Inventorying Other Operating Systems

Last updated: January 10, 2020

It goes without saying that the Docusnap documentation tool also inventories various Linux operating system distributions as well as Apple Mac OS X. As with Windows-based inventories, you can bet that no additional software needs to be installed on those computers. Docusnap exclusively uses standard features provided by the operating system. The only extra thing you might be required to do for enabling information retrieval is to set up a share. As with Microsoft SQL Server inventories, it is recommended that you create a dedicated account. This way, you avoid any security issues that might arise when the root default account is used. A detailed description of the optimum way to proceed can be found in the Docusnap User Manual.

Use of standard operating system features

By default, system data will be read using port 22 and the SSH protocol. If you have set a different port on your IT system, you can, of course, adjust the settings accordingly in the Docusnap inventory wizard.

Similar to Windows inventories, Docusnap scans both Linux and Apple operating systems for any installed software products and stores the retrieved data in the Docusnap database. Since paid software products are hardly ever found on Linux operating systems, you could certainly do without license management here, but without software product data, your IT documentation would not be complete. This, in turn, would mean that you cannot create an all-encompassing recovery plan, which requires complete information on all IT system. So, it does make sense to record free software as well.

In a nutshell: Docusnap allows you to scan all common operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Linux distributions, and Apple OS X. To be honest, do you need more?