Introduction

The following guide gives an overview about the installation and functionality of the SKOOR Windows Agent (WinAgent). The software can be downloaded from a SKOOR Engine installation. Open a browser and navigate to the files/agents/windows directory:

The setup program

The WinAgent can be run in two modes: as a Windows service and as a “normal” application. If installed as a service, no user needs to be logged in for it to run. WinAgent will run in the background and will have full permissions to access all relevant data. 

If WinAgent runs as an application instead of a service, a user must always be logged in. It will then run with the privileges of the user that is logged in. This mode is useful for Agent Execute Jobs which start GUI applications that cannot be started properly from a service.

Best practice is:

• Run the WinAgent as a Windows service if you want to monitor the Windows Machine (with Agent Process, Agent Network jobs etc.)

• Run the WinAgent as a normal Application if you want to start robot scripts that interact with the GUI

Be aware that not all monitoring data is available when running WinAgent as a normal user. An Agent Process job e.g. would only see the processes of the current user but not all system processes, which could lead to confusion and wrong results. One can always start the WinAgent as an Administrator (right click – Run as administrator) to give the WinAgent access to all data. But one cannot autostart the WinAgent on login with such elevated priviliges.

To be able to install the WinAgent as a Windows service, the setup program must be started as administrator by right clicking and choosing Run as administrator:

The installation program always stops and uninstalls the SKOOR Collector Service (and the SKOOR WinAgent Service of a previous version of the Windows Client in case they would already exist on a target system) before installation starts.

Multi user modes

If the setup is run with administrator privileges, one can choose to install WinAgent for all users (usually under C:\Program Files\Junisphere) or only for the current user (usually under C:\Users\myuser\AppData\Local\Junisphere): 

The setup program only offers to install the WinAgent as a Windows service if it should be installed for anyone.

If the setup is not started as an administrator, only the single user mode is supported and the page to choose the mode is not shown.

If the client is installed for all users in C:\Program Files\Junisphere, a normal user cannot change its configuration. To be able to edit the configuration, the WinAgent has to be started as an administrator.

Command line options

The setup program knows about the following command line options:

Silent and unattended installation

The setup program supports the /S (S for silent) command line parameter which installs the Windows WinAgent without any user interaction as a service. The SKOOR service is always started after a silent installation.

This silent option allows easy unattended installations and updates with software deployment systems. The other command line options of NSIS installers are supported as well (http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Docs/Chapter3.html#3.2.1 ) to e.g. override the default installation path (which is “%ProgramFiles%\Junisphere”) with the option /D.

The SKOOR Agent Service

The SKOOR WinAgent runs as a service with the name eRangerService. In this case, WinAgent.exe is only a graphical application that allows controlling and configuring the service if started as an administrator.

The service can be controlled by the WinAgent application or (as any other service) by the service control console. To start this console, hit Windows+R (for “Execute…”) and type services.msc or click Start – Control Panel – Administration – Services.

The service also can be started or stopped on the command line with:

C:\> net start eRangerService
C:\> net stop eRangerService

or

C:\> sc start eRangerService
C:\> sc stop eRangerService

See the documentation of the sc command for all available options.