Spruce

Over time, and, especially with the use of AutoPkg, your JSS has probably accumulated some cruft: piles of test scripts and out-of-date Chrome updates, for example. Spruce looks for packages and scripts that have no current usage in any policies.

• This information can be simply output to STDOUT (--report).
• You can go ahead and remove all of those unused scripts and packages (--report_clean; prompts prior to package removal and prior to script removal).
• Or you can take the safer route and redirect the output to a file, e.g.: ./Spruce --report > output.txt ...then edit the file to contain only the items to remove (vim...)...
• ...then feed that file to Spruce: ./Spruce --remove output.txt

Obviously this is a powerful and dangerous tool. You've been warned!

Setup and Situation

You need a couple of things to get this working:

• python-jss
• Either a functioning AutoPkg/JSSImporter preferences file, or a python-jss preferences file.
  • Spruce will try to use the Autopkg preferences first!

Input File Format for --remove

The file format for the --remove option is simple:

• One filename (no path) per line
• Lines that start with a '#' (comments), ' ', tab, or newline characters are ignored.

Like this:

# Packages I need to get rid of:
AdobeFlashPlayer-14.0.0.176.pkg
AdobeFlashPlayer-15.0.0.152.pkg
AdobeFlashPlayer-15.0.0.189.pkg
AdobeFlashPlayer-15.0.0.223.pkg
AdobeFlashPlayer-15.0.0.239.pkg
AdobeFlashPlayer-16.0.0.235.pkg
AdobeFlashPlayer-16.0.0.257.pkg
AdobeFlashPlayer-16.0.0.287.pkg

# Scripts I don't need:
installMERP.sh
kickstart_ard.sh
killPrinters.sh

The Future

As I devise more tactics for simplifying, cleaning, and reorganizing, Spruce will be updated with added functions. Here are some planned features:

• Merge in Recategorizer, since it is another organizational tool
• Check for unused static mobile and computer groups, both in lack of membership and lack of being scoped.
• Check for unused policies (not scoped).
• Check for unused categories.
• Check for unused icons, although that's currently very involved.
• Check for unused ebooks.
• Check for unused "Apps".
• Check for unused iOS/OSX Configuration Profiles.
• Check for unused Managed Preferences.
• Check for unused Restricted Software.

Happy cleansing!