Can I have inventory ONLY collect plugins in /Library/Internet Plug-Ins?

[fsjjeff]

I want to track my Internet plugins for Flash Player and the Java plugin so that I can create smart groups of machines that need updates.

However, when I use the Inventory Collection settings to turn on plugins, it also collects every plugin in every application - especially on machines with Creative Suite, this can easily lead to 7000+ plugins on a single computer. Unfortunately, with 4500 computers in our JSS, collecting all these plugins has led to crashing my JAMF server with a MASSIVE plugins table.

There is an option to Add locations to search for plugins, but no option to turn off searching in Applications.

Is there something I can do to tweak this, or do I need to turn off plugin collection and resort to an Extension attribute for every plugin I want to track?

[mm2270]

You will likely need to use an Extension Attribute if you only care about a few select plug-ins and not everything in every location on disk. We don't have Plug-In or Font collection on for the same reasons you've discovered.

That said, you could ask your JAMF account rep to see if they know of any tricks for tweaking this. I kind of doubt it though.

Edit: BTW, you could probably create one EA that reports back on the Internet Plug-Ins directory and each plug-in version found there, but the issue you may run into with that is it would be a little tricky to build Smart Groups from the result, especially if you wanted to build those groups based on the installed version and not just whether it was installed.

[ctangora]

In theory you could modify the "hidden_files" SQL table to ignore those plugins causing you problems.

[JPDyson]

I'd advise Extension Attributes for "hot" plugins; they're more helpful if you need to have a readable report for any reason.

[donmontalvo]

Can't you specify inventory paths, doesn't that tell JSS to *only* check defined paths?

Inventory > Inventory Options > Inventory Collection Preferences > Software > Software Colleciotn Settings > [x] Collection Plug-ins > Manage Search Paths for Plug-ins...

With that said, if it is indeed so, would be great if wildcards could be used such as /Users/*/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/.

Don

[fsjjeff]

@mm2270 - I think I need the records to be separate for easier smart groups.

@ctangora - That's not a bad idea, but since I've got up to 8000 plugins on a machine, most of which I don't care about, it's probably easier to do the EAs for the plugins I do want than to do a blacklist of the ones I don't :(. Good to know about the "hidden_files" table though.

@JPDyson - I think I agree with you, I'll be moving to EAs as that seems the only real solution at this point.

@donmontalvo - You *can* specify inventory paths for plugins, but to the best of my understanding, that seems to just *add* paths. It still inventories the default paths, which seems to include ever application on your system. If you have Creative Suite or some other plugin heavy apps installed, this leads to a LOT of records. As an example, I'm looking at a single machine with almost 8000 plugins here. I had to disable the plugin portion of inventory and completely clear my plugins sql table late last year when it hit over 60GB and then went corrupt and started crashing my JSS every hour or so.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, it's not necessarily the answer I wanted, but good to know I don't seem to be missing something, and at least there is a way to do what I want.

Jeff

[PeterClarke]

Yes - I ran into this problem as well.

The ONLY solution was to switch OFF "Collect Plugins".

I did try specifying paths - but all plugins were still collected anyway
- adding paths only enabled additional paths to be checked.

This is an area where JAMF could help - by allowing these different kinds to be separately specified.
- The JAMF default settings for this particular feature are very unhelpful.

This is an area that does need improvement, to make the feature useful.