FAQ

Blocking by firewalls can prevent JDisc Discovery from getting details from devices on the network. Either open the firewall for the discovery server and the required ports, or use separate installations on either side of the firewall.

Furthermore, you can define any number of IP address exclusion ranges. These are IP4 address ranges that are excluded from discovery.

JDisc Discovery can also ignore specific device types.

Yes, you may even schedule discoveries independently for different areas of your network. This is especially useful if your corporation has sites in different time zones.

JDisc Discovery offers the following types of schedules:

• Run once at a particular time
• Run recurring (e.g. every 2 hours)
• Run daily at a particular time
• Run weekly on a particular weekday / time
• Run monthly on a particular weekday / time

Furthermore you can define periods of inactive discovery (e.g. in times when backups are scheduled).

No, there is no need to install proprietary agents on the target computers. JDisc Discovery uses standard protocols to identify devices.

However JDisc Discovery can, if configured accordingly, deploy a temporary agent on Windows computers. This improves data quality in some cases (e.g. with Windows NT 4.0). For some data, however, the temporary agent is required.

Read more in our Agentless vs. Agentbased Discovery Tools Whitepaper.

For performance reasons, JDisc Discovery discovers devices in parallel. The number of devices to be discovered in parallel may be configured in the Discovery configuration.

Depending on device load, network speed and performance of the discovery server, JDisc Discovery can discover up to 1500 devices per hour.

Firewalls can block the access to WMI or remote registry on Windows computers and prevent getting detailed discovery information. JDisc Discovery offers the possibility to tunnel WMI and remote registry requests via its agents. That means that WMI requests are not executed remotely but by a locally installed JDisc Discovery agent. Local WMI queries are always possible without account. The same applies for registry accesses.

There are many things that can prevent JDisc Discovery from getting proper device details. Misconfigured user accounts or passwords, firewalls, or disabled protocols can for instance impact discovery results.

Therefore, JDisc Discovery features many built in troubleshooting technologies, starting from simple reports and leading up to a rule based analysis of possible problems and a quality meter. JDisc Discovery specializes in getting access problems identified and fixed as quickly as possible.

Refer to the “Discovery Scenarios” and “Troubleshooting” in our user manual.

If nothing helps, simply generate a Device Support ZIP file (refer to support video) and sent it to our support.

Each Microsoft Windows operating system comes with a built in tool called “wbemtest.exe”. Start the tool on the discovery computer by opening a command line first and then start the product “wbemtest.exe” from the command line. That’ll bring up the following Window:

Click the Connect button in order to establish a WMI connection. This opens a new Window where you can enter the connection details such as IP address, user name, and password.

Always use the form domainusername for domains or computernameusername for local computer accounts.

When the connection fails, then you’ll receive an error message. On a successful connection, the buttons within the tool’s main area will be enabled.

Recommended configuration:

Create a dedicated scan user in Active Directory for discovery tasks. This account is used by JDisc Discovery to access Windows systems and collect inventory data. The scan user does not need to be a member of the Domain Admins group and should not be granted domain administrator permissions.

Add the scan user to the local Administrators group on all Windows computers that should be discovered. This can be configured centrally through Active Directory Group Policy, so the required permissions are applied consistently across the relevant systems.

Configure the scan user in JDisc Discovery. A recommended approach is to create a new directory group and assign the scan user to the required part of the directory hierarchy. To do this, open the directory group configuration, switch to the Scope > Directory tab, and add the scan user to the appropriate Active Directory scope.

Our recommendation:

• Use the local built-in administrator user for discovery. You may have to activate it first, as it is mostly deactivated in the standard configuration.

Alternative:

• You can also use another local user who is a member of the local administrators group.In this case you will only get few device details, as this local user is restricted by Windows (Limited User Accounts / LUA). The reason for this is that a Limited User Account (LUA) cannot claim higher privileges from remote that are only granted interactively by the User Account Control (UAC).

Configure the user in JDisc Discovery:

• If each computer uses a different local user / password, select the respective Windows computer in one of the reports and then right-click the context menu: Manage> Change Accounts. There you then enter the user and the password in the lower two input fields (Admin / Root Account).

• If you use the same local user / password for all Windows computers, it is best to create a new network / range group and select the Accounts> Clients & Server> Windows tab. Now you can create the local Windows user by clicking the Add button.

JDisc Discovery detects many SNMP based devices, but there are permanently new devices being released by different vendors. When there are major changes for current models or new vendors, then we need to implement the device support explicitly. We do that at no cost for our customers and the effort is usually very limited.

However, we need your support. We need a SNMP walk in a special format for the unknown devices. Once we have the SNMP walk, we can import the walk file into a SNMP simulator within our labs. This enables our development team to simulate your device within our network.

Download our SNMP Walk product in order to create the SNMP v1 walks in the required format. Submit the SNMP walk file to our support mail address support@jdisc.com.

When using SNMPv3, we recommend to download netsnmp and install it on your JDisc Discovery server and then

snmpwalk -O n -v 3 -a MD5 -A <auth-pwd> -u <user> -x DES -X <priv-pwd> <ip> .1

Usually within one or two weeks, we release a new build that includes the new devices.

Some commands require root privileges on Linux systems. JDisc Discovery can obtain these privileges either through the su command or through sudo, depending on the configured authentication method.

When sudo is used, the sudo configuration must allow the required commands to run with root privileges. For this configuration, the commands executed by JDisc Discovery as root must be known.

JDisc Discovery executes the following commands with root privileges:

Operating Systems

Root Commands for Linux

• /usr/bin/cat /proc/1/environ

• /sbin/ethtool <ifname> or /usr/sbin/ethtool <ifname>

• /sbin/mii-tool <ifname> or /usr/sbin/mii-tool <ifname>

• /usr/bin/find / -perm /111 -type f -print0 -xdev 2>/dev/null | xargs -0 file | grep executable | cut -d’:’ -f1 | xargs ls -l –time-style=long-iso

• /sbin/lsof -i -n -P or /usr/sbin/lsof -i -n -P or /usr/bin/lsof -i -n -P

• /usr/bin/pvecm status

• /usr/bin/clustat -x

• /usr/bin/cat /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/product_serial

• /usr/bin/df -lT

• /usr/sbin/smartctl -i /dev/<disk-device-name> or /sbin/smartctl -i /dev/<disk-device-name>

• /sbin/hdparm -I /dev/<disk-device-name> or /usr/sbin/hdparm -I /dev/<disk-device-name>

• /usr/sbin/dmidecode

• /usr/bin/ls -ald /proc/*/exe

• /usr/sbin/qm list

• /usr/sbin/qm config <vmid>

• /usr/bin/lxc-ls –version

• /usr/sbin/runuser -l <username> -c ‘lxc-ls’

• /usr/sbin/runuser -l <username> -c ‘lxc-info -n <vmname>’

• /usr/sbin/runuser -l <username> -c ‘lxc-attach -n <vmname> ifconfig’

• /usr/bin/docker psd

• docker ps -a –format “{{.Names}}”

• docker inspect <containername>

• /usr/bin/cat /var/lib/pacemaker/cib/cib.xml

• /usr/sbin/crm_mon –as-xml

• mokutil –sb-state

• mokutil –list-new

• mokutil –list-delete

• virsh -r list –all

• virsh -r dumpxml <vmname>

• yum history

• yum history info <id>

• yum check-update

• chage -l <username>

• apt update
  but only when apt is used (e.g. on Debian).

Additional Root Commands for Citrix Xen Server:

• /opt/xensource/bin/xe host-list params=uuid,address,hostname

• /opt/xensource/bin/xe vif-list params=vm-uuid,MAC,device

• /opt/xensource/bin/xe pool-list

• /opt/xensource/bin/xe vm-list params=name-label,networks,power-state,is-control-domain,resident-on,affinity,uuid,parent

• /opt/xensource/bin/xe snapshot-list params=uuid,snapshot-of,name-label,name-description,is-a-snapshot,snapshot-time,parent

• /opt/xensource/bin/xe snapshot-list params=uuid,name-description

Root Commands for Mac OSX

• sysctl net.inet.ip.forwarding

• sysctl net.inet6.ip6.forwarding

• otool

Root Commands for AIX:

• no -a

Root Commands for Solaris:

• find / -perm -og+rx -type f -print0 -xdev 2>/dev/null | xargs -0 file | grep executable | cut -d’:’ -f1 | xargs ls -l –time-style=long-iso

• /usr/cluster/bin/cluster list

• /usr/cluster/bin/clinterconnect status

• ndd -get /dev/ip ip6_forwarding

• ndd -get /dev/ip ip_forwarding

• ndd <network_device> link_autoneg

• ndd <network_device> link_duplex

• dladm show-dev

• dladm show-phys

• df -lk

• /opt/SUNWldm/bin/ldm list-domain -o network -p <ldom_name>

• /opt/SUNWldm/bin/ldm ls

• virtinfo -a

Root Commands for HP-UX

• lsof -i -n -P

• /opt/propplusSUNWldm/bin/cprop -detail -c “Memory”

• diskinfo <diskfile>

• /opt/hpvm/bin/hpvmstatus -P <vmname> -Vldm ls

• virtinfo -a

Software

Some root commands are related to specific software items. This section lists the commands which are independent from the underlying Unix operating system.

Root Commands for Apache JBoss

• <jbossinstalldir>/bin/standalone.sh –version

• cat <jboss_componentsfolder>/WEB-INF/web.xml

• cat <jboss_componentfolder>/META-INF/application.xml

• <jbossinstalldir>/run.sh -version

Service Guard Cluster

• /usr/sbin/cmviewcl -v

IBM DB2

• <installdir>/adm/db2licm -l

• db2ls -c

Oracle WebLogic

• cat <installdir>/config/config.xml

• cat <middleware-path>/domain-registry.xml

• cat <installdir>/inventory/ContentsXML/comps.xml

Oracle Database

These files are read to locate Oracle databases on Unix/Linux.

• “/etc/oratab”

• “/var/opt/oratab”

• “/var/opt/oracle/oratab”

• “/etc/opt/oratab”

• “/etc/oraInst.loc”

• “/var/opt/oracle/oraInst.loc”

Postgres

• cat <datadir>/postgresql.conf

Several prerequisites must be met for a successful discovery of the network topology.

• Switches and routers must be managed devices. This means that they must support SNMP and provide access to the required SNMP information.
• Switches and routers must support either CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol) or LLDP (Link Layer Discovery Protocol). These protocols provide information about direct network connections between devices. Without CDP or LLDP information, the switch topology cannot be discovered reliably. The devices must expose this information through the corresponding MIBs.
• To assign end devices to switch ports, the switches must support the Bridge MIB. The Bridge MIB contains the forwarding table of the switch. This table lists the MAC addresses learned on each port. Without Bridge MIB support, end devices cannot be mapped to the switch ports.
• The assignment of end devices is based on MAC addresses detected within the network. It is therefore essential that the MAC addresses of all relevant devices can be identified during discovery.

The IP Scanner guide provides a comprehensive overview of IP scanners, including their core concepts, operating principles, supported technologies, and typical use cases. It explains how IP scanning helps identify active devices, collect network-related information, and support network inventory and discovery processes. The guide also describes the technical methods used by IP scanners and outlines their relevance for accurate and efficient network analysis.

JDisc Discovery classifies a device as an “Unidentified Device”, if the IP address replies, but none of the protocols succeed in obtaining further information. In this case, we know that a device with a specific IP address exists, but we don’t have any further information about the device.

JDisc Discovery sammelt unterschiedliche Daten für unterschiedliche Geräte. Nahezu vollständig werden Windows Rechner ab NT 4.0, IBM AIX, Sun Solaris, Linux, HP-UX und MAC OS X Rechner identifiziert. Wir können jedoch nicht garantieren, dass wir die folgenden Informationen für alle Geräte sammeln können. Die Unterschiede in Modellen, Betriebssystem-Version und Konfiguration ist einfach zu gross.

Volle Details:

Hardware

• Modell
• Hersteller
• Typ
• Seriennummer
• Artikelnummer
• Prozessoren
• Speichermodule
• Festplatten
• Grafikadapter und angeschlossener Monitor

Software

• Betriebssystem Version
• Patch Level (Service Pack)
• System Typ (x64, x86, ia64, …)
• Installationsdatum
• Uptime
• Eindeutige OS ID
• Locale
• Liste der installierten Applikationen
• Liste der Applikationsinstanzen (beispielsweise Oracle oder MS SQL Server Instanzen)
• Liste der installierten Patches
• Liste der installierten Services
• Firmware Nam
• Firmware Version
• Firmware Datum
• eindeutige Firmware ID

Konfigurationsdaten

• Netzwerk Schnittstellen mit MAC, IP Adressen und Hostnamen
• Konfigurierte Partitionen und Laufwerke
• Aktuell angemeldete Benutzer, Liste der lokalen Benutzer und eine Historie der zuletzt angemeldeten Benutzer
• Virtuelle Computer mit ihren physikalischen Hosts
• Active Directory Zuordnung für Windows Computer
• Windows Domain Zuordnung für Windows Computer

JDisc Discovery is not limited to a specific manufacturer or to a particular device type. Our goal is to support virtually any device that is connected to the network. However, different devices divulge different sets of information. Therefore, it is not possible to get the full set of information for all devices. JDisc Discovery gets very detailed information for computers running with the most common operating systems.

However it gets only basic information (model, brand, serial number, IP address) for other SNMP based devices such as switches and routers.

Detailed network documentation information is available for:

• Windows computers with Windows NT 4.0 and above
• HP-UX workstations and servers
• Oracle Solaris workstations and servers
• IBM AIX workstations and servers
• Linux computers
• VMware ESX(i) servers
• MAC OS X computers

Basis identification is available for:

• SNMP based devices (such as routers, switches, network printers)
• IP phones

In case a new device has been discovered, which JDisc Discovery doesn’t recognize yet, please contact support@jdisc.com . We are able to integrate most of the new devices very quickly into our tool.

Linux computers are secured by default. In many cases, SSH is the only protocol available to access a Linux computer. Unfortunately, SSH does not provide any device information. Therefore it is impossible to identify a device with SSH as sole access protocol if there is no possibility of logging in with valid access credentials.

However you can activate remote login (“active” is the default value in the standard configuration) and define valid accounts and passwords. JDisc Discovery uses them to connect to the computers via SSH and to discover information details via system commands. Refer to “Discovery Scenarios” in our User Manual.