Core Deployment: Troubleshooting Inventory

FlexNet Manager Suite ()

Inventory gathering and upload is a sophisticated chain from target inventory device through inventory beacon to central application server. For general trouble-shooting over the whole process, see the online help for FlexNet Manager Suite under Inventory Beacons > Inventory Beacon Reference > Troubleshooting: Inventory Not Uploading. This topic focuses entirely on inventory collection on the target inventory device.

After you have deployed and installed the FlexNet inventory core components on a Windows device, the regular log file for the ndtrack component is $(TempDirectory)\ManageSoft\tracker.log by default (although there are command line options that can modify this).

For advanced trouble-shooting, you may require more advanced tracing and logging. You may also be asked to submit a trace file to assist the Support team at Flexera to solve difficult problems in your environment.

To set up and configure tracing for FlexNet inventory core components:
Obtain a copy of an etcp.trace file from an installed FlexNet Inventory Agent on another device.

Where the full FlexNet Inventory Agent has been installed on a target device, the etcp.trace file is located with the ndtrack executable:
- On Windows, the default is C:\Program Files (x86)\ManageSoft\etcp.trace
- On UNIX-like platforms, the default is /opt/managesoft/etcp.trace. Because this file format is consistent across platforms, you may take your copy of etcp.trace from any inventory device where the full FlexNet Inventory Agent is installed.
Save the etcp.trace file in the directory on the target device where the FlexNet inventory core components will execute.
Create a registry key that identifies this location:
1. Create the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\ManageSoft Corp\ManageSoft.
2. Add the string value InstallDir.
3. Set the value to the full path to the directory where you have saved etcp.trace.
Configure the name and location of the trace/log file that will be generated on the inventory device.

The hash or pound character (#) identifies a comment. To "uncomment" a line in the .trace configuration file means to delete (only) the leading hash character. Choose one of the following lines, uncomment it, and optionally modify it to your requirements.
```
#filename=C:\ManageSoft.log
#filename=C:\ManageSoft%p_%d_%t_%u.log	# filename pattern with everything!
```
See the notes within the file header for the use of the supported variables within the file name.

Tip: It is best practice to use a pattern that includes (at least) either a date stamp (%d) or a sequential number (%u). Without these, the fixed file name means tracing information is appended to the same file with every inventory collection. This can quickly produce a trace file too large for text editors to read, and too hard to manage in terms of disk space. Variables in the file name trigger creation of a new file each time the associated variable is changed (or, for %u, at every invocation of ndtrack).

Important: The log file path:
- Must be on the same drive as the ndtrack executable (on Windows devices)
- Must exist and be writable before the ndtrack executable is next invoked (tracing does not create any directories, and does not function if any directory in the specified path is missing or unwritable).
Uncomment the lines for which you want to enable tracing (ensuring that the uncommented line now starts with a plus sign).

For FlexNet inventory core components, the typical lines to uncomment are:
```
+Inventory
+Error
+Communication/Network
```

When the tracker component is invoked, it creates the tracing log file as you specified, ready for your inspection.

2025 R1.1

Parent topic:Core Deployment: Details