Viewing software installed on workstations

If you have WPKG running on your workstations, you will probably want to see what software is installed, even if the workstations are turned off.

By default, WPKG keeps its own "database" on each machine (it's in %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\wpkg.xml - it is enough to copy this file to a special share on your server.

If you use Samba, a share may be configured like this:

[wpkg-xml]
  comment = WPKG workstation XML
  path = /home/samba/wpkg-xml
  browseable = no
  valid users = unattended, Administrator
  write list = Administrator
  guest ok = no

Make sure you create the appropriate directory ("path = ..." above) with correct permissions. After that, check if you can write to this share as the user which normally runs WPKG.

Additionally, you have to make sure that wpkg.xml file is copied to this share, with a proper name. We use copy command to copy the file, and %COMPUTERNAME% variable with .xml extension for the destination file.

You can do this with WPKG of course:

<package
     id="wpkg-xml"
     name="wpkg.xml files from workstations"
     revision="1"
     priority="0"
     execute="always">
 
<install timeout="15" cmd='cmd /C copy %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\wpkg.xml \\server\wpkg-xml\%COMPUTERNAME%.xml /Y' />
 
</package>

Note - WPKG (wpkg.js) saves wpkg.xml file as one of its last actions. To make it easier to imagine, it works as follows:

• WPKG installs software,
• WPKG copies a local wpkg.xml file to the server, as defined in the above package id="wpkg-xml",
• WPKG updates a local wpkg.xml file.

Because of this, the wpkg.xml file on the server will be a previous version of a local wpkg.xml.

To have the latest version of wpkg.xml copied to the server, you can either:

• use WPKG client, and copy this file as "Execute after" action,
• in config.xml, configure wpkg.js to save this file on the server.