Kernun Reporter Documentation

What is Kernun Reporter

Kernun Reporter (KR) consists of a piece of powerful hardware with pre-installed operating system (FreeBSD 7.1), database engine (MySQL 5.0), web server (Apache 1.3) and log analytics software (Sawmill 8.0). Its purpose is to gather logs of Kernun products or even other software, store them to database and let them analyze with a number of sophisticated reports.

Initial configuration and license installation

The following steps are required to configure Kernun Reporter system:

a) When KR is switched on and boots, MySQL, Apache and Sawmill are up and running. Use one of the two ethernet ports and connect it to local network. Log on the console (use the superuser "root" as login name and empty password) and set up an IP address of the system. For detailed description, see FreeBSD Handbook (find the link at the end of this page).

b) Sawmill software license must be entered in order to use the software. Use any web browser and load the main page of KR system. For example, if the IP address used in step a) was 192.168.1.100, enter "http://192.168.1.100/" in your browser. Browser gets redirected to the Sawmill CGI script and the Sawmill welcome page renders.

c) Click Next, and the License Agreement appears. Read it thorougly. If you choose to accept it, click on the corresponding radio button and then Next.

d) Now, enter the Sawmill license into the box titled "Enter a license key". You may choose to get a trial license in this step, and enter the license key later. Click Next.

e) Enter the username and password of Sawmill administrator. The same password must be typed twice. Click Next and then Finish.

f) Sawmill login page appears. Enter the username and password set up in step e).

g) Upon logging, you will see title menu at the top of the page. Use link named Licensing to enter your license key if you have chosen to get a trial license in step d).

Now, your Sawmill software is initialized. You need to create some profiles in order to use it. Profile is a combination of a log format and log source. The next section will show you how to create a basic Kernun Net Access profile. For more information on profiles and their types, see Sawmill documentation (find the link at the end of this page).

Creating a Kernun Net Access profile and viewing reports

The following steps are required to create a Kernun Net Access profile and view data reports in Sawmill:

a) MySQL configuration

Assign a root password for MySQL database. Follow instructions on page http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/default-privileges.html in the section named "root Account Password Assignment".

b) Transferring a log file

Using the scp command, or similar, copy a kernun log file from the Kernun Net Access system to the local disk of Kernun Reporter. It is not matter whether you copy a raw log file (e.g. /var/log/kernun) or bzipped file (e.g. /var/log/kernun.0.bz2) or whether you copy a single file or several files. Let's assume you copy the file kernun.0.bz2 to the local directory /var/data/.

c) Creating the profile

Using the web interface create a new profile: Click on the Create New Profile button, as the log source choose Local disk. The Pathname field fill with the expression /var/data/kernun.*.bz2. You can check what files matches the expression by clicking the Show Matching Files button.
Several log formats are detected. Choose the one that fits your needs
Note the Kernun Proxy Log Format stores all proxies in one profile. You may want to set separate profiles for HTTP, SMTP od DNS proxies using the particular Log Format to gain the protocol specific information.
Choose fields that fit your needs.
Select MySQL Database server type. Use the values you had set during MySQL configuration. The hostname 127.0.0.1 is used typically. The Database name, Server socket, SQL table name prefix and suffix may be left empty.
Choose a new profile name. The profile is saved then. You may click on the Process Data & Vies Reports link to start building the database.
Once the database is built you can View Reports of the profile.

d) Automatic log file transfer and database building

As new data in the log files grows you may need to update the content of the profile database. You can use one of these options:

Copy the new log file on the local disk so it matches the pattern in Pathname of the profile config( e.g. /var/data/kernun.*.bz2).

Rebuild the database. You can rebuild the database via www interface (Admin/View config/Database info/Rebiuld database), or using the command
'sawmill -p profile_name -a bd'.

Rebuilding the database erases the current content of the database and builds the database anew. This method can take a lot of time as the amount of the data in the source log files are huge. For more information please see the Sawmill documentation.
Copy the new log file on the local disk so it matches the pattern in Pathname of the profile config.

Update the database. You can rebuild the database via www interface (Admin/View config/Database info/Update database), or by using the command
'sawmill -p profile_name -a ud'.

Updating the database reads new source data only and rebuilds the database indexes. I.e. you don't need to store old source log files in the local disk (e.g. /var/data/). For more information please see the Sawmill documentation.

Note: You may write a simple script and run in daily to update the database content:

# Get the latest log file to Kernun Reporter's local disk
scp kernun:/var/log/kernun.0.bz2 /var/data/
# update the particular profile database
sawmill -p profile_name -a ud
# remove the processed source log file
rm /var/data/kernun.0.bz2

Links

a) Sawmill: http://download.kernun.com/doc/SawmillDocumentation.pdf
b) Apache: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/
c) MySQL: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/
d) FreeBSD: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/
e) Kernun Net Access:http://www.kernun.cz/podpora/dokumentace/kernun-access/

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