Inventory Agent Automatic Deployment Cautions

Automatic upgrades (or downgrades) of policy-controlled installations of Inventory Agent are available for each supported operating system platform. (See FlexNet Manager System Requirements and Compatibility for a list of the supported operating system platforms.) However, the following guidelines apply:

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Avoid using automatic deployment by IT Asset Management when you are using third party tools to deploy Inventory Agent, as conflicting specifications of the version to deploy can cause damage to the existing installation and upgrade failures.

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If Inventory Agent is installed on AIX or Linux platforms in a custom path, automatic upgrade by IT Asset Management is supported only for upgrades to Inventory Agent version 13.2.0 or later (and depends on the config.ini file being available in its standard location, /var/opt/managesoft/etc). If you have specified an earlier target release of Inventory Agent for AIX or Linux platforms where your installation uses a custom location, disable automatic upgrades for the affected platform(s).

Tip:This inventory setting grants permission (through policy) to the Inventory Agents to perform self- upgrades or downgrades to the specified version. The setting, therefore, can only be put into effect on those platforms where the Inventory Agent includes self-update functionality. Currently, Inventory Agents on Debian or Ubuntu Linux do not include self-update functionality. On these platforms, you can do any of:

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Deploy new versions of Inventory Agent manually

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Use your preferred third-party deployment tool to publish updates to Inventory Agents

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Uninstall the old version(s) of Inventory Agent, and once again target the devices for adoption through IT Asset Management.