Offline scan

Introduction

OctoSAM Inventory Offline Scan can be used to scan systems that are not part of your network or that are not part of your Active Directory or NDS.

Using the offline scan tool allows you to have these disconnected machines in your OctoSAM Inventory database. The Organization can also be set offline, so that the machine appears in the correct organization in the inventory.

Offline Scan is configured to run from USB sticks or removable discs. Due to the disconnected architecture of the whole OctoSAM Inventory scanning process, an offline scan does not differ significantly from a connected scan invoked by GPO or similar.

OctoOffline.exe

OctoOffline is a small program that provides an easy way to interactively start the standard scanner Octoscan2.exe.

With OctoOffline you can also manually enter values for the Description and CustomField1 / CustomField2 attributes of the OctoSAM Inventory Machine Object

Preparation and configuration

Required programs

Before you start, make sure that you have the newest versions of Octoscan2.exe and OctoOffline.exe Both executables are delivered with the OctoSAM Inventory Support Files archive.

Configure Octoscan.config file

For offline scans, the Octoscan2 configuration parameter OfflineScan must be set to true.

; 
; Octoscan2 Sample Config for Offline Scans 
; 
OfflineScan=1 
ScanPeriod=0 
HardwareScanPeriod=0 
ScanHardwareInfo=1 
Metering=0 
OutputFolder=.\scanfiles

These are the minimum required settings for offline scans. For obvious reasons, metering cannot be activated for offline scans. Note that in this example the .scan files are written to a subfolder, which must exist. See Octoscan2 Configuration Guide for more information about configuring Octoscan2.

Configure Organizations.csv file

Generate a .csv file through OctoSAM Inventory GUI -> Setup -> Organization -> Grid Context Menu -> Export.

OctoOffline expects the file in the format ;. Contents of “Name” will be written to the .scan File.

OctoOffline.ini

This file persists local settings of the offline tool. If the file does not exist the settings dialog will be shown at start.

Running OctoOffline

If you run OctoOffline for the first time, you are asked for your name.

The value entered is used to supply a default value for the Notes field of the machine object. Enter the desired information and click Scan!

After a short while a Message Box will indicate that the scan could be performed.

Verify that a new .scan file has been written to the configured Output Directory. In our example setup to the subdirectory “scanfiles”.

Configure AUTORUN.INF

[autorun] 
OPEN=octooffline.exe 
ICON=octooffline.exe 
ACTION=octooffline.exe

Note, however that AutoPlay is often disabled for USB Sticks. Still it’s cool to see the OctoScan Icon.

Prevent scan operator from running Octoscan2.exe directly

It’s a good idea to set Octoscan2.EXE as a hidden file. Octoscan2 detects, when it is run directly in offline mode and displays a warning.

Importing the offline scan files

Copy the generated .scan files to your ordinary Import folder.

Troubleshooting

No .scan file gets produced:

Check if Octoscan2 is already running in Metering mode on the machine. If that is the case, use Octoscan2 /q to stop the background instance of Octoscan2.

In general, systems that are scanned regularly via GPO or similar means should not at the same time be scanned with the offline scanner.

Verify the .scan File:

Use octodump.exe to generate a readable .xml File: