[sleuthkit-developers] Autopsy 3 module development: Loading an external ingest module from netbeans

[Petter C. B. <pet...@hi...>]

Hi,

Is there a correct way to dynamically load an external ingest module into
Autopsy 3? What I want to do is to right-click on my module in netbeans and
hit "run".

Without any modifications Autopsy does not list the module under "Add Data
Source" -> "Configure Ingest Modules". Reinstalling the .nbm for each
update is not really an option.

I've made this solution using the @OnStart annotation which checks if the
module is loaded in the IngestManager or not, but it doesn't feel right.

@OnStart
public class MyModuleStarter implements Runnable {

    @Override
    public void run() {
        List<IngestModuleAbstractFile> modules =
IngestManager.getDefault().enumerateAbstractFileModules();

        boolean started = false;

        for (IngestModuleAbstractFile module : modules) {
            if (module instanceof MyIngestModule) {
                started = true;
                break;
            }
        }

        if (!started) {
            modules.add(MyIngestModule.getDefault());
        }
    }
}

Sorry if I've missed something obvious in the docs, but they seem to
suggest that you need to reinstall the module every time you want to test
changes. (
http://www.sleuthkit.org/autopsy/docs/api-docs/mod_ingest_page.html#ingestmodule_registration
)

Thanks

Petter