The scanning process

When scanning AIX servers, Snow Inventory Agent for Unix can run an additional hardware scan to gather IBM licensing information. This hardware scan can be run at more frequent intervals than the regular scan. For recommended scanning intervals, refer to your current license agreement.

With the following command, the agent will perform a hardware scan only, and write the result to a file, without sending it to a Snow Inventory endpoint:

$ sudo java -jar /path/to/snowagent.jar scan -hw-only

Any created hardware scan result files will be sent to a Snow Inventory endpoint during the next regular scan.

Depending on the interval of the scan, the number of result files allowed to be stored on the computer until the next scheduled run must be large enough. The number is set by using the system setting send_max_scan_result_backlog_count in the agent configuration file.

Scanning of running processes

When software inventory is performed and includes running processes, information about these processes and the full path to the files will be stored in a running processes repository.

Each time a software scan is initiated, a lookup of previously identified running processes is performed to determine if the software is still installed on the client. This will be done even if the process is not currently running at the time of the scan. The result is stored in an encrypted file named tempdata.ser which is placed in the storage path directory.

Information on new software will be added to the repository as they are discovered. When software is removed from the client it will be removed from the repository as well.