Fighting Institutional Memory Loss

1
Fighting InstitutionalMemory Loss

• Integrated Issue and SolutionTracking with
  Trackle
• Dan Crosta

2
The SCCS

• Swarthmore College Computer Society
• Public Linux/OS X multimedia lab
• UNIX shell accts
• Web space, Wikis
• Mailing lists
• Video still cams

3
Student Sysadmins

• SCCS unique needs as UNIX admins
• Lots of us
• Kind of clueless
• Few regular hours
• Always other or better things to do
• Self-reporting stinks rm rf /bin vs. rm
  rf /bin

4
Partial Solutions Email

• Do some work
• Get distracted by something shiny
• Maybe remember what you did
• Maybe email staff to say what you did

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Partial Solution Wiki

• Do some work
• Write it down as you go
• Get distracted by something shiny
• Maybe email staff to say you did something and
  heres a link to it

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Partial Solution Ticket System

• Create a ticket
• Do some work
• Record your changes as a ticket annotation
• Get distracted by something shiny
• Maybe remember to email staff to say you did
  something and heres a link

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We Need More

• Record all sysadminly actions
• Who, exactly what and how, when
• Records accessible from the web
• Because we do everything on the web
• Allow arbitrary annotation to improveclarity to
  future generations
• Not ugly
• Get distracted by something shiny and useful

8
Trackle

• Web- and console-facing tools
• Automatic recording of system changes
• Minimalistic approach stays out of the way
• Integrated Wiki
• Automatic notification to staff
• Users may subscribe to ticket updates
• Appropriate support for staff and end-users

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Trackle Architecture
Database
Web Interface
Console Tools
Shell Tracking
Email System
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Web Interface

• Supports 2 user classes anonymous users and
  authenticated staff
• Both ticket creation, viewing
• Staff only ticket editing, shell sessions
• Integrated Wiki, Timeline, Milestones

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Web Interface Tickets
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Web Interface Tickets
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Web Interface Shell Sessions
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Web Interface

• Wiki pages public private
• Wiki areas in all web components
• Milestones for ticket organization
• Timeline for tracking actions

15
Console Tools

• GUI-like interface for creation, viewing, editing
• Start shell tracking session
• Provides subset of web functionality

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Shell Session Tracking
Shell / trackle-cli
Program Code
System Libraries
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Shell Session Tracking

• trackle-cli records cmds, environment
• trackle-cli loads libtrackle with LD_PRELOAD
• libtrackle tracks file-related system calls
  fopen, chmod, unlink, etc
• State directory used for IPC from libtrackle to
  parent trackle-cli process

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Shell Session Tracking
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Email System

• Email confirmation for user creation
• Staff notified when a ticket is confirmed
• Users may add selves to watcher list
• With email confirmation
• Staff, watchers notified of status changes
• Cron script for periodic staff reminders

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Future Plans

• Private tickets
• Ticket due dates
• Ticket relationships (parent/child, depends on,
  etc)
• Incremental file diffs version tracking
• Multiple machine support
• High-level abstractions free tagging
• LISA 06 Paper

21
Thanks!

• Currently in use at the SCCS
• Open Source (BSD License)
• Currently under active development (you can
  help!)
• Thanks to Ben Kuperman, Mustafa Paksoy for Audlib
• Thanks to Edgwall Software contributors for
  Trac
• Previous names wicket, twiki