Client Management Suite

Hi. I have a situation where I need to monitor certain files daily for any change. Eg: monitor file abc.exe and if the size or time stamp or anything else about it changes send an email. I'm wondering what the best way to do this would be using Altiris?
Thanks! 

I would probably use a custom inventory to accomplish this, possibly with a wrapper script.  You could also use Inventory History on the custom inventory dataclass.  I can go into more detail, but need to know what Altiris solutions and version you're using (i.e. Inventory Solution 6.1, or SMP 7).

However, I think there are better solutions. Two that come to mind are Symantec Control Compliance Suite and Tripwire.

Thanks Kyle. We run version Inventory Solution 7 SP2, CMS 7.0 SP2 and SMS 7.0SP2, basically everything is updated to the latest version. Jim, TripWire or SCCS are great alternatives but we burned through the budget with Altiris so need to see how it can work for us under various situations.
Cheers, Michael

I'll admit I haven't done much yet with NS7 or Inventory 7...so I'll have to refer you to an excellent intro article by Doug Jenkins @ Symantec:

Introduction to Custom Inventory in Notification Server 7.0

Depending on how your VBScript skills are, it shouldn't be too tough...something like:

Dim fso, file
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set file = fso.GetFile("C:\path\to\secret\file.exe")
<all the NS custom inventory stuff from Doug's article, and referencing the custom dataclass you created>

attrib1 = file.DateLastModified
attrib2 = file.Size ' this would be an integer

<all the stuff to write out the custom inventory data>

Once that is done, you'd probably want to enable history on the dataclass.

Another route would be to have a script that pulls these properties from the file and logs them in the registry, then checks/compares them to the previous values.  If it does, then set a particular custom inventory with a datetime field in it and a message that gets posted back.  Its a little complicated to get into here, but I think there are several ways you could go about doing this.