Admin Resource Kit

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Basic monitoring of Scalix with ommaint

Use the ommaint script to do basic monitoring of the Scalix environment. The script is typically run as a cron from the crontab. Contained within the comments (at the top) of file are three lines that may be pasted directly into /etc/crontab. Typically the script is placed in the /usr/local/bin directory. Dont forget to give "chmod +x ommaint" before executing it. By default the script will send notifications (by mail) to root. However, if you would like to have them sent other sources, update the MAIL_REPORTS variable in the script.

http://downloads.scalix.com/ark/ommaint

Backing up Scalix with sxbackup

Use the sxbackup script to backup the information store on your Scalix server. untar the file and run the setup script to configure for your system.

http://downloads.scalix.com/ark/sxbackup.tgz

Creating rules for users with sxaa

sxaa allows a system administrator to administer server-based Scalix rules (autoactions) from the command line. This allows administrators to set up simple rules without needing to use a client or know the user's mailbox password. This command should be run as a Scalix administror or, preferably, root.

For a full description of sxaa, please see: http://downloads.scalix.com/ark/sxaa.readme

Download sxaa at: http://downloads.scalix.com/ark/sxaa

Importing contacts from csv/ldif file

The import tool provides an HTML front-end to allow end-users to import their contact data into the Scalix server without needing to involve a system administrator.

For a full description of import_contacts, please see: http://downloads.scalix.com/ark/import_contacts.readme

Download import_contacts at: http://downloads.scalix.com/ark/import_contacts.tgz

Displaying Outlook version of users who have connected to the Scalix server

olkvers - http://downloads.scalix.com/ark/olkvers

• NOTE: olkvers scrapes the audit files for the most recent Outlook logins for each user. If your user is using multiple instances of Outlook (i.e., Outlook on more than one host), only the version of the last login will be shown. This applies to NotifyLink customers as well. Ideally olkvers would show all versions found for a particular user.

Creating a custom address generation rule (flast.example)

Use this example for creating a custom address generation rule. In this example, the rule will create an address of consisting of the FIRST INITIAL (f) concatinated with the LAST NAME (last) concatinated with @domain.name

flast.map.example - http://downloads.scalix.com/ark/flast.example

Monitoring Scalix with Nagios

This file documents how to setup Nagios to monitor basic services on the Scalix server.

http://downloads.scalix.com/ark/nagios_in_a_scalix_environment.pdf (last updated 2005)

The above document references scalix-nagios.tar.gz, a tarball of preset Nagios configuration files located here:

• http://downloads.scalix.com/ark/scalix-nagios.tar.gz

(Please note that some of the configuration files will need to be manually updated for Scalix 11.)

Update ScalixDB content without user login using sxapiprep.py

After a major release upgrade, and after other events that trigger a database schema change, every Scalix Web Access user must log in in order to trigger a ScalixDB update with their mailbox content. For users with very large numbers of messages in their mailbox, this process can take some time (in extreme cases minutes). This database update can be triggered without the users logging in, for example overnight when system load is low by means of the sxapiprep script.

Disk performance test

This C program will write random small blocks of data to a large file and sync the changes to disk. This simulates the write behaviour of the Scalix server and will help identify if you have problems with your disk.

The results are displayed as

Test Started
Test file: disktest.data
File size: 100 Mb
Num write: 10000
PRO: 0.000      Create file: disktest.data
PRO: 0.352      Zero fill
PRO: 2.304      Sync data
PRO: 0.000      Seek to start
PRO: 0.000      Fill write buffer
Starting write tests
PRO: 19.193     Write tests complete
Test complete 

where a smaller number for the write tests is better. The example above shows reasonable performance.

To build the binary, make sure you have gcc installed. Take the source file and run

gcc -Wall -o disktest disktest.c

Ignore any warnings about formats in the fprintf statements.

Usage for this binary is

./disktest --help
disktest [--file name] [--size mb] [--writes num] [--maxblock size] [--nosync] [--verbose] [--help]

--file          Name of test file to write to [default: disktest.data]
--size          Size of test file to create (in Mb) [default: 100]
--writes        Number of write tests [default: 10000]
--maxblock      Maximum byte size of block (as power of 2) [default: 7 (128)]
--nosync        Disables disc sync after each write [default: enabled]
--verbose       Log every seek/write [default: no]
--help          This text

Download the file at

• http://downloads.scalix.com/ark/disktest.c

Checking when users last logged in

I wrote this script as a Scalix-specific 'lastlog' equivalent, simply run it without arguments.

Any enhancement request feel free to mail me at ben --attt-- redcircleit --dottt-- com.

Download it here:

• http://www.redcircleit.com/public/scripts/sxlastlog.pl.txt