The rescanExisting flag provides a way to control how Provisiond is going to be executed.

There are currently 3 possible values for that flag:

• true (the default), Provisiond is going to persist all the changes on the database and execute the scan phase for each node.

• false, Provisiond is only going to add/remove nodes from the database, and the scan phase won't be executed.

• dbonly, Provisiond is going to perform all the DB changes, and the scan phase won't be executed. The difference between this and false is that false ignored changed nodes on requisitions, while dbonly will synchronize all the changes on the requisition to the DB.

This parameter can be controller through any of the following ways:

• The ReST API (either directly or through provision.pl).

• Through events (by sending a reloadImport event with the proper URL).

• Through the WebUI

If the requisitions are managed from outside OpenNMS, like PRIS, CMDB or another proprietary source, the user must configure the periodic synchronizations through provisiond-configuration.xml. Unfortunately, this method doesn't provide a way to specify the rescanExisting flag, and true will be assumed (the default).

The current workaround for this is push the requisition from the external source, instead of getting the requisition from OpenNMS at specific intervals.