Friday, February 25, 2011

Install OCS Inventory Agents minus the Headaches

One of the major hurdles with OCS Inventory is understanding how the wiki pages addresses agent installation methods.  In my opinion the best documentation they had so far is written in french! So what I am going to do is make life easier!  Posting a hashed version which will allow you to install agents with very little problem.  Enough of the talk and lets get down to business.

Before installing the agent it is pressumed that you have OCS Inventory Server running correctly.  The goal in this mini-cookbook is to guide you without having to second guess how the installation might proceed as with the OCS pages do.

[For those using Linux/MacOS]

1)  Download the package http://launchpad.net/ocsinventory-unix-agent/stable-1.1.2/ocsinventory-unix-agent-1.1.2.1/+download/Ocsinventory-Agent-1.1.2.1.tar.gz  if you want a source install, on the otherhand if you are using newer versions of Debian/CentOS you can easily do an apt-get install "package name" and yum install "package name" though you will have to make some edits to your repos list to update your channel streams

2)  Process will check for availability of "perl" modules for features to work correctly. Please satisfy those dependencies before continuing.

3) During installation you will have to point your agent to listen to e.g.  172.16.24.109 <-- server. It is expected that you will have a  problem connecting this is fine. Once the agent is installed please proceed to item 4.

4) Edit /etc/ocsinventory-agent/ocsinventory-agent.cfg

          e.g.
             basevardir=/var/lib/ocsinventory-agent
             tag=
             server=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx  <-- change this value to point to the OCS server.

5) Initialize a check, issue the command:

              ocsinventory-agent --debug --info --scan-homedirs --server=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
    This will send an agent report to the server. If this is successful  please proceed to item 6.

6) Daemonize the agent

              ocsinventory-agent --deamon --debug --info --scan-homedirs --server=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx


     This will put the agent to work in the background.

7) To automatically allow your system to send updates to the inventory server you will have to bootstrap the previous command "item 6" on startup.


[For those using Windows] 

1) Download the installer package:  http://launchpad.net/ocsinventory-windows-agent/trunk/win32-agent-release-4061/+download/OCSNG_WINDOWS_AGENT_4061.1.zip  extract and install the package.
Look for the file "OcsAgentSetup.exe" to run setup.

2) On the Server Address use this IP: 172.16.24.109; Server Port: 80; Enable log file [check it]; Immediately launch inventory [check it].

3) Check if the service is running. You can do this by opening the "service management console > services" double click on the icon and check if OCS INVENTORY is "started" and the Startup type is set to "Automatic" your done.

Process should not take more than 30 minutes of your time. Login to the web console of the OCS Inventory Server and verify that the agents communicated your machine and has been registered.

2 comments:

  1. HI

    Can you please help me with a Document for Setting up OCS Server...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sorry for the late reply Suma Ramesh. How, can I help you with this?

    ReplyDelete