SCAP Workbench is a graphical user interface to the SCAP toolset that is designed to provide users with an easy, intuitive way of performing common scanning tasks. Hence, it is well suited to less technical users or those who are more comfortable in a graphical environment.
One thing of consideration is that SCAP Workbench is a graphical tool, and in many environments, Linux servers are run headless and without the graphical X environment installed. Hence, if you install it on an ordinary Linux server without a graphical environment, you will see an error such as the one shown in the following screenshot:
Thankfully there are several ways to run SCAP Workbench. First of all, it is worth noting that it is a true cross-platform application, with downloads available for Windows, macOS, and most common Linux platforms, and as a result, the easiest path for most users will be to run it in their native operating system.
If, for consistency, you wish to run SCAP Workbench on Linux, you would either need to set up a remote X11 session or set up a dedicated scanning host that includes the graphical desktop environment. There is no right or wrong approach here—it really is up to you to decide which path suits your environment and working patterns best.
If you choose to run from Linux, the installation of SCAP Workbench is no more difficult than for any of the other OpenSCAP tools we have considered:
1. To install it on RHEL7/CentOS 7, you would run the following:
$ sudo yum -y install scap-workbench
On Ubuntu Server, you would run this:
$ sudo apt -y install scap-workbench
- Once this is complete, you can then open SCAP Workbench using the appropriate method for your chosen operating system. If you are running it on a Linux server using a remote X session, it is as simple as running this command:
$ scap-workbench &
We will explore how to set up and run a scan from this graphical environment later in this chapter, in the section entitled Scanning the enterprise with OpenSCAP. Before we complete this part of this chapter, though, we will discuss two of the other tools on offer from the OpenSCAP project—SCAPTimony and the Anaconda Addon.