine starts streaming to Controller through the MI Listener. (See Set firewall monitoring preferences.)

  • If no data arrives at Controller, try connecting Controller to the MI Listener as if the Listener is a load generator. This helps to identify the cause of the problem. Right-click the LoadRunner Agent icon, and examine the log file on the MOFW machine. There should be no error messages.

  • Start the MI Listener, and then manually start the LoadRunner Agent process by running <installation>\launch_servicebin\magnetproc.exe on the MOFW machine.

    Allow the MOFW machine sufficient time to connect to the MI Listener, then connect Controller to the MOFW machine.

    If the LoadRunner Agent process crashes, either restart the agent or reboot the MOFW machine.

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Windows firewall considerations

In most Windows environments, Windows firewall is turned on by default. The firewall prevents certain LoadRunner Professional components from communicating with each other. The Windows firewall therefore needs to be turned off.

Note: Turning off Windows Firewall increases the risk to your computer's security.

For each process that needs the Windows firewall, you can unblock the process by clicking the unblock button in the popup window that indicates that the program needs it, or by manually configuring the Windows firewall in the Exceptions tab.

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Linux LoadRunner Agent menu

To configure the Linux LoadRunner Agent, run the agent_config script. For details, see Configure the LoadRunner Agent over firewalls. If the menu does not display, type the following command to check if the M_LROOT environment variable is set:

echo $M_LROOT

If M_LROOT is not set, do either of the following:

  • Type sudo su - to inherit all environment variables of the current user.
  • Type source <LoadGenerator_directory>/env.sh to set all the Load Generator related environment variables after switching to root (that is, "sudo su").

Note: This limitation occurs on Amazon cloud Linux machines, usually when you log in to the system using the special user named "ec2-user".

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