FlexNet Inventory Scanner: Accounts and Privileges

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

In the FlexNet Inventory Scanner case, when the FlexNet inventory core components (run locally as the FlexNet Inventory Scanner) gather hardware and software inventory from the target inventory device, they execute as the user name (or account) that triggered the execution.

To effectively gather inventory, this account must have elevated privileges:

• On Windows, it must have administrator privileges on the local machine.
• To collect complete inventory on UNIX-like platforms, you must elevate privileges (for example, with sudo or priv) and execute ndtrack.sh as root.

If ndtrack.sh executes as a non-root user on UNIX-like systems, the following are amongst the inventory details that cannot be collected:

• File evidence from any file system path not accessible by the executing user
• InstallAnywhere, InstallShield Multiplatform, or Oracle Universal Installer evidence under paths not accessible by the executing user
• Oracle Database service discovery via the local listener using lsnrctl
• Oracle Database inventory which may use impersonation of an Oracle Database administration user when running the sqlplus command
• On Linux systems:
  • BIOS details (dmidecode): serial number, UUID, manufacturer, model, chassis type
  • All hard disk information (from device files)
• On Solaris systems:
  • MAC addresses of network adapters
  • x86 BIOS details (dmidecode): model, manufacturer
  • SPARC model using OpenPROM interface (the tracker fails over to using the value from sysinfo SI_PLATFORM instead, which may give different results)
• On HP-UX systems:
  • SD-UX installation evidence from swlist if access has been locked down with swreg or swacl
  • vPar evidence including VMType, VMName, and vPar capacity (vparstatus requires root)
  • Hard disk drive properties including capacity
• On Mac OS X systems:
  • Mac OS X package bundle paths under /Applications or /System/Library not accessible by the executing user.