Topic: OCS question.

[tviles]

Anybody using OCS for inventory? Does it have to be installed on each desktop pc? Or does the server install work alone? Thanks, Tracy

[kevinb]

You will need the client installed on every workstation.

We install it with the built in OCS installer that lets you install with administrator rights from the user's login.bat script.

[tviles]

Got it thanks.

[erroneus]

Some time ago, I was wrestling with getting an OCS inventory installer package made up and eventually gave up.  Instead, I wrote a simple batch file that is called during the login batch file.  The scan is quick enough for most people when they reboot and log in and you need not worry about installing anything on Windows PCs at all.  Quite nice really.  If the scan were too slow, I would write some additional batch code that would run the scan every 3-5 logins instead of every login but that hasn't been shown to be necessary at all.

[kevinb]

erroneus, would you please post your batch file?

Kevin

[erroneus]

Surely...  Be aware of the prerequisites for this simple script:

1. the drive letter used here should be mapped previously.
2. the folder \ocs-ng\ contains a bunch of files that would normally be installed onto a client machine.

Code: [Select]

z:
cd \ocs-ng\
OCSInventory.exe /S /SERVER:192.168.3.21 /DEBUG /NP /HKCU /TAG:"domain-name-or-user-group"

You may find it useful to change the tags to something meaningful like department names or something along those lines.  I have found OCS inventory useful for a wide and varied number of things and it does a pretty good job of keeping up with itself.  I haven't had a need to worry about Mac clients or Linux clients at this time.

I think the batch/login approach is mind-numbingly simple and should be the preferred method of collecting this information.  However, it is good to have at least one machine on the network with the client software actively running so that it can discover other devices on the network as well.