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Ways to Inventory a Network of Linux Machines?
Milo_Mindbender asks: "Our lab has a few dozen Linux machines with varying configurations of hardware and software. We're trying to keep track of all the configs so we can get the machines upgraded when we have parts/time/money to do so. Right now, I have a little shell file that I have everyone run which copies the output of a bunch of commands and /proc files from each machine to a central server. The problem with this is that you get a lot of info you don't need, and it's in a format that's hard to read or put in a spreadsheet. Does anyone know of a reasonablly good, free system for taking a hardware inventory of a bunch of networked systems? It's important that it be easy to install on the client machine and not have a huge number of dependancies. It would be particularly useful if it automatically decended through the various /proc trees and returned as much info as possible for disks, USB, graphics cards...etc." Inventory control is a big thing in corporations these days. A simple program that's able to collect hardware information from the Linux boxes on the network would be yet another feather in Linux's cap.
Just tweak your current system a bit, get the info into some sort of database and pull reports using Crystal Reports or something similar.
If you feel like spending alot of money, buy Tivoli Enterprise, CA Unicenter or HP Openview.
Inventory tools are a pain in the ass to design and test. Why would anyone give one away??
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
its deisnged for monitoring the status of machine disk/cpu/network connectivity but could be adapted for regular reporting of dmesg generated data or /proc generated data. search on freshmeat for big brother.
There are two ways of doing this: buy it or make it.
You're current system isn't bad, it's just you're not searching for what you really need. It seams like you haven't put enough time into it.
If you're looking for something coded, good luck. Not becuase there nothing out there for you, it's just there nothing out there the way you want it.
The journey is better then the end.
Did you STFW first?
A quick search of http://sourceforge.net/search/ for "inventory" turned up LHinv at http://sourceforge.net/projects/lhinv/, which looks like it will help. So does http://phpmyinventory.sourceforge.net/
"A gun is a tool, Marian. No better, no worse than any other tool. An axe, a shovel, or anything." Shane (1953)