Please forgive the rant. I hope someone will be able to offer useful
suggestions on this...
I just went through the installation of Compaq Analyze on our DS-20,
(for those not familiar with this package, it replaces Dec_Event (dia)
which replaced uerf. Neither of the predecessors are able to read the
binary error log file on the DS-10, DS-20, ES-40, and other newer Alpha
systems.)
This thing has had me holding my nose from the start, but the final
result is that I don't think it's going to wind up being all that
useful. For starters, it appears to have been a tool designed with
GUI/HTML use as the primary concern. There is a CLI to the version I
have, but compared to Dec_Event and uerf, it's terribly crippled. :-(
Installation is mostly straight-forward for those that have already used
setld to install packages. You end up installing "WEBES" (Compaq's
Web-based Enterprise Service Suite), of which Compaq Analyze is part.
One thing which caught my eye was installing this added to my inetd.conf
file (without warning, comment, or any indication that this file was
being changed!) the following line (wrapped for legibility)
dsn_tunnel stream tcp nowait root
/usr/bin/DsnTunnelServer.sh DsnTunnelServer.sh
So when a connection to the "dsn_tunnel" port, (non-existent in my
services file -- the installation seems to have missed that) is made,
the DsnTunnelServer is run as root. It sure would be nice to know what
this thing does, and it would be even nicer to have been forewarned
about that change so the "TunnelServer" can be wrapped with
tcp_wrappers!
Furthermore, the WEBES involves a "director" process, which itself sets
up TCP connections on ports 7901, 7902, 7903, and 7904. Are the uses of
these ports documented anywhere? Is it possible to control/limit access
to these ports, or is any host on the internet able to access my host
via these ports?
Compaq Analyze doesn't work without the director process running, (I
don't recall that either uerf or Dec_Event depended on anything beyond
the binary logger). What's particularly troubling about this is that any
(unprivileged) user is able to shut down the director! Ok, so it may
not have the same effect as say someone shutting down syslogd or inetd,
but I see this as a bug; a documented bug, but a bug nonetheless. A
process started by root should most certainly not be able to be shut
down by any user on the system!
I can work around that by removing permissions on the installed files,
but that doesn't increase my confidence in this product in any way.
I think this is a real shame. We have a machine-room nearly full of
DEC/Compaq equipment, and are periodically buying new machines. That
means we're ultimately going to run out of systems where we can use
Dec_Event effectively, and I'd certainly prefer not to use the only
alternative. :-(
I currently use a script run from cron every morning on a number of our
DEC systems (in fact all those running Unix on non DS hardware), which
sends me a report of any new entries in the binary error file, which
came in "yesterday". This has been extremely handy and has helped us
identify hardware problems quickly and have them repaired before they
cause us any serious trouble. Will I lose that ability without making it
possible for just about anyone else with Compaq Analyze to know the
state of my hardware?
Does anyone know the "ca" equivalent to the following:
dia -R -o summary -t s:${YESTERDAY} e:${YESTERDAY} \
-x software_informationals > ${TEMPDIR}/dia.out 2>&1
Still curious to see what's in the binary errors file on the DS-20, I
attempted to start the Compaq Analyze gui. It presents a licence
agreement window, with a text-input box where I presume I'm supposed to
enter a serial number. Which serial number? I've tried entering nothing
but the process then silently exits, without logging anything useful in
its log file.
I've tried running the command-line version, but I don't seem to get any
output. I know there should be some output, so either I'm using this
thing wrong, which is certainly possible, or it's not finding what I
think is there.
All-in-all, I'm terribly disappointed that Dec_Event will no longer be
usable. Does anyone know of a better alternative than Compaq Analyze?
Way to go, Compaq. :-/
--
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Sylvain Robitaille syl_at_alcor.concordia.ca
Systems analyst Concordia University
Instructional & Information Technology Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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Received on Wed May 03 2000 - 20:45:14 NZST