The scanning process

Snow Inventory Agent for macOS scans the computers regularly. The default schedule is every day at 09:00.

When the scan is completed, the agent sends the inventory file with the scan data to a Snow Inventory endpoint (Snow Inventory Server or Snow Extender). If the agent for some reason cannot send data to the endpoint, it will try again later. The inventory file is stored until the data has been sent successfully. The maximum number of stored inventory files is determined by the setting key send.max_scan_result_backlog_count in the SystemSettings element in the agent configuration file.

File scanning

The agent gathers information by scanning the file systems. To include or exclude directories or files from the scan, use the <Software><Include> and <Software><Exclude> elements in the agent configuration file. See Rules for file system scan for a description of how to use the elements to configure a file system scan.

File system types not scanned by the agent

The following file system types are excluded from the scan by default:

cifs	devfs
fuseblk	mtmfs
nfs	nfs4
none	smbfs
vmhgfs

You can also exclude file system types by adding them to <Software><Exclude><FileSystem> in the agent configuration file.

note

Adding a file system exclusion to the agent configuration file is not an additive process; it replaces the default set listed in the table above. Therefore, you must list all file systems that should be excluded.

Sending scan results

By default, the agent checks once every hour if there is any unsent data, and if so, tries to send it to the endpoint. The frequency is defined in /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.snowsoftware.Scanresult.plist.

If you want the agent to only send scan results after each scheduled scan, you can turn off the Send scan results every hour toggle in the Scanning modules section in Package Builder when creating the agent installation package. Then, the .plist file will not be included in the package and the agent will not check for any unsent data in between scans.

Configure the scan schedule

You can configure a custom scan schedule, for example at 01:00 every day, at 04:05 every Sunday, or at 00:30 on the first of every month. The scan schedule is defined in /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.snowsoftware.Inventory.plist.

Configure the agent to scan a maximum of once a day

If you need the scan schedule to be performed more often than once a day, for example, if the computer is turned off most of the time, but still only want to produce one scanning result per day, you can use the following configuration:

• In the SystemSettings element of the agent configuration file, set the setting key env.allowonlyonescanperday to true.

  <SystemSettings>
      <Setting key="env.allowonlyonescanperday" value="true" />
  </SystemSettings>

When the setting key is set to true, the agent will check when the last scan was performed before it starts a new one. If the last scan was run the same day, the agent will not start a new scan.

Note that the agent will not perform the check if the scan is run from the command line.