Introduction

Hi All,

Release 3.3.0 of Open-AudIT has some amazing new features, read on for the details. The release notes are available as usual, here - Release Notes for Open-AudIT v3.3.0.

Configurable Device Columns

From 3.3.0 onward, when you view the list of devices (Manage → Devices → List Devices), you'll notice a small additional control on the upper right. Click it and you'll see a list of available columns you can display. Click a column name and it will appear. Click a bold column name and it will disappear. If you want that set of columns as your default, click "Save as Default" and every time you view the device list, those will be your default columns. You can also click "Reset to Default" (if your columns are different) to reset them. The default list of columns is in the configuration under the name devices_default_display_columns. If you are seeing a n unacceptable slow down viewin gthe page, you might wish to limit the retrieved (but not displayed) columns. This is also in the configuration under the name devices_default_retrieve_columns. See the screenshot below.

New Discovery Process

With the coming release of Open-AudIT 3.3.0 we have implemented a new discovery process that scales even better that previously. Even faster discovery times!

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Because of the above, we have created a new configuration item called "discovery_limit" and set it to 20 by default. This means when a discovery is run, it will spawn up to 20 processing instances in parallel. Because of this parallel processing of target IPs, discovery is $discovery_limit times faster. Well, not quite, but you get what I mean. The old way ran a discovery and for each target, sequentially, started a scan. Several scans were run at once, but it was still waiting for an Nmap scan, before handing off to PHP to complete the rest. The new way completes the initial scan and loads all resulting devices into the queue to be processed in parallel. At the end of the day, it's just so much faster.

Windows Users

As well as this, there has been a change targeted specifically to Windows Open-AudIT Servers. Because of the issue's we have run into using the default service account, you will now get a big warning stating you should change the service account to a "real" account. This is because by default the service account cannot access network resources. IE - copy the audit script to thew target and run it. The "old" way of running the script on the Open-AudIT server itself and specifying the target still works and is enabled by a config item - discovery_use_vintage_service, which is set to 'n' by default. One reason for this is that the discovery script contains sections that do now and can not work remotely. Think starting an executable. That won't work as WMI can target the remote machine, but running an executable would run it where the script is running - the Open-AudIT server.

The Default Network Address

Because of our new way of running discovery, we no longer need to set the Default Network Address. The scripts are run on the target devices and create a file (as opposed to submit_online=y). That file is the copied to the server and processed, rather than submitted using the URL (that was created from the default_network_address). The only reason to set the Default Network Address for Discovery is if you're using discovery_use_vintage_service. The now normal use of this is only for the "Audit My PC" functionality.

Change Logs and Non-Current items

And don't forget about our new configuration items for keeping non-current items and creating change logs. More information on these can be found here - Device SubSection Data Retention Options.

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