What is GatherProducts.Exe?
Software license monitoring automatically gathers data on what files are associated with which discovered products. When the inventory scanner runs, it launches GatherProducts.exe. This program scans for new applications by looking for install signatures in the registry and by looking for new application shortcuts. On managed devices, GatherProducts.exe stores discovered product information as XML files under ..\LDClient\Data\proddefs. The inventory scanner sends new and changed product definition XML files to the core server so they can be added to the database
* There are now 2 types of product definitions (custom, automatically discovered)
* Product definitions node has 3 subnodes.
- All
- Automatically discovered.
- Custom
Discovered product definitions can NOT be edited. (except name). You can, however, clone a discovered definition into a new custom definition
Automatically discovered product definitions.
When does Gatherproducts.exe run?
Gatherproducts.exe runs when the Inventory Scanner runs if it is enabled. Gatherproducts.exe does not run on it's own schedule. If you find that GatherProducts.exe is running at a specific time every day, the Inventory Scanner is either set up in the Local Scheduler or in Scheduled Tasks.
To disable GatherProducts
- On the core server, open the Ivanti Endpoint Manager console
- Go to Configure | Services
- Click on the Inventory tab
- Click on the 'Advanced Settings' button
- Change the value for 'Send Product Definitions' to 0.
- Save all changes and restart the LANDesk Inventory service.
How GatherProducts.exe operates
- First, it gathers all the shortcuts it can find under every user's "Start Menu" and "Desktop" directories.
- Using the list of paths that it has gathered it then goes through the MSIs installed on the device. Any files found in the MSIs that match a file in our list of files is marked as a "key" file and is placed in the product definition. That file path is also removed from our list - no other product can use it.
- After all of the MSIs have been run through we look at the remaining files and attempt to create products from them, using the version resources contained in those files (any file used will have to be a .EXE).
- The definitions that we've made so far are now written to the C:\program files\landesk\ldclient\data\proddefs directory, if run by the inventory scanner. If you just double-click gatherproducts.exe it will write them to \products.
*In all cases GatherProducts.exe writes it's log to \data\GatherProducts.log.
- The scanner sends definitions up in scan file.
- Can be turned on/off in Service Config.
- Known products are listed in the LDAPPL3.INI so every machine will not send them over and over again.
How to troubleshoot GatherProducts.exe
Look in the ..\ldclient\data\GatherProducts.exe log file.
You will see it has time stamps included with what it is doing. Is Gatherproducts hanging on something or is there just so much that it takes a bit to run?