Here are the link for the three helpdesks software used:

Liberum: http://www.liberum.org/
Zentrack: http://zentrack.phpzen.net/
Wreq: http://www.math.dulce.edu/~yu/wreq/

All of these softwares are Free or OpenSource? and have demo sites.

Let us know what you think about them.

Pacific Inet 2003 Tonga
Phill Hardstaff
Senior Support and Systems Engineer
SPC - Noumea - New Caledonia
October 8 2003

Topics for Today
• Setting up a Helpdesk
• Building your own server
• Misc. Programs (admin and other utilities)

Setting up a Helpdesk

Why have a helpdesk ?
• Reduce number of phone calls
• Users fill out job ticket
• Users get feedback automatically
• Allows statistics to be gathered
• Everyone knows what's going on if everything has a “ticket”

Liberum
• http://www.liberum.org
• Open source web based solution
• Runs on Win2K using ASP
• DB can be Access or SQL server
• Easy to set up
• Send mail to users on update

Demonstration of Liberum
• http://192.168.1.145/hd
• Sign on as new user
• Add a job or two

Other Helpdesk Software
• Zentrack (Franck)
• WREQ (Al Blake)
• Commercial software

Server Building

Why ?
• Cost
• Easy to source parts
• Can use parts from a workstation

Server for Tonga
• P4 2.6 Ghz
• 3 NICs
• 1Gb RAM
• 2 x 120 Gb hard disk (mirrored)
• On board Intel RAID

Donated by SPC to Tongan Govt.

Misc. Programs
• Winimage and Boot CD’s
• Xoops and MySQL
• Logcaster and Codecharge
• RRDtool and Perl scripting

Winimage and Boot CD’s
• How to make a boot CD (Nero)
• Why use a boot CD
• http://www.ultimatebootcd.com
• Winimage, to create and archive disk images or from http://www.bootdisk.com/
• http://www.winimage.com/winimage.htm

Xoops and MySQL
• Xoops is an open source portal solution using PHP and MySQL and runs on Windows and Linux
• To install XOOPS for the first time, you'll need to have the minimum following server software pre-installed:

• HTTP Server (Apache or IIS) "Note, XOOPS only officially supports Apache"
• PHP 4.1.0 and higher (4.1.1 or higher recommended)
• MySQL Database 3.23.XX

Xoops and MySQL
• http://www.xoops.org
• Install PHP http://www.php.net
• Install MySQL http://www.mysql.com/
• Install GUI admin for MySQL http://www.mysqlstudio.com/ (US$95)
• Configure it and you are away.
Logcaster and Codecharge
• Logcaster cosolidates logs from Windows servers and stores them in a database (MSSql server) http://www.rippletech.com
• Codecharge is for creating web sites and pages that access databases. http://www.codecharge.com

(demo)

RRDtool and Perl scripting
• You can graph anything that can give out a number
• Don’t limit yourself to routers
Some Examples
• Ping Probes http://www.spc.int/cgi-bin/14all-1.1.pl?dir=Ping_Probes\&cfg=spc.cfg
• Routers http://www.spc.int/cgi-bin/14all-1.1.pl?dir=Routers\&cfg=spc.cfg
• Servers http://www.spc.int/cgi-bin/14all-1.1.pl?dir=Wasp\&cfg=spc.cfg
• Satelite Transmitters http://www.spc.int/reports/

Any questions send message to the author.

Phill
The root servers are the servers that are on TOP of the DNS (Domain Name System).

These root servers point to the gTLDs( .com, .net, .org,..) and the ccTLDs(.tv, .to, .fj, .ki, ...).

They contains very few records as there are about 200 countries and about 10 gTLDs. However they handle many requests and are very important to maintain the structure of the Internet.

If the Internet link of a country goes down, then no machines in the country can contact the root servers to locate a local domain. Having a root server in country allow to maintain local connectivity as well as save a non-negligeable amount of bandwidth, and reduce latencies in queries, providing better avaialbility.

The system is all configured that the root server will primarly handle request of the machines which are in the country. They do not add on the international bandwidth but rather save some.

Bill Woodcock from PCH (Packet Clearing House), is managing the installation of some of the root servers in many countries around the world. They can do it on site for about USD17,000 and handover the equipment, or you can do it and ask them to be part of the root-servers network.

For more information, contact him directly or see:
http://www.pch.net/technology/operations/ccTLD_Hosting.ppt

http://www.hackbusters.net/

These people have a tool called labrea which slow does attack or DOS attack by answering slowly to source computer, slowing down their attack.

http://corp.sover.net/notices/archived/phonebill-audit.html

We had an interesting theory...

In the US the telcos are not telecom providers but billing companies. They
spend 90% of the time and resources to bill their customers...

So they use random billing and there is a thriving business industry in
the US living from correcting these random billing errors for 10% of the
money they save the company who uses telephone services from the telcos...

Scary?
http://shirky.com/writings/permanet.html

http://www.nagios.org/

This software allow you to monitor equipment on your network as well as services.

It can send alerts to your mobile and escalate to other group of people...

It is released under GPL.

Nagios has a lot of features, making it a very powerful monitoring tool.
Some of the major features are listed below:

• Monitoring of network services (SMTP, POP3, HTTP, NNTP, PING, etc.)
• Monitoring of host resources (processor load, disk and memory usage, running processes, log files, etc.)
• Monitoring of environmental factors such as temperature
• Simple plugin design that allows users to easily develop their own host and service checks
• Ability to define network host hierarchy, allowing detection of and distinction between hosts that are down and those that are unreachable
• Contact notifications when service or host problems occur and get resolved (via email, pager, or other user-defined method)
• Optional escalation of host and service notifications to different contact groups
• Ability to define event handlers to be run during service or host events for proactive problem resolution
• Support for implementing redundant and distributed monitoring servers
• External command interface that allows on-the-fly modifications to be made to the monitoring and notification behavior through the use of event handlers, the web interface, and third-party applications
• Retention of host and service status across program restarts
• Scheduled downtime for supressing host and service notifications during periods of planned outages
• Ability to acknowlege problems via the web interface
• Web interface for viewing current network status, notification and problem history, log file, etc.
• Simple authorization scheme that allows you restrict what users can see and do from the web interface

http://www.digitemp.com/

http://www.weather-display.com/

Following talks by Andy Linto, find the above link useful to monitor
temperature and humidity inside the server room and send alerts before
everything fries...
Rancid monitors a router's (or device's) configuration, including software
www.shrubbery.net/rancid/

Rancid monitors a router's (or device's) configuration, including software and hardware (cards, serial numbers, etc), using CVS. Rancid currently supports Bay routers, Cisco routers, Juniper routers, Catalyst switches, Foundry switches, Redback NASs, ADC EZT3 muxes, MRTd (and thus likely IRRd), Alteon switches, and HP procurve switches.

It allows you to reverse back to several old configurations as well as being alerted when the configuration has changed and what was the change...

Following recent discussions at the PICISOC meeting here is a link that some of you might find useful to a totalizer add-on for MRTG which many of us use to monitor our links:

http://www.geocities.com/josef_wendel/

The add on is called MRTG totalizer and we use it to provide a quick visual bar graph of the traffic passed over a link in a month. It has proved invaluable in settling arguments with our ISP as to who was measuring traffic correctly ;) and for most of us that dont live in the US and pay per Meg that means dollars!

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