Macintosh Software

[sbrunk]

We have a number of Macintosh computers on our network. It appears that the Macs that are running older versions of OS X are scanned properly and all information is collected, including installed software. However, the Macs that are running the latest version of OS X, 10.11 or El Capitan, are scanned and some information is collected, but no installed software is shown. Is anyone else seeing this? We are on version 5.3.17 of Lansweeper right now. Is this perhaps fixed in the latest versions? I checked the changelog but didn't see anything about it.

[Ian_Prentice]

all sorted - Spotlight was off. back on, rescanned and all ok!

[Ian_Prentice]

Hey folks,

I also have this issue.
An example Mac with this issue - OS X 10.11.1
An example Mac that scans OK - OS X 10.11.3

we are on Lansweeper Version:

Website Version: 5334
lansweeper 5.3.0.34

Any ideas?

[Susan_A · Accepted solution]

Just an FYI for everyone: a fix for the software scanning issue on El Capitan has now been implemented in a production version of Lansweeper. You can update your installation by following the instructions in this knowledge base article.

Keep in mind though that scanning a Mac computer's software will still require Spotlight to be enabled on the computer. Without Spotlight, the system_profiler command we use to retrieve software records doesn't work.

[sbrunk]

Since I started this topic I thought I'd reply that we'll just wait for the fix to be incorporated in a formal release. This is not a high priority for us. Thanks!

[Bert_D]

Hi,

I would advise people that have this problem to contact support@lansweeper.com. (refer this post)
We have a new version that contains a fix for this issue.

[Filip_V]

On the new OSX (El Capitan) the system_profiler command does not work correctly for users that have never signed in. To solve this simply sign in on the device (locally, not using SSH) and rescan.

We have contacted Apple Support about this issue but so far we still haven't reached anyone who knows what SSH is. If any of you have a better understanding of the inner workings of OSX, or a better way of getting support from Apple, please share your solutions with the community.

[Susan_A]

In the meantime, another customer reported the same issue via email. Based on the information provided in that ticket, it appears that, specifically in El Capitan:

• The system_profiler command we use to retrieve software returns data when run locally on the computer.
  
• The same system_profiler command does not return data when run remotely, which is how Lansweeper scans.

Lansweeper doesn't appear to be doing anything wrong, but it appears that El Capitan handles remote security differently, or perhaps contains a bug. We'll perform some tests on our own machines to see if we can work around the issue, but it will likely take at least a few days to complete testing and draw conclusions.

[sbrunk]

I have scheduled an update of our Lansweeper servers to version 5.3.0.24 for 01/20/2016. I'll test after that and open a support case if the issue persists.

[sbrunk]

Yeah, I agree this issue is not "solved." The SSH account we're using has admin rights on all of our Macs and scans of the El Capitan Macs still do not successfully retrieve the installed software. We are still on version 5.3.0.17 of Lansweeper. We'll be upgrading at some point but it may be a bit.