HW/SW Inventory history only shows changes as opposed to documentation

[jreinh]

A little question about the Inventory history.
Checkmk Raw Edition 2.1.0p20
Ubuntu Jammy(Server and Client)

I am interested in the package changes of the inventory and thought , that the inventory together with the history would be a good tool to keep track of packages and changed versions over time.
However only change are being displayed in the inventory history.

As opposed the the screenshot from the Checkmk-Documentaion The HW/SW Inventory

And while the screenshot from the documentation includes entries in white, i could only find either red or green entries.

Playing around a bit with the inventory_delta_cache files, i got the history to display a package name.
Changing the auto generated content:
(0, 1, 0, {'Attributes': {}, 'Table': {}, 'Nodes': {'software': {'Attributes': {}, 'Table': {}, 'Nodes': {'packages': {'Attributes': {}, 'Table': {'KeyColumns': ['name'], 'Rows': [{'version': ('2.0.1p28.1', '2.1.0')}]}, 'Nodes': {}}}}}})
To:
(0, 1, 0, {'Attributes': {}, 'Table': {}, 'Nodes': {'software': {'Attributes': {}, 'Table': {}, 'Nodes': {'packages': {'Attributes': {}, 'Table': {'KeyColumns': ['name'], 'Rows': [{'name': ('package', 'package'),'version': ('2.0.1p28.1', '2.1.0')}]}, 'Nodes': {}}}}}})
I got checkmk to display package, in white as the name attribute.

Would it be possible to get an entry with both the changes and non changes?
Thanks in advance for any idea or comment.

Might be related to: HW/SW Inventory history: Display the whole row if there are any changes

P.S. This is a new installation with only one configured host.

[gstolz (Gerd Stolz)]

Hi @jreinh,

just to be sure: there are two views:

the current Inventory state in view_name=inv_host - which shows a complete list, but only of the current state of the inventory

and the history of changes in view_name=inv_host_history, which only shows the changes.

Do I understand it right, that you require a third view which shows a complete list i.e. 1000 packages that haven’t changed + the red/green highlights of the changes in that list?
(If so, I don’t think that list exists, so it might require a feature request - but I might be mistaken.)

Gerd

[jreinh]

Hi @gstolz,

Sorry i didn’t clarify. I mean the view_name=inv_host_history view.
However in my case it only shows the changes.
In other words i know, that a package changed its version(from red to green), however i don’t know the name of that package, since only changed attributes are being displayed.

I would like to know, if it would be possible to get the view_name=inv_host_history view to show me all attributes of the packages, that changed( those that changed as well as the others).

jgfz

[gstolz (Gerd Stolz)]

Ah yes no I understand, I just checked a 2.1.0p15 and it seems that somewhen this view was broken, pretty sure we used to see the package name there in the past.

I agree with you, the current way it’s shown doesn’t help anyone.

Software package history in 2.0

In 2.1

@theyken It looks like a deliberate change that maybe makes sense for other parts of the inventory but in this case I’d say the UX is broken

[jreinh]

Thanks @gstolz,

what now?
Should i create a bug report or something similar?

Any help is appreciated.

[andreas-doehler (Andreas)]

This bug / problem exists since the beginning.
The screenshot for 1.6 from @gstolz is only an example that it is “half working”.

The root cause of this problem is the circumstance that for inventory tables you have no key columns.
Without such keys you cannot compare tables with different length to find changed entries.

I can remember a proposal to introduce key columns to solve this problem.

[jreinh]

Just for clarification.
Would this

count as a working example?

I got it by modifying an inventory_delta_cache - file to look like this:
(0, 1, 0, {'Attributes': {}, 'Table': {}, 'Nodes': {'software': {'Attributes': {}, 'Table': {}, 'Nodes': {'packages': {'Attributes': {}, 'Table': {'KeyColumns': ['name'], 'Rows': [{'name': ('package', 'package'),'version': ('2.0.1p28.1', '2.1.0'), 'arch': ('x86_64', 'x86_64'), 'package_type': ('deb', 'deb'), 'summary': ('','')}]}, 'Nodes': {}}}}}})

[andreas-doehler (Andreas)]

Yes this screenshot is more what you expect of a changed software view.

[sebkir]

This should fix it in 2.1.0p22: HW/SW Inventory history: Fix missing row fields if changed

p22 should arrive late this february.