API information

Reporting
1

(imported topic written by taadams91)

I am new to BigFix administration and am looking to find whatever API information is available. My company is using BES 6.0.

What database schema documentation is available?

What client side API are available?

2

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hi taadams,

Fixlets and relevance are flexible layers built on top of the BigFix platform. You can often accomplish many things using Fixlets and properties that would require a full API in other products.

You should take a look here for more information:

http://support.bigfix.com/fixlet/

Also, we have other APIs, including:

  • BES API – Integrates with management interfaces and allows other tools to control BigFix. (contact us for more information)
  • Database API – Allows data to be extracted from the database. (http://support.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/kbdirect.pl?id=161).
  • BES Agent API – Allows data to be queried from the endpoint itself (often used for NAC integrations). (contact us for more information)

Ben

3

(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)

Hi Ben,

i know this post is 2 years ago and maybe things did change; but i am searching for more informations about BES API, you said here contact us for more information, what should be the way to contact BigFix for more information?

Thanks!

4

(imported comment written by BenKus)

You can contact support and ask for more info… And can you let us know what you are looking to do? It helps us so that we know you are using the right API…

Ben

5

(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)

Ok, thanks Ben.

6

(imported comment written by bigfix_deployer91)

Ben Kus

Hi taadams,

Fixlets and relevance are flexible layers built on top of the BigFix platform. You can often accomplish many things using Fixlets and properties that would require a full API in other products.

You should take a look here for more information:
http://support.bigfix.com/fixlet/

Also, we have other APIs, including:

BES API – Integrates with management interfaces and allows other tools to control BigFix. (contact us for more information)

Database API – Allows data to be extracted from the database. (http://support.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/kbdirect.pl?id=161).

BES Agent API – Allows data to be queried from the endpoint itself (often used for NAC integrations). (contact us for more information)

Ben

Hello Ben,

Thanks for providing information about the available API. I want to know much more about the BES agent API ( It means I am interested if some SDK is available, so we can use that SDK and can make some application which directly talks to BES server or client ). In border term’s I want to develop some application over top of the bigfix infrastructure.

Could you please provide your inputs over this ?

if any SDK is available, please provide me the link from where I can download it .

7

(imported comment written by BenKus)

If you are looking to build something that talks to the BigFix Server, you probably want the platform API (http://support.bigfix.com/bes/misc/platformapi.html) or the SOAP API (http://support.bigfix.com/bes/misc/soapapi.html).

Ben

8

(imported comment written by bigfix_deployer91)

Ben Kus

If you are looking to build something that talks to the BigFix Server, you probably want the platform API (http://support.bigfix.com/bes/misc/platformapi.html) or the SOAP API (http://support.bigfix.com/bes/misc/soapapi.html).

Ben

Ben,

I followed the instruction provided in the link and installed platform api. I tried to use the TestApi.htm (which comes with platform API).However, I am getting following error, while using a createFixlet option in the testAPI.htm.

=============================================================================

FixletCreator failed. Msg is: No such file or directory; system lib (class BIO_read_filenameFailed)

=============================================================================

I also checked the if CheckSigningKeys is working or not then, I got following error

=============================================================================

Diagnostic Message: No such file or directory; system lib (class BIO_read_filenameFailed)

=============================================================================

It seems my signing keys validation, somehow got failed. Can you guide me which mistake, might I have done.

P.S.1: while running CheckSigningKeys , I entered first path to my publisher.pvk ( in next try, I provided path to license.pvk also) and my password for bigfix.

P.S.2: I am using windows (NT based ) authentication, so above password means the password we supply, while executing the fixlets.(Private Key password) …( tried with windows userid and password, but same result )

and I am also trying to run the perl script provided in the platform API document, but they are giving me error like this :

Can’t locate BESAPI.pm in @INC

BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at FixletMessage.pl line 5.

any idea what I am missing in the above cases ?

any pointer would be appreciated …

9

(imported comment written by bigfix_deployer91)

Hello Ben,

any pointer on this, I am stuck with this error and won’t be able to continue.

Thanks!

10

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Hello,

Can you tell me if you are using an x64 system? If so, which path are you using?

Ben

11

(imported comment written by bigfix_deployer91)

No, I am using 32bit machine.

12

(imported comment written by BenKus)

What path are you using? The error message indicates that the private key files can’t be read.

Ben

13

(imported comment written by bigfix_deployer91)

Hello Ben,

I have provided the details already, but repeating once again:

while running CheckSigningKeys , I entered first path to my publisher.pvk ( in next try, I provided path to license.pvk also) and my password for bigfix.

As my bigfix have NT based authentication, so I provided private key password (which we use, at time of deployment of fixlet).

Being more specific, My publisher.pvk is in

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\BESCredentials\dbuser\

(here two files are present, publisher.crt and publisher.pvk)

so. I provided the above path in the popup, while running testapi.htm

14

(imported comment written by bigfix_deployer91)

and could you also let me know the process, by which I can verify that the BESAPI are correctly installed ?

Thanks!

15

(imported comment written by bigfix_deployer91)

Ben,

Can you please provide me any pointer on how to proceed over this. I have commented the section of the perl script which asks for the key and then the script works fine. however, I am unable to load any new/custom fixlet (made by me) with the perl script.

any pointers on the signing key error (posted previously) would be appreciated.

Thanks!

16

(imported comment written by BenKus)

So I guess I don’t know what is wrong… It sounds like you are using our API examples in our old SDK and I haven’t really used those in a while and I don’t know the issue off the top of my head… It is very hard to debug these types of issues over the forum and so I don’t really have any good advice for you.

The error you sent indicates that the APIs are not reading the private key properly. I don’t know if this is related to an invalid path, too many/few slashes in the path, a permissions issue, corrupted private key, a bug in our SDK example, or something else…

If you want to post the lines of perl code that are failing, then we can continue to troubleshoot here, but I can’t think of anything better…

Ben