Software Details Page

Local Drives

Drives with non fixed media that can be removed or exchanged. Removable drives are normally not included for scanning:

• CD and DVD Drives. Scans the contents of CD and DVD drives.

• Floppy Drives. Scans the contents of floppy drives.

• Other Removable Drives. Scans other removable drives (for example, SyQuest drives).Scanning removable media is not usually recommended, because the content of these drives varies depending on the media currently in the drive.

Drives that are neither local nor removable, and may or may not have local physical media associated with them:

• Network Drives. Scans the contents of network drives.

  Note The network drives can be scanned by multiple computers.

  See Automount (AutoFS) Drives (below) for detailed information about scanning automatically mounted drives.

• SUBST Drives. Scans "virtual" drives created using the operating system’s substitute command, SUBST, on Windows, or by the loopback file system (lofs) on UNIX. This is not normally desirable as a substituted drive can be scanned using both its true drive letter/path and substituted drive letter/path.

  Note Use this option with caution.

• Automount (AutoFS) Drives. When not selected (default), the scanner does not scan any auto-mounted drives. The scanner does not attempt to mount any indirect automount drives. It may mount a direct automount drive if it comes across its mount point during the software scanning process, but the direct automount drive itself is not scanned.

  When selected, the automount drives are scanned only if all of the following conditions are met:

  • The directory where the drive’s mount point is located is, itself, being scanned, for example, it is located on a drive for which the corresponding drive-type check box is selected.

  • The drive-type check box for the real drive type of the automount drive is also selected. For example, an auto-mounted NFS drive is scanned only when the Network Drives check box is also selected.

  • The drive is a direct automount drive or if the drive is an indirect automount drive, it has to be either already mounted or during the scanning process the scanner has to encounter a symbolic link pointing to a location within the indirect automount drive’s directory structure.

  Example:

  The following example shows how these three conditions are met:

  A direct automount DVD drive mounted under /usr/local/cd (where /usr/local is located on a local hard drive) is scanned only when both Local Drives and CD and DVD Drives check boxes are selected.

• Other Drives. Scans drives created using other devices drives (for example, RAM drives).

  Note  

  • Scanning drives created using device drivers can lead to false reporting of files on a computer.

  • Use this option with caution.

• Available for Targeted or Combined scans only. For details, see Software Data Page.

• For Windows operating systems, you can also scan desktop and Start menu shortcuts.

• By scanning only selected directories rather than complete drives, software scanning is made faster.

• Although you can specify the file systems and directories (known to the Scanner Generator) that you want to include or exclude during scanning, you can override the settings of the file systems and specific directories and files during software scanning by using the content in the override files. For details on how to add content to the override files, see Scanner Options Page.

• Start Menu. Scans the directories that are pointed to by shortcuts on the Start menu.

• Desktop. Scans the directories that are pointed to by shortcuts on the desktop.

• Only use shortcuts to files with these extensions. Scans only shortcuts that point to files with one of the specified extensions.

• Windows Services. Select to include directories containing Windows Services for targeted scanning. As the name implies, this option applies to Windows scanners only.

• Java Home. Select if you want the scanners to add the Java Home directory to the list of directories for a targeted scan. This option applies to Windows scanners only.

  Note If you checked the Enable scanning of Java class files on the Standard Configuration page, this option is selected by default.

• Non-Global Zone Root Directories. Select if you want the scanners to add the Solaris non-global (local) zone root directories to the list of directories for a targeted scan. This ensures that all directories used by non-global zones are scanned during the software scanning process. This option applies to Solaris scanners only.

• Packaged File Data. Select if you want to make sure that the directories where the files belonging to installed packages are located are added to the list of directories to be scanned. For this option to work, the Packaged File Data option must be enabled on the Hardware Data Page.

• File Associations. Select if you want the scanners to add directories containing applications that are associated with various file types (for example NotePad for .txt files) to the list of directories for a targeted scan. This option applies to Windows scanners only.

• Software Utilization. This setting instructs the scanner to include any directories from where used programs are executed. These directories will be included in the list of directories for a targeted scan. This ensures that the scanner collects the file data required for recognition of used applications. This option applies to all scanners.

• Program Files/Applications. Select if you want the scanners to add the standard location for program files to the list of directories for a targeted scan. On Windows, it is the Program Files directory, which is normally located in the root of the Windows system drive (such as C:\Program Files). On Mac OS X, it is the /Applications directory where the applications are installed by default.

• Include directories from these environment variables. If selected, the paths included in the environment variables specified here are also be added to the list to scan. If you specify multiple environment variables, you must separate each name with a semicolon (;).

Shortcuts to excluded drives.

(Combined scans only)

• Scan excluded drives. When selected, this option forces all directories pointed to by shortcuts to be scanned. If not selected, the directories that are located on the drives that are excluded by the drive selection on the Drives tabs are not scanned.

  When selected, the scanners may scan directories on network volumes. This is particularly useful when scanning for software licenses as the scanner detects files that are part of a network install that is accessible from the machine.

Shortcuts to the network/Used programs launched from the network.

(Targeted Directory scans only)

• Scan network drives. When selected, this option forces all directories pointed to by shortcuts to be scanned. The scanners may scan directories on network volumes. This is particularly useful when scanning for software licenses as the scanner detects files that are part of a network install that is accessible from the machine.

  If not selected, the directories that are located on the drives that are excluded by the drive selection on the Drives and Drive Selection tabs are not scanned. Usually shortcuts to network drives or network directories from which used programs were executed are not scanned.

Files to Scan sub-tab

Enables you to specify how much information is collected about files and the checking processes used.

• Add. Opens the Select Files to Process dialog box, enabling you to add a filter for files to scan:

  • File Name. Specify the relevant wildcard file type to process. For example, *.tmp means all files with the .tmp extension. Multiple specifications, separated with semicolons, are also accepted.

  • Action. Select one of the following actions:

    • Signature. Collects file signatures for the specified type of file.

      The signature is an ISO checksum (CRC) of the first 8KB of the file. To calculate the signature, the scanner opens the file and reads the first 8KB from it. Collecting signatures helps to establish the file’s identity. Two different files rarely have the same signature. Signatures are used by the software recognition in analysis tools to improve software application recognition. Also, only those fields for which signatures were collected can optionally be identified by the scanner (see File Identification sub-tab).

    • Ignore. Ignores the type of file specified in the File Name box.

  • Attributes. Select from the following options as required:

    • Read Only. Files with the read-only attribute are capable of being displayed, but not modified or deleted.

    • Hidden. Files with the hidden attribute are not normally visible to users. For example, hidden files are not listed when you execute the Command Prompt DIR command. However, most file management utilities allow you to view hidden files.

    • System. Files with the System attribute.

    In general, if a given attribute is not selected, the entry having the attribute will not match, even if the file name does.

  • Size Range (Kb). If required, select the Limit Processing by File Size and specify the maximum and minimum file sizes. Only files within this size range are processed.

• Edit. Enables you to edit the selected file scan filter.

• Delete. Deletes the selected file scan filter.

• Move up/Move down. Enables you to change the order of the filters.

  The order in which process selections occur is important. For example, use Ignore first before making Signature process selections.

  This ensures that the Ignore items are processed first before a file needs to be opened. It may be necessary to ignore certain files, the content of which is constantly changing.

  Examples of files to ignore because of changing content are files that are normally used as swap files, such as pagefile.sys.

• <Files to Scan list>. Displays the checking methods used for processing files. You can build up a prioritized list of filters which specify a sequence of checking processes to be used.

File Identification sub-tab

Enables to you determine whether the scanner identifies files based on their content.

• Identify File Type. Instructs the scanner to check every file that was selected for signatures to identify all executable and archive files. The scanner can identify LZH, LHA, ZIP, ARJ, ARC and PAK archives. Selecting this enables two further options:

  • Process Archives as Subdirectories. Treats archive files as subdirectories and lists the files included in each archive (it does not extract information from within these files). If this option is not selected, archive files are not scanned for embedded files and directories.

    If this option is selected, a further option is made available:

    • Process Archives inside GZIP Files. Enables the handling of archives located in gzip files (such as .tar.gz files). These are tar archives that were compressed using gzip. This option instructs the scanner to process such archives.

  • Collect Internal File Identification. Collects internal file information included in the executable file, for example, version data and legal copyright. This option must be enabled if you are using Express Teaching to teach applications. For more information about Express Teaching, see Express Teaching Overview.

  • ELF Prelinking Aware. During software scanning, this option instructs the scanner to check if an executable file has been pre-linked by the ELF Prelinking Utility (prelink). The ELF Prelink Utility is used to speed up loading times of ELF shared libraries and executables by modifying them to reduce the number of the reallocations the dynamic linker needs to do to load them in memory. If this option is enabled, the scanner calculates the size and signature of the file before it was pre-linked. This is useful for accurate application recognition since the file size and signature are used to perform application matching. However, enabling this option does produce extra overhead during the scan as the scanner needs to run the pre-link utility to obtain the original executable file. The pre-linked file is not modified by the scanning process; the original file is only reconstructed temporarily in order to collect the size and signature.

    Note This is for Linux platforms only.

• Preserve Last Access File Date. Collects the Last Accessed time stamp for files (where available). The support for the Last Accessed time stamp varies depending on the operating system and file system used.

  When this setting is used on UNIX computers, although the last access time is preserved, the ctime of the file gets changed. For this reason we recommend that you do not use this setting on Linux, Mac OS X or UNIX computers.

  Note When this option is enabled, the XML Enricher can make use of this feature to accurately estimate the time when recognized applications were last executed.

• Process Software Id Tag Files. Enables the collection of information from software tag files during the software scanning phase. During the hardware detection phase, the information from tag files that are located in the common system location and in the root of the application's installation directory is picked up. The tag files stored in the root of the application's installation directory can be collected only if the application is in a standard package format, or a directory where the application is installed is scanned during the software scanning phase.

  For more information, see Software Identification Tags.

Enables you to define which file details to store in the scan file.

• Add. Opens Select Files to Process dialog box, enabling you to add filter criteria for file information to store. For details, see File Information to Store tab > Select Files to Process Dialog Box.

• Edit. Enables you to edit the selected filter. For details, see File Information to Store tab > Select Files to Process Dialog Box.

• Remove. Deletes the selected filter.

• Move up/Move down. Enables you to reorder defined filter criteria.

• By default, store information on all files. If selected, and no other options are specified, then information about all files is stored in the scan file.

• By default, discard information on all files. If selected, and no other options are specified, then no file data is stored in the scan file.

• Do not store empty directories When selected (default), the scanner discards information about directories that have no files in them. This can include directories that may have files in them, but you have set up the scanner not to scan for these particular types of file.

• The collected files can be viewed in Viewer or exported from Analysis Workbench. For more information, see Inventory Tools.
• If a targeted directory scan selection was made earlier and does not include a specific directory in which a stored file may be found (including the root directory), then any required stored file must be specifically defined here with the full path.

Enables you to limit the size of the files to be stored

When large files are collected and stored, restricting the size of files collected can prevent creation of very large scan files.

• <Right-click menu>. Enables you to add a new file to store, or delete a file from the list.

• File Name to Store. Displays a default list of system files. The name of the files can include wildcard characters unless a specific directory is used.

  For example, collecting the Config.sys file for each computer scanned across a population provides a snapshot of the system configuration for each computer. This enables the analysis and consolidation of system configuration across the computer population.

  Other commonly collected files are Net.cfg, Profile.ini, AutoExec.Bat, Win.ini, System.ini, and Boot.ini.

  Note The one Universal Discovery specific file included in the list is the override file, called override.ini on Windows systems and .override.ini on UNIX/Mac OS X systems. This is an ASCII file used by the scanner at run-time to store a list of files to be ignored (that is not opened at run-time). For more details, see Directories Tab.

• Found Where. Displays the location of the file.

  • /etc directory. Stores the file only if it is found in the UNIX /etc directory.

  • /var directory. Stores the only file if it is found in the UNIX /var directory.

  • Any Root. Stores the file only if it is found in a root directory.

  • Anywhere. Stores the file wherever it is located.

  • Root of Boot Drive. Stores the file only if it is found in the root of the boot drive.

  • Specific directory. All the files in the specific directory are collected, but sub-directories are not included.

    For example, the stored files could be configured to be:

    C:\Documents\*.*

    In this case, the scanner stores all the files in the C:\Documents directory.

  • Specific File. A specific copy of the file is collected irrespective of whether it is included in the software scan.

    For example, the list of specific stored files could be configured to be:

    C:\Documents\config.txt

    Z:\net.ini

    /etc/fstab

    In this case, the scanner storee the config.txt file from the C: drive (when scanning PCs), the net.ini on the Z: drive (if it is available, and only on PCs) and a file named fstab in the /etc directory (when scanning UNIX machines).

    Note Files are stored only if the directory where the file is located is included in the software scan, unless the specific directory is specified.