Common: Child Processes Invoked by the Tracker

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

Whenever the tracker (the ndtrack executable) is invoked on a target device, it calls a few utilities and operating system commands to fulfill its inventory-gathering tasks. The behavior of the tracker is consistent (per platform), regardless of how it is delivered to the target device or how it is invoked. For this reason, the following per-platform listings of child processes invoked by the tracker apply equally across all these tracker cases described in this document:

• Adopted through the automated processes within IT Asset Management
• Agent third-party deployment using the third-party tools of your choice
• Zero-footprint, where the tracker is copied from the inventory beacon, and installed and run
• FlexNet Inventory Scanner, where the tracker is invoked by the ndtrack.sh script
• Core deployment, where you have arranged for the deployment of FlexNet inventory core components and now manage invoking the ndtrack executable within your specialized scenario

(To revise details of the cases, see the chapter Understanding What, Where, How, and Why.)

To operate securely, the tracker invokes these child processes with appropriate levels of privilege. Security and functionality can often be a trade-off, and in those cases, the priority is with security. This may mean that, depending on the security configuration in your computing estate, some inventory-gathering processes cannot succeed until you update the configuration to allow the specific tasks. In many cases, the outcomes of such restrictions are visible in the discovered device properties by selecting the Status tab, and expanding the Oracle database inventory heading. However, some issues are recorded only in the tracker.log file on the target inventory device. For more details, see the chapter on Oracle Discovery and Inventory in the IT Asset Management System Reference PDF.

Because the details vary across platforms, the processes and accounts used are documented separately in the following topics, first for Windows and then for UNIX-like platforms. Each gives a complete listing, and they may be read independently.