The Edge of the Net

Apparently the CTO and CEO at $WORK have become very nervous about the lack of organization in our software license tracking.  Our license tracking leaves a lot to be desired, and I tried to get this fixed a year or so ago, only to be told “It’s not that important” (You know the talk ).  Well apparently now I have to audit every single system Danube has and record all the software installed on each machine.  The accountant then gets to make pretty Excel spreadsheets that shows who’s using what.

Oh and this has to be done by the end of the year.

I’m sure there’s software out there that will audit the installed programs on a machine and create a list of what’s installed.  The question is, is there software that’s 1. Cheap (free is better), 2. Can determine license keys of the installed software, and record them, 3. Can be easily run remotely and then e-mail the resulting report to me.

Being able to automate this would make my (and our accountant’s) life a LOT easier and we’d finish this project well within the required timeline.

I’m sure everyone reading this has used Synergy at some point in time. I personally use it at work and home to keep the keyboard/mouse mess to a minimum on my desks. Well apparently some awesome people decided to fork Synergy off into a new project called Synergy+. This is wonderful news for those of us that have been fighting the bugs in the original Synergy.

Thanks to Matt for the heads up on this!

Here’s the standard ‘new blog’ post. I’ve converted this domain to a blog to help me keep track of thoughts about systems administration, engineering and development. Hopefully these thoughts will also be helpful to others in the community.