About Software Inventory Using the filescan.rule File
filescan.rule
FileSoftware inventory using the
filescan.rule
file lets you collect information about the installed applications on your UNIX, Linux, and Mac computers.A file scan agent that is included in software inventory uses the
filescan.rule
file to detect the applications that are installed on your managed computers. The filescan.rule
file contains the data sets that represent information about different applications. The file scan agent compares each data set to the actual file system data to find out whether an application is installed.Each data set in the
filescan.rule
file consists of two lines of data. The first line is the application description data, and the second line is the matching criteria data. The application description data consists of the product name, the manufacturer, the version, and the description of the application. The matching criteria data includes a file name or the absolute path to the file that is part of the application, file size, and cyclic redundancy check (CRC). When the file scan agent finds this file in the specified directories, the associated product is reported as part of the inventory on that system.A data set that represents information about an application in the
filescan.rule
file looks as follows:product name = "Watcher" manufacturer = "Company" version = "3.24" description = ""
file = "/opt/secret/eys/watcher" size = "45698" CRC = ""
A default
filescan.rule
file is included in the Inventory Plug-in installation package for each platform. It contains an example list of some common applications.Symantec recommends that you configure the default
filescan.rule
file to include the additional applications that the software inventory should report. You can also add entries for the applications that are developed in-house.After you configure the
filescan.rule
file, you can create a Quick Delivery task to redistribute it to all managed UNIX, Linux, and Mac computers.