Manage recursive jobs: license expiration check, log events (cron)

Description

This option checks and opens the root's "crontab" file in order to schedule recursive jobs.

Example:

Notes:

Alerts will be sent using the common alert script, see chapter Alerts management - Update/reinstall common alert script
License expiration alert levels are explained here: Check for license expiration
If the "crontab" file does not exist, it is initialized with comments in order to facilitate settings like this:

# root crontab
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Syntax:
#
# *    *    *    *    * command to execute
# |    |    |    |    |
# |    |    | |    |
# |    | |    |    +----- day of week (0 - 6) (0 to 6 are Sunday to Saturday, or use names)
# |    |    |    +---------- month (1 - 12)
# |    |    +--------------- day of month (1 - 31)
# |    +-------------------- hour (0 - 23)
# +------------------------- min (0 - 59)
#
# Checks for license expiration: runs everyday at 09:00 with alert set to 15 days before expiration
0 9 * * * /opt/charon/utils/charon_expchk 15
#
# Monitor unrequested guests stop
* * * * * /opt/charon/utils/charon_mongstop
#
# Log events report
* * * * * /opt/charon/utils/charon_logevent
#
# Console autoconnect utility
* * * * * /opt/charon/utils/charon_console_autoconnect

# Logs archiving utility (each Monday 00:00)
0 0 * * 1 /opt/charon/utils/charon_logarchive -keep=60 -zip

Expiration check alert (charon_expchk)

The expiration check alert sends alerts by default 15 days before expiration (7 days in interactive mode).

This number of days can be changed using parameter 1 as number of days

Example for 21 days, running everyday at 08:00AM and 04:00PM (16:00):

0 8,16 * * * /opt/charon/utils/charon_expchk 21

More details on crontab at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crontab (credits: wikipedia)

The ‘-nomail’ parameter can be used to make the script check if the license dongle can be read: if not or if a timeout is detected, the aksusbd drivers are restarted. This is mainly used for debugging.

Monitor abnormal termination of the guests (charon_mongstop)

This job is active by default, it is recommended not to prevent it from running. It's goal is to send alerts if a guest has been stopped whereas it was not requested.

It is mainly used if you're running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6; version 7 and Fedora are using systemd feature to alert in case of service abnormal termination

Log events (charon_logevent)

This job is active by default, it is recommended not to prevent it from running. It's goal is to scan for events in the guests active log files and send alerts based on alert level defined by the administrator. It runs by default every 1 minute so alerts will be sent in bulk mode rather than one alert per error detected. The interval can be updated at your convenience.

Console autoconnect (charon_console_autoconnect)

This utility will check if the guest is running: if the console log is not defined in the configuration file (set OPA0 log=xxx), it will check no one is connected to the console via “telnet localhost <port>”. If no one is connected, it will connect to the console using the ‘screen’ command and will record the console output.

For more information, see Connect to guest console - Autoconnect feature

Notes:

If you want to connect to the console, via Connect to guest console menu option, you will have the option to kill the active one and then connect interactively.
It is possible to disable this feature from the Connect to guest console menu.

Logs archiving utility

This utility will archive services log files and guests console log files (if not managed by the emulator itself)

Default from the crontab entry is to keep files for 60 days and then zip older log files. Zipped files will be kept for 6 months