so i tried using the --local flag on the ocs-agent (and --nosoftware to keep it shorter), on one of the machines that give the 500 server error, and can't see anything obviously wrong with the xml file, but when I try to do a manual upload of the file to the server, via the OCS admin page I also get the 500 error and logging about
Not a HASH reference at /usr/local/share/perl5/Apache/Ocsinventory/Server/Inventory/Data.pm line 126.
kind of assuming there IS something in the XML that the server does not like, but not a perl expert