Trouble Shooting "Partial Scan" scan results

Sometimes when scanning with iQCloud, instead of getting a successful scan, or no response form the IP Address, you get a “Partial Scan”.

This typically occurs when the scanning appliance is able to do a port scan of the target and even log in to the operating system, but then fails to gather all the required datapoints to completely inventory the target computer.

For example, when you look at the target in the “Points to Watch” section, you may see an error code stating failed to gather identifier

 

This means the scan was unable to find the serial number or other unique identifier for the target.
This might represent a failure to get sufficient data from the dmesg or dmidecode commands on Unix/Linux, where we are looking for hardware information.

Another common error code on this screen might be Problem while scanning <OS>, failed to gather Process Connections. This represents a failure to gather the information about open network connections between processes.

Underlying causes

When some commands work, or the login works but most commands fail, this is usually due to lack of permissions - in other words the account has permission to log in to the computer, but does not have permission to run all the needed commands to gather the required data.

Double check the permissions assigned to the command. On Unix/Linux systems, double check the sudoers file. If you have configured a sudoers file with fine grained permission rather than the ability to run all commands as root, it is very easy to make a typing error, or to miss one or two of the required commands.