At Snow Software we empower customers by providing access to all the tools necessary to support their software asset management. Creating a Snow Agent is one of the first steps of this journey, but it can be tricky to make sure that this step is done correctly. This guide helps you confirm that your Snow Agent is fit for your needs. When a Snow Agent is incorrectly configured you may experience issues such as:

• Limited or no software being scanned
• Snow Agent fails to install
• Snow Agent service fails to start

Use the guidance included below to confirm that all required settings and scripts are present in the Snow Agent that you have created via the Snow Agent Package Builder. 

Prerequisites

In order to perform the Snow Agent checks, you will need to have access to the following:

• Package Builder - Access to your Snow Atlas Agent Package builder to create Snow Agents.
• A decompression tool such as 7-Zip - File archiver/extractor tool used to investigate the downloaded Snow Agent package from the Package Builder.
• An editor tool such as Notepad++ - with XML Tools installed. Used to check the Snowagent.config file to ensure your settings are correct.
• A downloaded Snow Agent package ready to validate.

Preparing to Validate

Checking Package Contents

In this example we are using 7-Zip (a decompression tool) to validate the contents of the Snow Agent package. 

1. Download the Snow Agent. 
2. Right-click the download and use the Open Archive options to examine the contents of the package.

3. Confirm that all scripts requested from the Package Builder are present.

4. Open the snowagent.config file and confirm it contains your request settings. Items to confirm:
   • Sitename – Is this correct? Do not use spaces/whitespace in this field.
   • Configname  – Does this accurately explain the current configuration (e.g WindowsServerConfig?)
   • Endpoint Addresses – Confirm your gateway or endpoint address (e.g http or https and the correct port number.)
   • Drop Locations – Is this the correct Drop location address you are using?
   • Scan times – Does it scan at the desired time?  Is the configured time when the machines are likely to be online?
   • System Settings keys – Have you enabled and configured all relevant settings you wish to use?
   • Powershell – Are all requested “.Snow_ps1” scripts present.
   • Linux - Cronjob file is present within the package. This is used to create a scan for Linux OS

Checking XML syntax

In this example we are using Notepad++ with the XML Tools plugin installed.  Using this method you can confirm that there are no syntax errors in your snowagent.config file. Other XML validating editors can be used as well, but our instructions will focus on Notepad++ as a free tool accessible to anyone. Broken XML tags will yield negative results, and Notepad++ with XML Tools makes it easy to spot errors. Notepad++ also displays XML using colours and other formatting options to make the file as readable as possible. 

1. Launch the Notepad++ application.
2. Under the Plugins menu, select Plugins Admin.
3. Enter XML Tools in the Search field. The XML Tools plugin is highlighted in the list.
4. Enable its checkbox and click Install. Click Yes on the confirmation dialogue that appears. 

5. Notepad++ will close and restart to complete the installation.
6. Open your snowagent.config file in Notepad++.
7. Click Plugins > XML Tools > Check XML syntax now. 

8. If there are no errors, a dialogue box will open stating this. Otherwise, use the Next error / Previous error controls to locate tags to correct.