bigthepaco has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi, I'd like develope a lan inventory application (similar OCSInventory) with Perl. What can I use? SNMP? Anything else? Are there examples? scripts? Tutorials? Guides? I have a LAN with 1000 PC-clients (Windows 2000/XP and Linux) and I want monitoring hardware and software. I'd like to check hardware configuration, installed software, install and uninstall software remotely, to set programs configurations automatically. I think that OCSInventory is very good (and I could use it), but I'd like develop myself to understand technology. Can you help me? Thank you very much.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: lan inventory
by ww (Archbishop) on Mar 21, 2010 at 00:17 UTC

    Sounds as though the tools you need include Super Search and Google... and perhaps a slightly more constrained, well-defined goal. IOW, this question is too amorphous to elicit the best kinds of help we can provide.

    I'd like a pony.

    But if I expect the Monks to help with that, I'd best ask for one shoe-nail at a time; give some indication of the effort I've put into the question; and show some code I've written, along with an explanation of why that nail doesn't fit the horseshoe.

    Given the minimal information we have about your skills, perhaps a brief description of your competencies would be a good thing too.

    BTW, you may want to demonstrate your skill at organizing a set of statements into <p>...</p>s. See the information provided on the page where you entered this stream of consciousness... and that in On asking for help, How do I post a question effectively?, Markup in the Monastery and I know what I mean. Why don't you?.

Re: lan inventory
by Khen1950fx (Canon) on Mar 21, 2010 at 02:29 UTC
Re: lan inventory
by Corion (Patriarch) on Mar 21, 2010 at 00:16 UTC

    Besides SNMP, there also is CIM and the Windows incarnation, WMI, for inventorizing at least hardware. For inventorizing software, I guess you will need to write detectors for each program found on a machine.

Re: lan inventory
by NetWallah (Canon) on Mar 21, 2010 at 05:29 UTC
    GLPI is an amazing set of (Free) IT inventory and project management software.

    It incorporates OCSInventory.

    Probably not quite what you were asking for in terms of software development ideas, but gives something you can aim for, when deciding a set of features.

    It is also completely open source and customizable - giving you development opportunity.

         Theory is when you know something, but it doesn't work.
        Practice is when something works, but you don't know why it works.
        Programmers combine Theory and Practice: Nothing works and they don't know why.         -Anonymous