Getting Started with Open-AudIT: A Complete Beginner's Guide

Open-AudIT is the fastest way to gain complete visibility into your network. In this guide we'll walk through installing Open-AudIT, running your first discovery scan, and interpreting the results.

Updated October 2026: the prerequisites now match the current release, and the install steps point to the official documentation, which is kept up to date for every release.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have:

• A 64-bit server running RHEL 9/10, Debian 12/13, Ubuntu 24.04 or Windows Server 2016+ (Windows Server 2022 recommended). Desktop Windows 10 and 11 are not supported.
• At least an Intel i7-class CPU, 16 GB RAM and 40 GB disk
• Network access to the subnets you want to audit
• Administrative/root credentials

The download page lists the full system requirements, including the PHP, MariaDB, Apache and Nmap prerequisites.

Step 1: Download Open-AudIT

Head to open-audit.org/download/ and choose:

• Open-AudIT for Linux, the installer for RHEL, Debian and Ubuntu
• Open-AudIT for Windows, the installer for Windows Server
• Open-AudIT + NMIS VM, a ready-to-run virtual appliance

Prefer containers? See the Docker deployment guide.

Step 2: Install

Follow the installation guide for your platform. It covers the Linux installer, the Windows Server installer (which uses the XAMPP package) and the virtual appliance.

Step 3: Initial Configuration

Log in with the default administrator account described in the installation guide.

⚠️ Change the default password immediately after first login via Admin → Users → admin → Edit.

Step 4: Configure Your First Discovery

1. Navigate to Discover → Discoveries → Create
2. Give it a name (e.g. "Office LAN Discovery")
3. Enter your subnet in CIDR notation, e.g. 192.168.1.0/24
4. Add credentials under Admin → Credentials if you want deeper OS-level data
5. Click Run Now

Step 5: Interpreting Results

After the scan completes, head to Devices → All Devices. You'll see every discovered device with:

• IP Address & Hostname
• Operating System (where detectable)
• Open Ports
• Hardware manufacturer (via OUI lookup)
• Software inventory (if credentials were provided)

Click any device to drill into the full audit record.

Common Troubleshooting

Discovery finds only a handful of devices: Ensure ICMP (ping) is not blocked by firewall rules. Open-AudIT uses ICMP for initial host detection.

Software inventory is empty: Add valid Windows credentials (domain admin or local admin) under Admin → Credentials, then re-run the discovery.

Permission denied errors on Linux: Ensure the open-audit service user has appropriate sudo rights for running nmap.

Next Steps

Once you have your first discovery running, explore:

• Change detection, to see when configurations change
• Reports, to export hardware and software inventories as CSV, XML or JSON
• Baselines (Enterprise), to compare devices against an expected configuration
• Scheduled discoveries (Professional), to keep the inventory current automatically

We'll cover each of these in future tutorials. Happy auditing!