The FlexNet inventory agent

FlexNet Manager Suite 2022 R1 (On-Premises)

By default, the BMC Discovery agent does not support inventory collection from UNIX-like inventory devices; but the optional pattern UnixHardwareData extends its capacity to use the FlexNet inventory agent on those platforms to collect the appropriate data. Since this is a functional extension of BMC Discovery, this optional pattern, and corresponding use of the FlexNet inventory agent on UNIX-like platforms, applies to whichever of the methods you have chosen for collecting information from BMC Discovery (the adapter or the connector). Installation to suit BMC Discovery is described in Installing the FlexNet inventory agent.

The FlexNet inventory agent is a standard component of any installation of FlexNet Beacon, and of the application server that is included with FlexNet Manager Suite. For this reason, if you are downloading the adapter, you do not find the necessary files included in the BMC Discovery adapter zip archive, since they are already present in any standard implementation of FlexNet Manager Suite. Similarly, if you need the FlexNet inventory agent for UNIX-like platforms when you are configuring the connector, you can find the relevant files already available on the inventory beacon.

Tip: If you are gathering FlexNet inventory in parallel with your use of BMC Discovery, it's possible that the FlexNet inventory agent may already be installed on target inventory devices. Check before undertaking your own deployment.

For use on Linux or UNIX platforms, the agent has two component files:

• ndtrack.sh, the component responsible for collecting inventory details (in this case, for the BMC Discovery inventory system) and writing them in an intermediate format to a data file, ready for upload to an application server. The script has no active elements until it is triggered by BMC Discovery through the enhanced UnixHardwareData collection pattern.
• ndtrack.ini, a text file that contains configuration variables for ndtrack.sh.

The combined disk space requirement of both files is under 13MB.

Important: Inventory fails to upload from FlexNet inventory agent if the account running ndtrack.sh has a hash (#) character in the user name. The hash (#) character is not permitted, and causes failure of the upload of the generated .ndi files to the application server.