scc-win(5)
NAME
scc - introduction SCC
RELEASE
scc-win 1.1.5
DESCRIPTION
System Configuration Collector for Windows is a clone of SCC for Unix.
It uses WMI to access system to collect their configuration data. The
file formats are identical to SCC for Unix. Each line of collected
data is extended with a hierarchical classification of the nature of
the data and with an indicator whether that data is supposed to be
static or dynamic. For example: the size of a file system is static
data and the current usage is dynamic data. Consecutive collections of
configuration data (snapshots) are compared and differences in the
static data are added to a logbook. Filling a file system will not be
reported in the logbook, but the extension of a file system will be.
Additional software converts the snapshot and logbook to html-format.
The classification of the data is a hierarchy with the following top-
level items (among others):
- general
- boot
- hardware
- kernel
- network
- software
- system
- users
Development of SCC started for Unix and later Windows was added.
INSTALLATION
SCC for Windows is available as an self-extracting executable. It uses
WMI to acces other systems than it is installed on. It requires perl
on the system it is installed on. The executable perl should be in the
PATH when SCC is run. The current release has been tested with the
perl distribution from Active State:
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/ActivePerl/
The software installs by default in "c:\program files\scc\bin". SCC-
data is located in the data folder. Temporary files are located in
temp and documentation in the doc folder. SCC can be executed as the
last part of the installation; the proper ownership of the folders of
SCC is also set at that stage. This only works when the software is
installed in the default directory. Otherwise the permissions.bat
should be run. The shortcuts in the program group point to the proper
files.
Before installing an upgrade of SCC, run SCC for all systems you are
collecting data from. Otherwise all changes between the last run and
the upgrade are lost. Then you should uninstall SCC, either from the
program group or by running the setup.exe. The uninstall will keep the
datafiles on the system for the new version of the software. The last
stage of the install will ask you whether SCC should run. Note that
this run will only be performed on the local system! After upgrading
SCC, you should not wait too long before running SCC to avoid missing
changes between the upgrade and the next (scheduled) run of SCC. The
new version of SCC will detect the old layout of the present snapshots
and ignore all changes. This is done to avoid numerous changes in the
logbook when the layout of the snapshots has changed.
When SCC is uninstalled, the directories bin and doc are removed. The
data and tmp directories remain intact. They have to be removed manu-
ally.
DEPENDENCIES
The software uses several other open source programs.
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/bsdtar.htm
From bsdtar for Windows the following files are included from version
1.2.38:
- bsdtar.exe
- archive1.dll
- bzip2.dll
- zlib1.dll
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/coreutils.htm
From coreutils the following file is included from version 5.3.0:
- sort.exe
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/diffutils.htm
From DiffUtils for Windows the following file is included from version
2.8.7:
- diff.exe
The two above programs require the following libraries that can be
downloaded from either of the two above pages:
- libiconv2.dll
- libintl3.dll
http://www.blat.net
To send email from the command-line, the following file is included
from version 2.5.0:
- blat.exe
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
To transfer files by means of scp, the following file is included from
version 0.58:
- pscp.exe
COMMUNICATION
The data that is collected can be sent to the server part of SCC.
Assume that the data should be sent to directory /var/opt/scc-
srv/data/transfer/cp/scc, owned by user scc, on system
scc_srv@domain.com.
The first step is to get the host-key of scc_srv in your local cache:
The servers host key is not cached in the registry. You
have no guarantee that the server is the computer you think it is.
The servers dss key fingerprint is:
ssh-dss 1024 a1:4e:1b:6a:18:1a:7f:34:fa:25:32:5a:5f:64:ea:d5
If you trust this host, enter "y" to add the key to
PuTTYs cache and carry on connecting.
If you want to carry on connecting just once, without
adding the key to the cache, enter "n".
If you do not trust this host, press Return to abandon the
connection.
Store key in cache? (y/n) y Enter
scc@scc_srv.domain.coms password:
Enter a bogus password to abort the transfer.
Now generate a local dsa-key using WinSCP.
- start All Programs -> WinSCP -> Key tools -> PuTTYgen
- select SSH2 DSA under Parameters (at the bottom)
- click Generate
- move the mouse around as instructed to create entropy
- in the box labelled "Key comment", type in a short string to identify
yourself e.g. scc_from_your_client.domain.com (no spaces!)
- do not select a passphrase
- click both the Save buttons and name your keys, traditionally
id_dsa.pub for public key and id_dsa for private key (it will be named
id_dsa.PPK) in \Program Files\scc\bin.
- select the contents of the box at top of the PuTTYgen (labelled "Pub-
lic key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys2 file").
- paste the key into the file: ~scc/.shh/authorized_keys2 on
scc_srv.domain.com
Now issue the command:
perl scc.pl --prog scp --pki id_dsa.ppk \
--dest scc@scc_src.domain.com:/var/opt/scc-srv/data/transfer/cp/scc
All scc-data from the Windows system(s) is transferred to scc-srv and
will be shown after the next run of scc-update.
PROGRAMS
The programs of SCC have the following relationship:
scc: main program
this program calls scc-log and sends data to the SCC-server.
scc-log: this program calls:
- scc-collect: collect all data by calling modules in scc_modules
- compare new and old snapshots, add differences to logbook
- scc-snap2html: convert snapshot to HTML
- scc-log2html: convert logbook to HTML
USING SCC
After the installation, the data is available in directory data. The
file scc.<hostname>.log contains the logbook and the file scc.<host-
name>.cur contains the current snapshot.
To run SCC again, just start scc. To keep an accurate logbook of your
system, you can schedule it daily.
To run SCC on several systems, use the --file option to indicate a file
containing the names of the systems you want SCC to run on. You can
also use the --list option to specify the systems in a comma-separated
list. Finally you can use the --netview option to run SCC on all sys-
tems reported by net view.
CUSTOMIZING/EXTENDING SCC
scc-collect(1) collects OS and OS-related configuration data. It does
not collect data of the applications you developed. To extend the
snapshots, refer to the manual page of scc-plugin(1). It offers a
starting point to collect other configuration data.
PERFORMANCE
Usually scc completes its runs within several seconds. When you notice
that runs of scc on a system take very long to complete, you can use
the profiling data to determine the cause. Profiling data is added to
the snapshot and can be found in the html-file under the classifica-
tion: "profiling". Each line of the profiling data consists of the
following fields:
- timestamp
- seconds since previous stamp
- seconds since start of run
- comment
Look for large values in the second column to locate the code of scc
that is causing this performance problem. You can also use the --trace
option to actually see the progress of the collection of the data.
COPYRIGHT
SCC is free software under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
Copyright (C) 2006-2009 QNH.
SEE ALSO
scc(1), scc-collect(1), scc-log(1), scc-log2html(1),
scc-plugin(1), scc-snap2html(1), scc-win(4), scc-win(5)
VERSION
$Revision: 1.12 $