Open Computer and Software Inventory (OCS-Inventory) – is a free software that enables users to inventory their IT assets.
OCS collects information about the hardware and software of networked machines running the OCS client program (“OCS Inventory Agent”).
This guide describes how to install OCS-Inventory Client (ocsinventory-agent) Series 1.x on CentOS/RHEL.
Adding EPEL Repository
There is no OCS Inventory Agent package in the standard repositories, so we will take it from EPEL repository.
If you need, you can use the guide that describes the installation process of EPEL repository.
The example of EPEL installation on CentOS 6.4 – 64bit:
# wget http://ftp.riken.jp/Linux/fedora/epel/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-6 # rpm --import RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-6 # rm -f RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-6 # wget http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm # rpm -ivh epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm # rm -f epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
Installing OCS Inventory Agent
Install the OCS Inventory Agent 1.x with the following command:
# yum install ocsinventory-agent
Configuring OCS Inventory Agent
Open the configuration file.
# vi /etc/ocsinventory/ocsinventory-agent.cfg
Uncomment the following lines. Set a tag for the current server and the address of your OCS server.
server = http://your.ocs.server/ocsinventory tag = your_tag
Change the line local = /var/lib/ocsinventory-agent
to basevardir = /var/lib/ocsinventory-agent
. Save and close the file.
Forcing the Inventory
By default, the ‘ocsinventory-agent’ script was added to ‘cron.hourly’ and it will send the inventory to your OCS server every hour.
I advice you to move the script to ‘cron.daily’, to send the inventory once a day. In most cases it will be enough.
# mv /etc/cron.hourly/ocsinventory-agent /etc/cron.daily/
To force the sending of inventory execute the following:
# /usr/sbin/ocsinventory-agent
Troubleshooting
The problems I have encountered.
Packages perl-XML-Simple and perl-Net-IP not available
I had the following errors on RHEL 6.4 x86_64 system.
Error: Package: ocsinventory-agent-1.1.2.1-1.el6.noarch (epel) Requires: perl(XML::Simple) Error: Package: ocsinventory-agent-1.1.2.1-1.el6.noarch (epel) Requires: perl(Net::IP)
# yum install perl-XML-Simple perl-Net-IP *** No package perl-XML-Simple available. No package perl-Net-IP available.
It means that your system is not subscribed to the RHEL ‘optional’ channel.
You can manually subscribe your system or install the required packages from rpm.
Search for perl-XML-Simple
and perl-Net-IP
on rpmfind.net and install them manually.
Example:
# rpm -ivh ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/centos/6.4/os/x86_64/Packages/perl-XML-Simple-2.18-6.el6.noarch.rpm # rpm -ivh ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/centos/6.4/os/x86_64/Packages/perl-Net-IP-1.25-13.el6.noarch.rpm
500 Can’t connect to your.ocs.server:80 (connect: Connection timed out)
The following error in ocsinventory-agent.log
means that OCS server is not reachable.
Test the connection with ping
and telnet
.
# telnet your.ocs.server 80 Trying your.ocs.server ... telnet: connect to address your.ocs.server: Connection timed out
Check your firewall.
Good morning everybody,
Could someone give the links that allow me to install the “mbsring module”, ” perl-Net-IP module”
For RedHat7. 6 Linux entreprise x86_x64
Because, I’m going to install the OCS INVENTORY SERVER Ng 2.5, but I’m blocked.
I also have the problem of dépendances, epl-release =7 is missing.
Thank you in advance.