system profiles with syssumm - a follow-up

by Bruce W. Mohler
<bruce.w.mohler@saic.com>

Bruce is a Senior UNIX System Administrator for SAIC, where he is on the Systems Engineering team and provides support for Corporate Solaris, HP-UX, and Linux systems.


My article in the April 1999 ;login: on "System Profiles with Syssumm" described a series of Perl scripts developed as a "proof of concept," the goal being to create profiles of a large number of diverse computer systems and display the results via a Web browser. In that article, I asked anyone interested in collaborating on such a project to contact me via email. This article, written six months after the first one, summarizes what has happened to syssumm.

There are 60 people on the syssumm mailing list and eight active developers. The main mailing list represents people from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The following people have directly contributed to the source code of the syssumm project: Martin Andrews, Jeffrey W. Collyer, Frank Crawford, Paul Farrell, Brett M. Hogden, Keong Lim, Bruce Mohler, Jeff Putsch, and Bart Swennen.

How Has Syssumm Changed?
At the time of the original article, syssumm supported HP-UX 9.X and 10.X and Linux (Red Hat 5.1). At the present time, it supports:

 AIX 4.X
 IRIX 5.3 through 6.5
 HP-UX 10.X and 11.X
 HP-UX 9.X (partial)
 Linux (Red Hat 5.1 - 6.0)
 SunOS (Solaris 2.X)

We're hoping for modules soon for DEC/UNIX (Tru64) and Windows NT.

The original Web interface offered the choice of displaying a specific system's profile or listing all available profiles. Paul Farrell added functionality that allows searching on a combination of vendor (e.g., HP, Sun), operating system (e.g., HP-UX 10, RH Linux 6.0), location, and organization. (See the figure below.) The values in the lists represent the values in the currently stored profiles on your Web server.

What Are the Near Future Development Plans for Syssumm?
We want to complete the modules for DEC/UNIX (Tru64) and Windows NT, and we're adding code to identify a Web server running on the remote system.

How Are People Using Syssumm?
Syssumm solves a number of problems for system administrators:

It bundled a number of other administrative procedures and made some of them available electronically that weren't before. (Bart Swennen)

Managers can get server hardware, software, and configuration information directly without going through a system administrator. I've had a couple of managers call me since I've installed the software. . . . When I told them they could get the info by going to our Web page, they were impressed. (Paul Farrell)

We now have detailed on-line configuration information for each system. [syssumm] also gives me a place to hook in more information as (Jeff Putsch)

Having all of the config information gathered in one place, formatted, and up-to-date is a big time saver. All I need to do to get a quick snapshot of a server is click on an HTML link. (Paul Farrell)

The information is helpful in planning upgrades, changes, etc. Like most sites, we don't throw out good equipment, we just shuffle it between machines (particularly disks). Having all the details at hand saves considerable time trying in planning such rearrangements, as all the information is up to date. (Frank Crawford)

One of the managers said to me, "We got all of this, and it didn't cost us anything?" It was definitely a big PR moment for Open Source software around here. (Paul Farrell)

Also as a by-product, the mailing of differences on reboot allows me to keep track of major changes to systems. (Frank Crawford)

Why Are the Developers Participating?

The nice feeling about participating in such a project is that you feel you can really contribute to something. (Bart Swennen)

I also feel like I'm giving something back to the UNIX community, which makes me feel good. I'm not a superhacker, but you don't have to be to contribute to something like this. (Paul Farrell)

I get something useful out of it and hopefully have contributed useful stuff back. (Jeff Putsch)

I have learnt many new commands or arguments to existing commands as a means of digging deeper into the system details. (Frank Crawford)

The syssumm developers are always looking for more people to contribute code and to test it. If you're interested in collaborating on this software or if you'd just like to keep track of the progress of the software and use it once it's more functional, please contact me at <bruce.w.mohler@saic.com>.

Conclusion
Syssumm allows you to profile your diverse UNIX systems (and, soon, your NT systems too).

It's extensible, so you can add code for the information that may be unique to your site (and then contribute it back to the project!).

The format of the Web pages is under your local control. If you need to see categories and subcategories in a different order, you merely edit a file on your Web server.

Syssumm is free, released under the Gnu Public License. You are welcome to copy the software so long as you attribute authorship and don't charge more than it costs you to copy it.

Syssumm is now available at <http://syssumm.saic.com/>. Both source and documentation reside there.