Step 2c: Basic mode - Scanning remote shared disks (BigFix® scenario)

To discover software that is installed on shared disks in your infrastructure, run the software scan with the Scan remote shared disks option enabled.

Before you begin

  • This method of scanning is advised for environments in which a single shared disk is mounted on one or only few computers. For information, see: Discovering software on shared disks (BigFix scenario).
  • If more computers are configured to scan a shared disk, performance of the disk might decrease drastically and the scanning might take a long time. It is recommended to schedule the clients to scan the shared disk at different times, for example to spread the scanning across many days of the week.
  • If the shared disks to be scanned are large, scan timeout problems might occur.

Procedure

  1. Discover shared disks that exist in your infrastructure.
  2. Exclude unsupported file systems from scanning.
    1. In the navigation tree, click Analyses.
    2. Click Shared Disk Information, and open the Results tab to recognize file systems that must be excluded from scanning.
    3. In the navigation tree, click Fixlets and Tasks and select Add Excluded Directories. Specify directories or mount points of unsupported file systems, and click Take Action. For more information, see: Adding excluded directories.
      Tip: A mount point is a directory that is at the top of the file system hierarchy. You can verify whether a directory is a mount point by checking the output of the mount or mountpoint commands.
    4. Select computers on which you want to exclude the unsupported file systems and click OK.
  3. Stop the current software scans.
    1. In the navigation tree, click Actions.
    2. In the upper right pane, select the Initiate Software Scan action.
    3. In the lower pane, click Stop.
  4. Initiate software scans with the option to scan remote shared disks selected.
    Important: Automounted remote disks will be scanned only if they are mounted during the scan.

Results

Information about shared disks and the installed software is available on the following reports:
  • Computers report (when you access it from the widget on the home page) contains information about the type of file system, shared disk IP address, and mount point
  • Software Classification report contains information about the installation path

What to do next

9.2.6 Information about scanned files and directories in your file system is stored in the scanner cache folder. By knowing the hierarchy of files, the scanner can locate them quicker, which results in shorter scans. The amount of disk space that is needed for the cache depends on the number of files that are being scanned. If the current location of the cache folder cannot ensure sufficient disk space, you can change the location of the cache folder or optimize the cache. For more information, see: Optimizing scanner cache configuration (BigFix scenario).