This page is obsolete

Many links and procedures may not work (for the long time).

I'm experimenting with KSVI Web server and writting simple network and system utilities. Till now I have worked on three projects: w3stat, MSwho and diskusage. The first program generates WN server statistics from WN log-files, second one implements smart alternative of rwho protocol. The set of scripts diskusage is used for simple monitoring of disk usage on our workstations (output is presented on the Web). If you are interested, read details in next sections:

W3stat program reads WN log file and generates output tables in plain text, HTML 2.0 or HTML 3.0 formats. It understands 'extended WN log file format' but can operate with 'common log format' too.

For more information see w3stat home page.

To see WWW server sun3.ms.mff.cuni.cz statistics click here - only for clients with form capability.
Sample output pages are available here.

See w3stat bug list with log-file. To send comment or request to the author click here.

Compact explanation - MSwho implements 'smart multi-network rwho-like' protocol. The name stands for 'Malá Strana' WHO (the building of our School of Informatics stands in this part of Prague, our Internet domain is also named 'ms.mff.cuni.cz').

Why I wrote MSwho utility:

• there are several subnets in our domain and 'rwho' doesn't work over routers

• some administrators don't run 'rwho' because of relatively high network overhead (especially on large networks)

• our network is heterogenous - UNIX workstations (SUN, DEC, IBM RS, AT&T, Silicon Graphics, PC), Novell-networked PCs (5 separate LANs), standalone PCs, X-terminals. But I want to have easy and fast way to examine who is logged on..

• our students get unique good-for-machine but bad-for-human login names. The code consists of name initials and four-digit number (which can be hard to remember). That's why I want to do some real-name resolving in the MSwho utility

Implementation method:

Two caches are used for fast execution and network traffic reduction. First one stores recent finger-results (you can set the expire time up to 30 minutes). Second cache remembers real-names that were requested from whois server (the expire time is set to 30 days). Now you are be able to add your own (long-live) entry into this database.

Notes:

• Remember that all information MSwho gives you came from finger servers and whois server (whois.ms.mff.cuni.cz). More your finger server announces - more MSwho program can serve to other people (interesting: one finger server in this building was written only for humans - it gives you real names and no login names ...)

• Since MSwho asks all given hosts, the response time can be up to 45 seconds in the worst case. Note that the total number of hosts is over 40. In the best case all information is already in cache and you will become answer immediately.

• There are three ways to sort the output: by host, by last name (in real name) and guess by what.

• Real names: if there are more matching entries in whois database, MSwho appends '(??)' to the real name.

MSwho utility is still experimental and could be unstable. See bug list with log-file. Please report bugs and any comments to Josef Pelikán.

To enter the MSwho page you should have WWW client with form capability! You need not HTML 3.0 compliant client, you can check plain-text version of output.

Set of shell scripts for easy disk usage monitoring with WWW output. It runs on all KSVI UNIX workstations and every night collects information about disk usage of individual users. Results are formatted into several tables and presented on-line.

Daily usage files are stored five days (easy configureable value) together with one older file (refreshed every Monday). For each relevant triple [host,time,user] three values are computed: total disk usage in KB, total number of files/directories and number of files/directories changed in last week. User information is extracted from /etc/passwd file.

Copyright (C) 1996-2001 Josef Pelikán, last change: 18.3.2001