Many of EnlightenDSM's menus, buttons, icons and other tools are common throughout the program, allowing you to easily perform tasks and procedures without resorting to shell scripts. This appendix describes the following:
Global functions
List function buttons
Performing actions on list items
Creating defaults
Network pools
Performance expectation
Data requests and sorts
Two sets of global function buttons are located in the top right corner of most EnlightenDSM windows (Figure A-1). These buttons allow you to easily search, sort or print the information listed in the window. There are also buttons for sending mail, making selections and analyzing you system. Each button is described below:
The Close icon in the upper left-hand corner closes windows without further modifying any data. Most EnlightenDSM windows also have a smaller Close or Cancel button for the same purpose.
The Wizard icon is available in the User Configuration, Configured Printers, Host Configuration, and Disk Usage Information By Filesystem windows. This feature helps analyze the security and consistency of your system. Refer to Appendix A, “Wizard,” in the EnlightenDSM Reference Manual for information about the Wizard features.
The Mail icon is used to send customized forms to highlighted user(s). Click on the Mail icon and the Mailing Instructions window appears (Figure A-2) This window includes a box for entering text.
Mail To field
Use this field to send mail to the highlighted user(s) and/or additional users who may not be on the current list. Click the right arrow button to choose from a pick list of additional users.
Form Letter field
Enter the name of the form letter to be sent or click the right arrow button to choose from a pick list of available form letters.
New form letters are created by entering a new filename in the Form Letter field and then clicking the Edit Letter button. A text editor appears. Edit the text as necessary and save the “new” letter.
Existing form letters can be modified by entering the name in the Form Letter field and clicking the Edit Letter button. The existing letter will appear in a text editor. Edit and save the letter as a different filename, then quit the original letter. Edited e-mail forms are saved in the directory where EnlightenDSM started.
 | Note: You must quit/close the form letter window before attempting to access other EnlightenDSM features. |
Once the letter is ready, send it by clicking the Mail button. EnlightenDSM will prompt you to confirm your action.
EnlightenDSM is installed with three pre-defined form letters. These letter can be modified:
| Disk | ||
| Obvious | ||
| System |
These letters are stored in the file $ENLIGHTEN/config/formlet. Macros can also be used within the body of a form letter. For more details, see Appendix J, “Macros,” in the EnlightenDSM Reference Manual.
When the Refresh icon is clicked, EnlightenDSM automatically updates the current screen as if the window was reselected. This is particularly useful when killing a process (to check if that process still exists).
EnlightenDSM can also be set to refresh screens automatically. See Chapter 2, “Configure,” in the EnlightenDSM Reference Manual for more details.
Some reports are generated based on the selections made from a parent window. For example, a list of processes may have been generated based on the selected users from the Process Summary report. In such cases, the parent window is first regenerated and the same items are reselected (based on their order in the window).
The criteria for re-selection is based solely on position. If the first and third entries are highlighted, then the first and third entries will also be selected in the newly generated report. This is independent of the fact that in the first report, for example, the first entry referred to user root and the third entry to user bin.
When a window is refreshed using the Refresh button, the sort order previously selected for the report (via the Sort icon) will be preserved. When a report is generated from the main menu, the sort order is reset. Remember, selected items remain selected based solely on position (as described above in “Previous Selections”).
| Note: Except for NFS, disk-related windows that are based on previously generated snapshots do not have any refresh capabilities. Disk snapshots are used because of the heavy performance and resource load when scanning disk partitions in real time. |
Click the Sort icon to prioritize the list of information on the screen. Information can also be sorted in an ascending or descending order. (Figure A-3).
To perform a sort, select the desired criteria and click Apply. The longer the list, the longer the sort will take. Click the Close button to abort the sort. Most reports are sortable and each has its own set of sort criteria, depending on the information available.
The Help icon is available on all report and configuration screens. Click the Help icon for more information from an on-line Help screen. (Figure A-4).
The list function buttons, located on the right side of a window (Figure A-5), are used to manipulate items within a list box.
Click the corresponding button to:
Click the Select button to highlight the full list box. For long lists this may take some time. Click the Deselect button and all of the highlighted selections will be deselected.
Click the Invert button to highlight all list entries not currently selected, while unhighlighting those currently selected. This is especially useful when you want to select most, but not all, of a list; first select the few exceptions, then click the Invert button.
Click the Print button to print the currently displayed information. The print job will be sent to the path entered in the Session Preferences window (Configure menu). For more information on setting up the Print command, refer to Chapter 2, “Configure,” in the EnlightenDSM Reference Manual.
Click the Search button to bring up the Search List window (Figure A-6). Enter your search string, set the scope of the search, and specify how the results should be presented.
Only simple text strings are allowed in the Search String field. Regular expressions or wildcards are not allowed. All characters are searched, including any leading or trailing spaces. Use the Ignore Case toggle perform a case-sensitive search (the default) or to ignore cases during the search. A successful match occurs whenever the pattern is found anywhere in the list entry.
A search on the Full List begins with the first item and proceeds through the list to the last item.
A search To First Selection begins with the first item and continues until a currently selected item is reached. If the first item in the list is currently selected, no search is performed.
A search From Last Selection begins with the item following the last selected item and continues to the bottom of the list. If the last item is currently selected, no search is performed.
Choose the action to be taken after a successful match. By default, all entries successfully matched will be highlighted (Select All Found). You can also choose to have all matches unhighlighted (Deselect All Found); or, you can have the search stop after the first successful match (Select First Found), which is then highlighted if it was not already so.
In EnlightenDSM windows, the available actions are displayed as buttons just below the global icons. Since these actions differ for each type of report, each window's option buttons are unique. See the EnlightenDSM Reference Manual for information on actions for various functions. Figure A-7 shows the action buttons for the User Configuration window.
If no items are selected when an action button is clicked, an error message similar to Figure A-8 appears, reminding you to first select a list entry.
Click the OK button, select the desired items from the original list and reselect the relevant action button.
| Note: Some actions, such as changing user ownership, require further information before being completed. In such cases, a reminder notice will appear. |
EnlightenDSM may also prompt you for confirmation of a requested action (Figure A-9).
Select from the following confirmation options:
| Yes | Perform the action described in the window and proceed to the next highlighted item (if any). | |
| No | Do not perform the action on the current item and proceed to the next highlighted item (if any). | |
| All | Perform the action on all remaining highlighted items. |
Cancel Cancel the current command. This has the same effect as clicking the No button for all remaining highlighted items.
Clicking the Cancel button will not reverse any actions taken against previously selected items from the current list.
Several windows, such as Swap Space Usage, all you to create graphs of the data (Figure A-10). EnlightenDSM determines the appropriate graph type for each type of report.
Only highlighted items are graphed. If no items are selected, EnlightenDSM graphs all entries in the report.
Items are graphed in the same order as they appear in the report. Remember to sort the report as needed (via the Sort icon) before generating the graph.
Once the graph is displayed, use the middle mouse button to rotate the picture about its axis. Click the Print button to print the graph.
EnlightenDSM defaults automatically set up many of the program's Session Preferences. To revise any of these parameters, choose Session Preferences from the Configure menu. For more details, see Chapter 2, “Configure,” in the EnlightenDSM Reference Manual.
Network Pools are used by EnlightenDSM to simultaneously manage multiple hosts. A “pool” treats a group of hosts as a single entity. When viewing disk usage by pool, for example, the usage of all hosts in that pool is displayed. Similarly, any monitoring request will report activities from all hosts in the pool. This allows multiple hosts to be monitored simultaneously.
| Note: If the Hostnames field in a window is left empty, any actions performed from that window will affect all hosts in the current pool. |
As each report is generated, each item in the report will also show the original hostname associated with it. Specific host entries can then be viewed and selected for performing further activities.
EnlightenDSM is constructed from a layered, client-server approach. Each layer is responsible for providing one phase of handling and preparing the data. Therefore, the operating system environment and the actions you request can affect the rate for obtaining results. This section highlights some performance facts to help predict the time required to perform EnlightenDSM actions.
The most time-consuming part of displaying an EnlightenDSM window is the building of window lists. In fact, the time required grows geometrically with the length of each entry and the number of entries in a list. On large lists (greater than 1000 entries), more than 80% of the wait time is spent building the display.
EnlightenDSM maintains a database of file entry information for each disk partition examined during a Search or Summary of Usage. The first time one of these features is used to examine a given partition, or when Rebuild is used, the selected partition databases are built. This process may take up to two minutes for a partition with 10,000 files. For more details on this process, see Chapter 7, “Disk,” in the EnlightenDSM Reference Manual.
When you request configuration or process information (disk partitions, disk files, CPU summaries, and so on), either a text database must be searched or a series of commands performed. On a system supporting many CPU or disk requests, all processes, including EnlightenDSM, run slowly. Furthermore, EnlightenDSM combines multiple commands to present the results properly; so what you might think of as a simple query could require complex handling.
AlthoughEnlightenDSM has time-saving methods to speed queries, data requests are similar to database requests—the larger the database to be searched and the broader the search criteria, the longer it takes to process the query and sort the results. When information is requested across hosts, this happens more.
The first queries across a network “warm up” the connections, so these requests may take several seconds longer than usual to complete. This timing is dependent on the current usage of the network. Once connections are firmly established, however, EnlightenDSM processes requests almost immediately.
In general, the time it takes to fulfill a request on one machine is multiplied by the number of machines. Of course, different machines also respond at different rates based on their chip speed, disk speeds, and process load. Finally, the time for completion for a request will always vary based on the amount of result data shipped back to the user.