Altiris™ Inventory Solution 7.0 SP2 Release Notes
DOC1922
Last Updated October 04, 2010
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Build number 7.0.1218
This document contains the following topics:
- Introduction
- New features
- Installation and upgrade
- Fixed Issues
- Things to know
- Known Issues
- Where to get more information
Introduction
Obtaining and analyzing accurate inventory data is an important part of managing and securing your network. Inventory Solution lets you gather inventory data about computers, users, operating systems, and installed software applications in your environment. Inventory policies are easily configured and managed using a central Web console. After you have gathered inventory data, you can analyze the inventory data using pre-defined or custom reports.
This product is part of the following suites:
- Altiris™ IT Management Suite from Symantec
For release notes, see knowledgebase article 51492. - Altiris™ Client Management Suite from Symantec
For release notes, see knowledgebase article 49644. - Altiris™ Server Management Suite from Symantec
For release notes, see knowledgebase article 50400.
Inventory Pack for Servers:
Altiris Inventory Pack for Servers is a separate product with a separate license that gathers server-based inventory data from servers. It runs on top of Inventory Solution and uses the same Inventory plug-ins architecture, policies, tasks, and stand-alone packages. For more information see KB article 49316.
New features
The new features of this release are as follows:
Support for additional platforms
The following platforms are now supported:
- Windows 7 (x86, x64)
- Windows Vista SP2
- Windows 2008 Core, 2008 R2
- HP-UX 11.11 (PA-RISC), 11.23, 11.31 (PA-RISC/IA-64)
- IBM AIX 5.2, 5.3, 6.1 (PPC)
- Mac OS X 10.6
- Mac OS X Server 10.6
Internet Explorer 8 supported in compatibility mode
Internet Explorer 8 in compatibility mode is now supported for NS Remote Console.
Enhanced system throttling functionality
The inventory policies and tasks advanced run options tab has a setting for System Resource Usage. This lets you modify the usage of the target computer's processor and disk usage during an inventory scan.
New hardware and software inventory summary pages
When viewing the Resource Manager for a computer, you can view new summary pages for the hardware and software inventory of that computer.
New operating system readiness reports
New reports are provided to help you determine which computers are upgrade capable for Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6.
For Windows 7, the reports check for computers that have the following:
- If Using XP Virtual Mode=No
For Win 7 32-bit: CPU >= 1 GHz, RAM >= 1GB, Free Space >= 16GB
For Win 7 64-bit: CPU >= 1 GHz, RAM >= 2GB, Free Space >= 20GB
- If Using XP Virtual Mode=Yes, then additional 15GB free space should be available, so the requirements become:
For Win 7 32-bit: CPU >= 1 GHz, RAM >= 1GB, Free Space >= 31GB.
For Win 7 64-bit: CPU >= 1 GHz, RAM >= 2GB, Free Space >= 35GB.
For Mac OS X 10.6, the reports check for computers that have the following:
CPU has to be Intel, RAM >= 1GB and Free Space >= 5GB
New HW Chassis.AssetTag data field
This new field reports the same data that used to exist in 6.x in the Aex HE Serial Number.AssetTag data class. Drill down in “Count of form factors” report now shows the Asset tag instead of the Identification Code in the Serial Number column.
Changes in hierarchy and replication
The following table lists the level of support for hierarchy and replication:
| Item | Status in SP1 | Status in SP2 |
| Agent roll out packages | Not replicable | Not replicable |
| Plug-in policies | Not replicable | Replicable |
| Inventory policies | Were replicable but read-only on child NS because of partial hierarchy support. | Replicable and editable on child NS because of Full hierarchy support. |
| Static data classes | Replicable | Replicable |
| Reports and filters | Replicable | Not replicable |
| Automation policies | Replicable | Not replicable. |
| App metering global settings | Replicable | Replicable |
| Custom Inventory data classes | Not replicable |
Replicable. New custom inventory data classes can be created on child NS |
| Inventory task | Replicable | Replicable |
| Run Script task from platform | Not replicable if platform was upgraded from 7.0 SP1 to 7.0 SP2. | Replicable on SMP SP3/SP4. |
The computer summary report does not show the computers from a child NS in the hierarchy and replication environment:
• All the data classes are not, by default, replicated from child to parent.
• The computer summary report internally uses two summary data tables, namely, Inv_Hardware_Summary and Inv_Operating_System_Summary tables. These tables are populated on the child NS when NS daily schedule task runs which runs the SP’s internally, but not replicated to parent.
• So by default, the inventory for computers from the child NS do not reach the parent and the report does not show computers from the child NS.
• Work around: Enable the roll up rules to replicate the data classes to the parent NS, then run the NS daily on the parent NS. The report will be populated.
Installation and upgrade
Supported platforms
You can gather inventory on target computers running the following platforms:
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Tested models
This version has been tested on the following Sun models:
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This version has been tested on the following HP-UX models:
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This version has been tested on the following AIX models:
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Prerequisites
The following is required for this release:
- Symantec Management Platform 7.0 SP4. See knowledgebase article 49811.
New installation
You can install this product by using the Symantec Installation Manager. You can download the installation files directly to your server or you can create offline installation packages.
For more information, see the Symantec Management Platform Installation Guide (see knowledgebase article 45732).
Upgrade
You can upgrade this product from 6.x versions if you run the Symantec Installation Manager on a Notification Server 6.x computer. To upgrade from the 6.x version, you must first upgrade your 6.x Notification Server to Symantec Management Platform 7.0 SP4. To migrate Inventory data from 6.x to 7.0 you should perform data export/import during upgrade process.
For more information, see the Symantec Management Platform Installation Guide (see knowledgebase article 45732).
For upgrade instructions for Inventory Solution 6.x, see 46410
For information about the inventory data that is migrated from 6.x, see 49197.
Migration from 7.0
Status of 7.0 tasks and polices -- When you upgrade from 7.0 to 7.0 SP2, the following occurs:
- The default policies from 7.0 are deleted and replaced with the new SP2 predefined policies.
- Any legacy 7.0 policies that you created are maintained and can be viewed or modified. The configuration page is modified for SP2 and includes elements of the legacy 7.0 tasks and the new policy pages.
- Any default tasks from 7.0 or tasks that you created in 7.0 are maintained. However, they are moved to a “Legacy Tasks” folder (located under Jobs and Tasks > System Jobs and Tasks > Discovery and Inventory > Inventory). You may want to verify that legacy task schedules will not conflict with the new SP2 policies. Some of your own legacy 7.0 policies may depend on legacy 7.0 tasks. You may want to phase out legacy Inventory tasks and use the new SP2 policies.
Installation and Upgrade issues
The following issues are known issues related to installing and upgrading this product. If additional information about an issue is available, click the Article ID link.
| Issue | Article ID | Internal ID |
| Custom Inventory If you want to continue using the custom inventory scripts that you have for Inventory Solution 6.x, you must do the following:
If you don’t back up these things and you perform an upgrade, the upgrade will remove them, and you will not be able to use the 6.x custom inventory agent with Inventory Solution 7.0 |
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| When you have edited the baseline files and then upgrade from Inventory Solution 7.0 to Inventory Solution 7.0 SP1, the upgrade does not install the new default baseline files that are shipped with Inventory Solution 7.0 SP1 When the system detects during upgrading that the baseline files differ from those that are shipped, then the new default baseline files will not be installed. As a result the default baseline files with the extension *.*SP1 are not available. |
1732421 |
Fixed Issues in this Release
The following are previous issues that were fixed in this release. If additional information about an issue is available, click the Article ID link.
| Issue | Article ID | Internal ID |
| Software discovery information is not reported |
49138 | 1716007 |
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For creating new Application Metering Policy you go to Manage > Policies > Software, right-click the Application Metering and click New > Application metering policy. But when you have upgraded from Inventory Solution 7.0 to 7.0.SP1the Application metering policy option is not displayed. Note: When you install the Inventory Solution for the first time, the Application Metering Policy option is present. Workaround: You can create a new policy by cloning any existing policies and edit it according to your requirements. |
1834159 | |
| MS SQL Server Processors and Virtual Software Packages Windows data classes MS SQL Server Processors and Virtual Software Packages Windows data classes remain visible on the resource manager for a computer even when these are either not gathered or not applicable. For example, for UNIX, Linux, Macintosh platforms, these data classes are not applicable. For Windows computers which don’t have SQL Server of Software Virtualization Agent installed, these data classes will not be reported. But these will still be visible on the resource manager. |
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| Processor types Sometimes the Processor type shows up in Reports as Unknown. |
47660 | |
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When you have created the Stand-alone Inventory Package, it is displayed in the Stand-alone Inventory Packages list, but not created and available in \\servername\nscap\bin\win32\x86\inventory\standalonepackages\ folder. |
49178 | 1835825 |
| Inventory Plug-in installer gives error "another version of this product is installed…" This issue occurs due to partial un-installation of Inventory Plug-in which could be due to many reasons. |
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| Inventory causing the Altiris Agent to crash on Vista The Altiris Agent crashes on Windows Vista managed computers when the inventory tasks; file, hardware, software, or server application is run on them. |
49771 | 1868686 |
| Audit scan discovers the changed files as new files The Audit scan discovers the already discovered files as new files. The PST or DOC files are captured as new files, if the files have undergone a change. The files show up multiple times with a modified date and size. The Auditplus uses three parameters to uniquely identify a file: file size, file modified date, and file hash. If any of the three parameters change, the file is considered as a new file. |
49909 | 1880290 |
| Inventory Policy page fails to load The Inventory Policy page does not load. It throws an unknown, unspecified error - 100% exceeded message in the logs. The status of the policy is reflected in % and should be between 0 and 100. The combined total cannot exceed 100%. For the Inventory Policy page to load the percentage has to be lower than 100. The logic to deal with fractions of percentage results in the excess percentage. |
50182 | 1895350 |
| Inventory only reports 1 instance of a monitor if they are identical If you connect two identical monitors to a managed computer and run full inventory, the inventory is gathered for only one monitor. |
48843 | 1826626 |
| Adding a file type and file rule to the Advance options in an Inventory Policy cause most file types in the file rules to be captured When you set a rule on the File Properties Scan Settings, in the Advanced settings of the Collection Full Inventory Policy and push the policy to a computer, the audit captures most file types that are defined in the rule. But it does not capture the new extensions that are provided by the user. |
49670 | 1866077 |
| Configuring the Audit to capture certain file extensions i.e. .txt .nsf, the audit does not capture these files When you set a rule on the File Properties Scan Settings, in the Advanced settings of the Collection Full Inventory policy and push the policy to a computer, the audit captures most file types that are defined in the rule. But it does not capture the new extensions that are provided by the user. |
49669 | 1866046 |
| Inventory not processing - An error occurred while parsing EntityName The inventory policy does not gather inventory. It throws an error while parsing EntityName. The inventory does not get processed due to the ampersand character. |
48686 | 1890265 |
| Application Metering Plug-in Policies are not replicable The Application Metering Policy is set to No Replication, on a Notification Server. The Application Metering policy does not get replicated on the child NS. |
47975 | 1835892 |
| Inventory Policy pages timeout in Inventory Solution 7.0 SP1 When an Inventory Policy is run on 7.0 SP1, the policy becomes slow as more and more data is gathered from the systems and finally the policy times out. |
49357 | 1852541 |
| Custom inventory data class is not created on child NS in a hierarchy On a child NS where full replication has taken place, create a new data class under Manage Custom Data Classes. Select it under the data class list, add a attribute and save it. The custom data class is not created on child Notification Server in a hierarchy. |
47975 | 1923241 |
| Application Metering Agent does not get unregistered after uninstalling it through policy When you uninstall the Application Metering Agent through “Application Metering Plug-in for Windows Uninstall” policy, the Altiris Agent continues to show Application Metering Plug-in installed, but actually the plug-in is passive and does not perform any metering. The Application Metering agent gets uninstalled but does not get unregistered. |
51031 | 1836664 |
| Inventory task causes the Altiris Agent to crash when Microsoft Office 2007 is installed on Spanish Systems When you install the Altiris Agent and the Inventory agent on the Spanish Vista system that has MS office 2007 and run the file, software, and hardware inventory task, the Altiris agent crashes. |
50669 | 1923298 |
Things to know
The following are things to know about in this release. If additional information about an issue is available, click the Article ID link.
| Things to know | Article ID | Internal ID | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Modified default functionality from installation When Inventory Solution is installed, none of the Inventory plug-in installation policies are enabled. If you are installing Inventory 7x for the first time, you must manually enable the policies to install the Inventory and Metering Plug-ins. Otherwise you will not gather any inventory data from client computers. If you are upgrading for 7.0, the existing plug-ins will continue to gather inventory, but as soon as possible, you should enable the Inventory and Metering Plug-in Upgrade policies to upgrade the plug-in on managed computers. |
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| Custom Inventory Additional documentation is provided for using custom inventory. |
45963 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Add the link to Symantec Management Console to the list of trusted sites if you want to access the Console by name of the computer instead of localhost When you access Symantec Management Console using the name of the computer instead of localhost, for example http://SouthernWingNS/Altiris/Console/, you may face script errors like "permission denied" when navigating to:
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| Inventory policies run immediately and make the information available to you as soon as possible The default (pre-shipped) Inventory policies are scheduled to run every Monday at 6:00 PM. With this schedule, administrators would have to wait for Monday to get all the computers report their inventory to Symantec CMDB. However, Inventory policies have now been configured to run as soon as possible for the first time apart from the configured schedule, to make the inventory quickly available for administrators. The default enabled Inventory policies run as soon as possible after the first time installation. The ASAP behavior is implemented in the following way:
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| How does Inventory process react to maintenance window? If you schedule an Inventory policy, it will run on the schedule irrespective of whether any maintenance window is open or not. However, if you use a task, it will wait for the window to open. When you have scheduled a maintenance window on a set of computers and you schedule an Inventory task on the same set of computers but don't select the Override Maintenance Window option, the task does not start unless the schedule expires and the maintenance window is open or until the maintenance window opens next time. The behavior described above is the same as it was in 7.0 and is as designed. |
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| CRC length settings The inventory file scan agent runs Cyclic redundancy check (CRC) on files. This helps to stop false positives and provides more flexibility and configurability in the file scan rules. |
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| Process priority settings on UNIX, Linux, and Mac platform The priority of the executed inventory tasks is set to Normal by default. You can change the priority on the Inventory policy page, in the Advanced options, on the Run Options tab. It is possible to set following values: Very low, Low, Normal (default), High, Very high.
You can change these mapping values in the database, in the Inv_Task_Setting table. |
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| Inventory hierarchy and replication
If you want to replicate additional data classes, go to Settings > Notification Server > Hierarchy > Replication tab > Resources. If you enable all Inventory Solution replication rules (Inventory Data classes-Software, Inventory Data classes-Hardware, Inventory Data classes-User, Inventory Data classes-OS, Inventory Data classes-Metering, Inventory Data classes-Baselining) then all Inventory reports and web parts will work on the top-level. Caution: Enabling all data classes for replication will significantly increase the size of the parent NS database as well as add significant network and performance overhead. |
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| To be able to collect the inventory data, make sure that following requirements are met on your UNIX, Linux, and Mac client computers:
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Known Issues in this Release
The following are known issues for this release. If additional information about an issue is available, click the Article ID link.
| Issue | Article ID | Internal ID |
| 2008 Core limitation Delta file inventory on Windows 2008 Core is not supported. A detailed file inventory will always be gathered on Windows 2008 Core computers. |
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| Changes made to a cloned Inventory policy affects the original policy as well in 7.0 SP2 | 51667 | |
| Hierarchy: | ||
| Items that are not replicated:
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| Unable to set editable properties of inventory policy on child from parent The editable properties of the parent Inventory Policy are not carried to the child inventory policy on replication. When you are replicating an inventory policy from parent to child and you have made some policy properties editable, then after replication if you modify the properties in the child policy, you will not be able to do so. It throws an error that the item cannot be modified because it is a hierarchy managed item. |
1831443 | |
| Unable to create an instance of the specified item during replication warning while replicating custom dataclass/task When replicating custom data classes/task or inventory policy, a warning appears in the logs however the item in question gets replicated successfully. This has no side effect on replication of the item. |
1852113 | |
| Computer summary report in hierarchy is not populated on parent NS In a hierarchy environment, when inventory is collected on the child NS from Windows and ULM client computers, and replicated to the parent NS, the data does not get populated on the parent NS. Since there is no data in the summary data classes of the parent NS, the computer summary report is not generated for the parent and cannot be seen in the Reports.The dataclasses are a part of the roll-up rule but are disabled by default after inventory installation, and hence not included in replication. The data does not get replicated from child NS to parent NS as the roll-up rule is unchecked by default and becomes read only on child NS after they are replicated from parent NS. When the dataclasses are enabled, the computer summary report is populated correctly. The SQL query in the Report use two dataclasses named Inv_Hardware_Summary” and “Inv_Operating_System_Summary”. These two dataclasses are from Inventory solution and get populated with data from other Inventory solution tables through SQL query. They get populated through stored procedures and the stored procedures run when the “NS Daily” scheduled tasks run. The “NS Daily” scheduled tasks run around 2.10 AM and that is when the dataclasses in the child NS get populated. On the other hand, the replication task runs at 1.00 AM, and since the dataclass has been replicated before the data has been populated, the report is empty. Hence the parent NS is empty. The data in the parent NS gets replicated after two or three days. Workaround: To view the data in the customer summary report immediately, you can run the “NS daily” task manually before the “NS.Differential Hierarchy" task. |
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| Client Inventory: | ||
| Logged-in users must be in local administrator group (Windows only) As in Inventory 6.x, when an inventory task runs in the context of the logged-in user, the user must be a member of the local administrators group. To execute a standalone package and gather the inventory correctly, the logged in user should be a part of “Administrators” group on a local computer. |
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| Stand-alone inventory: | ||
| Package failure A stand-alone inventory package will fail if a computer has the 6.x Altiris Agent installed. |
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| Running Inventory tasks in the context of Specified Users: | ||
| "Roaming User Profile" Users having "Roaming User Profile" are not supported with the Specified User context for Inventory task. For more details on what are roaming user profiles, please refer to the link http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc779189.aspx. |
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| Task fails on Domain Controller Running an Inventory task in a "Specified User" context on a Domain Controller (DC) machine fails. |
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| Application metering: | ||
| Not supported on server operating systems We recommend running Application Metering only on the client computers and not on the servers because Application Metering Agent observes each application running on the computer closely, even though the impact of this will not be noticeable on clients but it may result in slowing down the performances of critical servers. |
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| 6.x policies Upgraded 6x policies are disabled by default. |
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| Blacklisting an application multiple times adds the same denial rule multiple times to the Blacklisted application policy When you blacklist an application multiple times, the same denial rule is added multiple times to the Blacklisted application policy. This can hamper the performance of the metering plug in, as it compares duplicate rules with the file properties of the launched executable. If you have blacklisted same application multiple times, go to the Blacklisted application policy through Manage > Policies > Software > Application Metering > Blacklisted Applications and delete any duplicate policies. |
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| Application Denial policy that uses "Product Version" in the metering rule might not work on x64 computers to deny applications This issue occurs because of a limitation of Windows. Windows returns different product versions when queried for a 64-bit .exe or given on the executable's Properties > Version UI. When the file properties of the .exe don't match with the ones defined in the policy, the policy is unable to deny or meter such applications. Workaround: If the targets for metering are x64 computers, avoid using the Product version to define a metering rule in a policy. Use other items like File version etc. to accurately identify specific executables. If you need to use Product version to meter executables, you can use wildcards. To meter an .exe with Product Version 5.2.3790.1830 you can use Product Version value 5.2* to define the rule. When you add the rule at Metering policy > Add > Software, the generated metering rule contains very specific information of the executable, including the product version. It is recommended to remove the product version value or to use wildcards as in the above given example. |
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| Reports: | ||
| "History tables does not exist" in "Computers with Hardware Changes" report When you run the cross-platform "Computers with Hardware Changes", by default, it returns the message: "History tables does not exist."For the report to work correctly, you must enable 'History' to get data populated for the reports. Do the following:
It will keep History of 6 months by default and Save changes. |
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| Unix, Linux and Mac Inventory: | ||
| Not all inventory data is reported on Linux, UNIX, and Mac computers The following inventory is not collected:
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| Some inventory scans may take a long time to complete The default inventory task includes several software rules for scanning that can take quite a long time depending on the platform.For example, on Solaris, the /opt or /Volumes on Mac OS directories contains multiple subfolders and files. On weak computers, this can take more than one hour. To avoid this, you can exclude such rules and exactly define which directories will be scanned. |
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| Inventory scan does not scan deeper than system limitations Each operating system has a maximum length paths limitation (though not the file system). For example, for Solaris and Mac OS X, by default the limit is 1024 chars, and for Linux, it is 4096.As a result, an Inventory scan does not detect files allocated deeper than the system limitations. |
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| "Manufacturer" field of the Storage dataclass may be empty On UNIX/Linux/Mac OS clients that have IDE disks, the "Manufacturer" field of the Storage dataclass may be empty. |
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| "LastBootUpTime" of dataclass OS_OperatingSystem is not valid for Mac OS X 10.5.x computers The field "LastBootUpTime" of dataclass OS_OperatingSystem is not valid for Mac OS X 10.5.x computers.This also causes report "Longest Uptime of 'N' Computers" to show incorrect results for Mac OS X 10.5.x computers. |
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| Missing information under Resource Summary tab The drives capacity value has incorrect units in Resource Summary tab. |
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Viewing legacy reports of UNIX, Linux and Mac computers fails in the Inventory Solution 7.x that is not installed as an 6.x upgrade When you install Inventory Solution 7.0 for the first time and don't upgrade from Inventory Solution 6.x then running legacy reports fails. The reason for the error is that during the first time installation of Inventory Solution 7.0 the legacy data classes are not created. You can run legacy reports successfully when you upgrade from Inventory Solution 6.x to Inventory Solution 7.0. |
1833308 | |
| Some fields of HW_Chassis class may be empty on Mac OS X platform Fields may be empty for following reasons:
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1855804 | |
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HW_DiskPartition DataClass cannot be populated on AIX platform On AIX platform the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) is used by default, and current inventory data model is not capable to represent it. The Partition and Volume concept of AIX does not directly match with the fields of the HW_DiskPartition DataClass. |
1865616 |
Where to get more information
The product installation includes the following documentation:
| Document | Description | Location |
| User’s Guide |
Information about how to use this product, including detailed technical information and instructions for performing common tasks. This information is available in PDF format. |
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| Help |
Information about how to use this product. This information is the same as in the User’s Guide. Help is available at the solution level and at the suite level. This information is available in HTML help format. |
The Documentation Library, which is available in the Symantec Management Console on the Help menu. Context-sensitive help is available for most screens in the Symantec Management Console. You can open context-sensitive help in the following ways:
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For more information, you can use the following resources:
| Resource | Description | Location |
| Symantec Management Platform Release Notes |
Information about new features and important issues in the Symantec Management Platform. This information is available as an article in the knowledgebase. |
https://kb.altiris.com/article.asp?article=45141&p=1 You can also search for the product name under Release Notes. |
| Installing the Symantec Management Platform products |
Information about using Symantec Installation Manager to install the Symantec Management Platform products. This information is available as an article in the knowledgebase. |
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| Altiris 7 Planning and Implementation Guide |
Information about capacity recommendations, design models, scenarios, test results, and optimization best practices to consider when planning or customizing an Altiris 7 Infrastructure for your organization. This information is available as an article in the knowledgebase. |
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| Knowledge Base |
Articles, incidents, and issues about this product. |
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| Symantec Connect (formerly the Altiris Juice) |
An online magazine that contains best practices, tips, tricks, and articles for users of this product. |
http://www.symantec.com/connect/endpoint-management-virtualization |
| Online Forums |
Forums for users of this product. |
Imported Document ID: DOC1922
Legacy ID:
49315
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