Prepare OCS Agent Package and deploy it

Before we start make sure that you have valid Certification Authority certificate. This MUST be the CA that issued the server certificate or should be from one of it’s trust chain.
If you have .crt file just rename it to .pem

  1. Open up the OCS Packager, press No if you don’t need to use PSExec. If using Active Directory, no need to use it. Fill in the data as below:
    Command line switches:
    /S /NOW /SERVER=https://ocsng.domain.local/ocsinventory /SSL=1 /NOSPLASH /NO_SYSTRAY

    • /S – Silent
    • /NOW – Run Inventory immediately after installation
    • /SERVER=https://ocsng.domain.local/ocsinventory – address for reporting, mind the suffix – it’s not ocsreports like for web console!
    • /SSL=1 – force using SSL
    • /NOSPLASH – no splash screen at startup
    • /NO_SYSTRAY – no systray – no need to bother users with new icons. Besides, user notification and interaction work perfectly without it
  2. Select output directory and press Next few times to finish

Explanation
When everything is done you can just double-click the exported OcsPackage.exe and after few minutes you should have first computer reported in OCS Web Console!

  1. If the computer is not reporting, check few things:
    • Check if OCS Inventory Service is running
    • Check OCSInventory.log file located in c:\ProgramData\OCS Inventory NG\Agent\

    If everything is Ok, we can try to build a package and deploy it to the computer:

    1. Navigate to your OCS Web interface and go into Deployment/Build
    2. Navigate to Deployment/Activate to active the package, most likely you will see some warning but it just indicates that apache cannot access the download directory but it CAN. I will try to cover this a bit later, maybe:
      Click on the far right icon(the green one with arrow)
    3. Select manual, press OK:
    4. Press YES to confirm the warning:
    5. Now you can go to computer/deployment and select activated package. According to our config package will be downloaded after maximum of 1 hour. You can force it on the client, just restart the OCS Inventory Service
      Logs from the Download component on client can be found in Download.log located in c:\ProgramData\OCS Inventory NG\Agent\

    That is pretty much it!
    If everything is working good, you can force usage of SSL by making redirect at Apache level:

    nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf 
    Redirect / https://ocsng.elemont.local/  <--mind the slash at the end!
    service apache2 restart
    

    Now, you should be having fully working OCS Inventory NG server with SSL and deployment functionalities. I have checked this around 10 times and when this guide is followed to the line it works so please, double or triple check when having problems or errors. Nevertheless DO NOT HESITATE to leave a comment, post a problem or solution maybe.

  2. I always look forward for your feedback and will be more than happy to respond. Hope this guide will help and you enjoyed it like I did while creating it.
  3. As always I encourage you to leave a small donation (to the right->>) using secure PayPal as this will help me develop and keep my blog running!
  4. RegardsMilosz

Loading