Open-AudIT helps you to discover all of your IT resources. The software automatically identifies the devices and applications on your network, giving you up-to-date information at any time, which, in turn, is a massive help for compliance policies and security guidelines. Open-AudIT also has an option for continuous monitoring of your network, not only with a view to detect unauthorized devices or applications, but also to identify and shut down potential vulnerabilities. The intuitive user interface does not require in-depth technical knowledge, and the installation and setup process is straightforward.

Comprehensive reporting functions then help you make day-to-day decisions relating to your IT assets. You can create user-defined reports to analyze specific information and adapt your IT strategy according to the results. The software integrates with the existing system landscape and can be adapted to your organization's specific needs.

Long History

The first, still very simple, and scripting-based version of Open-AudIT was published by Mark Unwin back in 1999. After a complete overhaul of the software in PHP, Open-AudIT was released under the GNU General Public License in 2006 and has seen many additional features added, including a web interface. Thanks to the project's great popularity, Australia's Opmantek acquired it in 2012 and released several major releases in the following years until the company was finally acquired by cybersecurity and network management specialist FirstWave in 2021. This acquisition put FirstWave in a position to add Open-AudIT's IT asset management and network audit capabilities to its portfolio and offer customers a more comprehensive suite of IT management tools. The most recent version 5.6.2 was released in January 2025 by Mark Unwin, who is still actively involved in the project.

The software is available in the form of the Community, Professional, Enterprise, and Cloud editions. The codebase of these editions is fundamentally identical, but the Community version lacks some plugins and functions that are included in the other releases. Of course, commercial support is not available for this version; instead, a very active community is happy to help with problems.

Different Installer Types

If you want to try out the Community version of the software, you will probably end up on the Open-AudIT project's website [1]. The Downloads link takes you to a website where you can select an installation file for either Linux or Windows. However, it is somewhat confusing that a number of links still point to the old Opmantek website, even though the company was acquired by FirstWave more than three years ago. It seems that the Opmantek website is primarily intended for members of the community, whereas the FirstWave website [2] clearly has enterprise customers in mind.

FirstWave also offers a software appliance for Open-AudIT, and an image file for operations on a virtual machine (VM). The Network Management Information System (NMIS) it contains includes both Open-AudIT and other products, such as opCharts, opConfig, opEvents, and opReports, to name a few. The Debian-based appliance has options for comprehensive network management in the form of a preconfigured VM. For more details, visit the product page [3].

The work in this article is based on the current community version of Open-AudIT at the time of writing (v5.2.2, released in May 2024). Apart from the software appliance, the installation is no different from that of the other the software editions and the basic configuration is identical.

Installation with Minor Setbacks

For this article, I chose a recent Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) v9.4, but you can also run the Linux installer on other recent Linux distributions such as Debian or Ubuntu. If some of the required packages are missing, the installation script will automatically download and install them from your distribution's software repository. Integrating external repositories is also part of the installation process. On a RHEL system, for example, the well-known Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) repository is automatically integrated by the installer, and packages are installed from it. Of course, you are first prompted to confirm that you want this to happen (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Open-AudIT script-based installer guides you through the software setup process.

You can launch the installer with the help of sudo:

# sudo ./OAE-Linux-x86_64-release_5.2.2.run

After the install, you will find the files in the /usr/local/open-audit directory. The public sub-folder is used as the document root of the Apache web server. Note that I was unable to run the software on RHEL in SELinux enforcing mode in the lab. In fact, I had to switch to permissive mode to exit the installer without error. There is certainly room for improvement here. Alternatively, you have the option of creating a separate SELinux policy module for the software to continue operating the system in secure SELinux enforcing mode.

The setup installs and configures a MariaDB database and an Apache web server. Apache will be responsible later for storing all the details of your IT assets. Both the database and the username for the installer is openaudit . The user password is displayed on the screen during the installation and is also included in the documentation.

Watch out for a few quirks if your are installing on Windows. Open-AudIT runs smoothly as a 64-bit app on a current Windows Server, but not on Windows 10 or 11. As on Linux, you need the Nmap network scanner, which is used during the network device discovery process. Although this package is installed automatically on Linux, Windows users first need to download the Nmap software from the website [4] and then install it manually. A Visual C runtime [5] also needs to be installed up front. With the underpinnings in place, you can start to install Open-AudIT working in the Administrator user context. The installer is available for download as an EXE file [1].