Use OCSPackager

Introduction

Open Computer and Software Inventory NG Packager is an application designed to prepare automated single “Click” end-user installation packages for windows. It also allows use an alternative user account to perform any kind of scripted task. This Packager is based on the NSIS script and RemCom utilities open source projects.

OCS Inventory NG Packager is GPL software.

i.e. free to use & copy (see http://www.opensource.org).

OCS Inventory is also Open Source! This means that if you want to modify the sources you can! However, if you want to change the source code and distribute the changed software, you must provide the source to your updates as well, as required by the GPL license terms.

Important notes

We would like to thank Talha Tariq for the Remcom program. Visit his project at http://sourceforge.net/projects/rce.

Manual

Prerequisite

Using OCS Inventory Packager is the fastest way to deploy and setup the OCS Inventory NG Agent on stand alone or domain integrated computers. It is based on the NSIS script and RemCom tools. It generates a file called ocspackage.exe based on your parameters, which allows a one click and/or a silent user install.

In this document a number of assumptions are made:

  • We assume that you know the domain or local administrative account of your computers.
  • You should also know how to generate or obtain a certificate file.
  • You are familiar with common Windows administrative tasks.

Usage

Download the Packager and the latest Windows agent from our website.

Prepare your certificate (needed for software remote deployment).

Launch OcsPackager.exe and accept the License agreement.

The following window will appear:

“Files and Options” group box:

  • On the Exe File line, select your freshly downloaded OcsAgentSetup.exe program. This entry is required !
  • On the Certificate file line, select your cacert.pem file.
  • The other files line allows additional files to be specified which will be copied to your install folder.
  • On Command line options line you should enter all the needed options for the Ocs Agent setup program (e.g. /server=http[s]://my_server/ocsinventory:8181 /S). Do not forget to specify the /S option for a silent installation.
  • The Label line will create a label file containing your user prompt. The first time OcsInventory.exe starts, a popup using this prompt will be shown. The user entered value is called the TAG.

“Install will run under account” group box:

  • On User line, enter the local admin account or a domain administrative account. On Active Directory domains, use “@” to separate the user from the domain name (e.g. administrator@my.domain.com). On a NT4 domain use the “domain\user” syntax.
  • Be careful when entering the password. It will not be validated at this point !

You should have something like this:

Click the [ Next ] button.

Select the destination folder and Click [ OK ].

At this point windows will briefly appear to generate ocspackage.exe.

You can now test ocspackage.exe by launching it under a normal user account (no administrative privileges).

A brief Ocs Inventory popup may show indicating the ocspackage.exe has been created. A log file named ocspackage.log is created at install time.

Publishing “ocspackage.exe”

You must now upload ocspackage.exe to the ocs web console or publish it on an alternative shared file system.

Publishing on the ocs web server

Log on to the administration console and select the Configuration icon:

Then upload your ocspackage.exe file.

Deploying agent on a domain

Refer to our documention to setup Windows Agent 2.X

Warning: Mysql server must accept files larger than 5M. Edit my.cnf file and modify max_allowed_packets value to fix it more than 5M. Save this file and restart service.

Getting help in forums

If you are unable to diagnose the problem yourself, you can get help on the OCS Inventory Ask. The link is available on our website.

If you do so, please provide us with the following:

  • Server operating system
  • OCS Inventory NG server version and patch level
  • Agent’s operating system
  • OCS Inventory NG agent version
  • Agent execution logs
    • Run “AGENT_INSTALL_FOLDER\ocsinventory.exe /NP /DEBUG=2 /SERVER=http://your_server_address/ocsinventory under Windows. Log file is created on folder “AGENT_INSTALL_FOLDER” under name “ocsinventory.log”.
    • Run “ocsinventory-agent --debug > ocsinv.log” under Linux. Log file is “ocsinv.log”.
  • Apache server error.log file, located under “/var/log/httpd/*error.log”.
  • OCS Inventory NG Server log file, located under “/var/log/ocsinventory-NG/ocsinventory-NG.log” under Linux.

Thanks in advance.