Find a file in the server \ pc

Content Authoring
1

Hi to all
i saw some posts about it and most of them have link to this http://forum.bigfix.com/viewtopic.php?id=362 its not exist anymore
i need to find file on several servers
problem is what i dont know the exactly the file name, i knew what it starts with "aa_v"
i tried the following:

 (pathnames of files whose ((name of it starts with "aa_v3" )) of (descendant folders of folder "c:\"))

and this

files whose ( name of it contains "aa_v3" ) of descendant folders of folders "C:\"

but all of the return error :class IllegalFileName

Thanks,
Julia

2

Hi

when I tried to list all .exe files in driver C:, I also encounter this problem. There are some folders or files which have illegal characters that relevance evaluator of BESClient can not understand.

So, I had to go on with a batch command likes below

C:\Users\xxxxx>FOR /R “C:” %i IN (aa_v3*) DO @echo %~nxi
AA_v3.5.exe
AA_v3.5.log

you can find other features of “FOR” :
http://ss64.com/nt/for.html

3

For what it’s worth, this kind of error can also be produced when IEM tries to read a file name that is too long.

1 Like
4

A big part of the problem is that you are using relevance to check all files on a system. This is in general a bad idea. It is very slow and will have negative consequences to the Client Eval Loop, among other issues. It will also tend to time out over and over and never actually work.

This sort of search is much better done with a task that is run either once, or on an interval with the results saved to a file, and then those results can be checked with an analysis property.

Here is an example of an appropriate use of the descendants relevance because it is limited to a single folder on the system, not all files and folder of the system: Relevance based on folder size

See also: Locate and replace a file under User Data (still not ideal)

See related posts:

5

Good morning, @jgstew
thanks for answer, no one of the post help me :unamused:

6

Hi @selimgoksu, thanks for replay
this batch is very nice and i think i will create task with batch
very important for me is pathnames of the file
i will use this one

dir /b/s aa_v* >> filelist.txt

now i need to understand how to pull the export(>> filelist.txt) back to BigFix, any idea?
thanks Julia

7

if each filelist.txt has a few lines inside it, you can create an analysis that read lines of filelist.txt

lines of file “filelist.txt” of folder “[parent folder of filelist.txt]”

if filelist.txt contains too many lines, it is not a usefull way to read it with an analysis. You can upload filelist.txt in such cases.

1 Like
8

To add onto @selimgoksu 's suggestion, the analysis property should have a report time of once an hour or less often. I typically recommend something in the once every 6 hours to once a day.

Also, if this analysis is only for reading this file, then it can have relevance to check for the existence of that file so that only computers with results will report into it, like this:

exists lines whose(it as trimmed string != "") of files "filelist.txt" of folders "[THE PATH TO THE PARENT FOLDER of filelist.txt]"

Also, @selimgoksu mentions:

In my opinion, even 100 lines is fine in an analysis property. The issue is it is hard to see those results in the console without clicking through to the computer summary and viewing the results there.

I would recommend another analysis property like this:

number of lines whose(it as trimmed string != "") of files "filelist.txt" of folders "[THE PATH TO THE PARENT FOLDER of filelist.txt]"

This will help you know how significant of a result you are dealing with, without actually needing to see the results themselves. This will allow you to sort on that column to find the computers with the most results easily, then click through to that computer’s summary tab.

Also, one huge advantage to using an analysis property is that you can use session relevance to summarize the results across all of your computers and even tell which results are the most common and which are the least common. It is usually these outliers that you need to pay the most attention to.