Command-Line Tools > Remote Inventory for Unix / Linux (RIU)

Use the program to run a remote OS inventory on Linux and unix-like target platforms. See the online help of the program for arguments that allow customization. The program may use credentials passed to it via the command-line for authentication against the target hosts. This program comes with a built-in credential store, a target database, and job management.

Remote Inventory for Unix / Linux (RemoteInventory4Unix.exe) is a command-line oriented tool for generating inventories from remote machines running different unixoid plattforms including different flavors of Linux.

The RIU tool can be operated in two modes:

•Batch mode
Allows you to manually create job files, target hosts, or automatically create job files from the content of target files while specifying simple credential store files with optional encryption. During startup RIU looks for job files, checks their status, and continues them until all job items (target machines) reached one of the end-states (Success, AuthenticationFailure).

•Single mode
Allows you to specify a singe host as a target machine

RIU generates inventories by connection to a target machine via SSH and performing different built-in shell commands and system utilities to determine the platform and architecture characteristics. According to those characteristics, it gathers hard- and software inventory relevant data by running further commands and by parsing and evaluating their results to store them in an inventory file for each target machine. Then the resulting NDI file is uploaded to an inventory data sink like RayVentory Scan Engine, RayVentory Server, and RayManageSoft or it is stored in the local file system.

The command-line arguments are passed to RIU as name-value pairs. Flags are set by their name.

Usage

RemoteInventory4Unix.exe [<argument-name>=<value>|<flag-name>]...

Table of Arguments and Flags

Name	Type	Description
addhosts	TEXT	Add hosts from a .csv file to the targets. Each line of the file must be in the format: hostname[,port][,hostkey] Mind that port and hostkey are optional.
authKey	TEXT	Fallback authentication key in the OpenSSH format. This is used if no authentication key is given for a target.
authKey.pass	TEXT	Passphrase for the fallback authentication key.
authKeyFile	TEXT	Fallback authentication key file in the OpenSSH format.
conFailureAuthLog	TEXT	Enables output of the authentication failure log to the file specified.
conFailureLog	TEXT	Enables output of the connection failure log to the file specified.
config	TEXT	Path to the configuration file. The optional configuration file is an XML file root element Config and sets the values ConsoleRefreshInterval, UploadAddress, and Workers which equal the command-line arguments refresh, upload, and workers.
conSuccessLog	TEXT	Enables output of the connection success log to the file specified.
credentials.file	TEXT	Defaults to credentials.xml: Credentials store file.
credentials.key	TEXT	Encryption key for the passwords in the credentials store file.
decryptLog	TEXT	Decrypting the partially encrpyted log file, given, and exit.
decryptLog.key	TEXT	The key for decrypting the file given by the argument decryptLog.
DeviceID	TEXT	RMS / RV network device ID for inventory binding.
forceFileName	TEXT	Forces the use of supplied file name for the inventory file.
help	FLAG	Shows a usage hint and lists the command-line options. Ignores all other arguments except pause and quits.
host	TEXT	Host to scan.
host.add	FLAG	Adds to the store and exit. Requires: host
host.key	TEXT	Expected host key fingerprint for host authentication. Requires: host
job	TEXT	Job tag / ID (this is supposed to be used by Raynet's inventory / discovery agents, only).
jobs	TEXT	Path to directory for job files.
mssqlts.connection	TEXT	Connection string to a MSSQL DB as source for targets Requires: mssqlts.query.
mssqlts.query	TEXT	Query string for a MSSQL DB as source for targets. Requires: mssqlts.connection
outputpath	TEXT	Path for output. Excludes: upload
pass	TEXT	Fallback password.
pass.key	TEXT	Encryption key for fallback password.
pause	FLAG	Pauses before exit and waits for a single key press.
port	INTEGER	defaults to 22: SSH port on the target host.
recordHostKeys	FLAG	Add the host-keys that were reported by the hosts for hosts which do not have got a host-key, yet.
refresh	INTEGER	Defaults to 5000: Interval for refresh of console and saving of job state in milliseconds.
rerunAllJobs	FLAG	Retry all jobs no matter what their status is. Excludes: retryAllJobs, single, retryAuthFailure.
retryAllJobs	FLAG	Retry all jobs no matter what their status is. Excludes: single
retryAuthFailure	FLAG	Retry targets in jobs which failed due to authentication errors. Excludes: single.
scanTimeout	INTEGER	Timeout in seconds for scanning a single target. Set this this to 0 in order to disable the timeout.
single	FLAG	Run for a single host given on command-line, ignoring all job files.
successfulHosts	TEXT	During job creation, set the targets in the specified list to status Done. Excludes: single
talkingFileNames	FLAG	Use certain bits from the inventory for the inventory file name instead of a generic number.
targetsfile	TEXT	Path to a file with targets.
upload	TEXT	Address for upload. Excludes: outputpath
user	TEXT	Fallback username.
user.add	FLAG	Add the fallback user with password or authentication key and authentication key passphrase to the credentials store and exit. Requires: user
user.elevpass	TEXT	The password that is passed to sudo. Requires: user
user.sudo	FLAG	Indicates that the sudo command is enabled for the fallback user. Requires: user
user.super	FLAG	Indicates that the fallback user is a super user Requires: user
user.target	TEXT	Regular expression to match the targets (by hostname) that the fallback credentials apply to. Requires: user
useTargetCache	FLAG	Loads targets not from the given sources but from a cache when present or creates the cache.
verbose	FLAG	Log the remote commands.
workers	INTEGER	Maximum number of workers to spawn.

Privileges

What privileges are needed depends on what data is needed.

You will need a user with root privileges or that is allowed to sudo, prbrun, or priv to run programs with elevated privileges with or without a keyboard interactive password query.

For example: Without such privileges you will not be able to read inventory and dependency mapping relevant data as for example the BIOS serial number of a VM (to determine which virtual guest system reflects the target machine) or a system enclosure serial number.

Ports in Use

•22 for connecting to the target machine.

•80(443) for HTTP(S) upload to the data sink or 445 for SMB upload to the data sink.