With the new release of Open-AudIT 3.1.0, we no longer require the configuration item "default"network"address" to be set for Discoveries. It is still required for the "Audit My PC" functionality, but we hope to minimise this dependance going forward as well.
Why was Default Network Address required?
Initially when we ran a discovery, on both Linux and Windows, we ran the audit script in such a way that it needed to know where to submit it's result. What URL should it use - hence the requirement for the configuration item. A while back now we changed how Discoveries ran under Linux, removing this requirement.
Linux
Linux discoveries send the audit script to the target, run it with a flag of "submit_online = n" and "create_file = w". So do not submit the result to the server, create a file and output the filename to the console. The server waits for the script to finish and captures the console output. It now has the filename of the result on the target system. It copies the result from the target to itself and processes it. All good so far.
Windows
We could never make Windows work this way. The account we use for Apache is the standard "Local System" account. This account has no access to network resources. Hence it cannot simply copy the script to or from a target PC. This was always a pain because the Linux way of running the Discovery was so much better and cleaner. After some (more) research we realised we can use network resources via "net use" - we simply don't assign a drive letter. Yay! So Windows now can copy the audit script to the target, run it, wait for the console output and then copy the result file back and process it, just like Linux.
Finally!
All that is a long explanation for "we don't need the default network address set". That's one less item a user needs to worry about.
We do still have the requirement to set the default network address for the functionality of the "Audit My PC" on the login page. We have plans to minimise this as well - if you can view the login page, we can use the request URL and work out what the default network address should be.
For now it's still required (as at 3.1.0), but look for it to be removed as a requirement in a near future release.
One step at a time, we're trying to make Open-AudIT as easy to use as possible.
Onwards and upwards.
Mark Unwin.