[Q&A] Additional content replacing parts of the original content

[dbeniamine]

Documentation & bug reporting acknowledgment

Yes, I read it

Describe your problem

Hello,

I want to replace a part of the inventory when we run glpi-agent, with additional-content I know how to add a line, but is there a way to tell glpi-agent that my additional-content should replace the initial discovered content ?

[g-bougard]

Hello @dbeniamine

you have to use additional-content option. It permits to load a XML or a json file depending on the inventory format. GLPI 10 expects json format and I'll focus on this case.

In json format, you will be able to merge datas where in XML you had to replace all the datas. If a data is still set in the before-merge generated inventory, the data from the json should simply override the discovered data.

Let's play with an example. If I generate a partial inventory for my own computer, the bios section looks like:

$ glpi-inventory --partial bios
{
   "action": "inventory",
   "content": {
      "bios": {
         "bdate": "2019-09-09",
         "bmanufacturer": "American Megatrends Inc.",
         "bversion": "1201",
         "mmanufacturer": "ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.",
         "mmodel": "PRIME X570-P"
      },
...

Now I can use the following content as json additional-content option file:

{
   "content": {
      "bios": {
         "bdate": "2029-09-09"
      }
   }
}

To change the bios date:

$ glpi-inventory --partial bios --additional-content /tmp/bios-update.json
{
   "action": "inventory",
   "content": {
      "bios": {
         "bdate": "2029-09-09",
         "bmanufacturer": "American Megatrends Inc.",
         "bversion": "1201",
         "mmanufacturer": "ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.",
         "mmodel": "PRIME X570-P"
      },
...

If you want to change all the section, you have to set a new value for all known values. To erase a value, set it to an empty string if this is a string.

Have you another case where this principle is not working as you wish ?

[dbeniamine]

Hello @g-bougard ,

Thanks for your quick answer, I am trying to replace the remote_mgmt section which is an array instead of an object and I think this is the issue for me.

By default I have something like

"remote_mgmt" : [
   {
     "id": "someid",
     "type": "rustdesk"
   }
]

If I add an additional-content file like :

"remote_mgmt" : [
   {
     "id": "someid/?password=somerandompassword",
    "type": "rustdesk"
   }
]

I end up with :

"remote_mgmt" : [
   {
     "id": "someid",
    "type": "rustdesk"
   },
   {
     "id": "someid/?password=somerandompassword",
    "type": "rustdesk"
   }
]

While I would like to obtain :

"remote_mgmt" : [
   {
     "id": "someid/?password=somerandompassword",
    "type": "rustdesk"
   }
]

[dbeniamine]

Another approach could be simply to disable the rustdesk discovery in the glpi-agent settings thus the only remote_mgmt entry would be the one in the additional-content file .

Actually glpi-agent --json --no-category=remote_mgmt --addition-content=myfile.json seems to be doing the job, so in the end, adding no-category=remote_mgmt to my /etc/glpi-agent/conf.d/00-install.cf does exactly what I want