• About sw
  • Dependencies
• Clipboards
• Reports
• Customization
• Installation

    sw?<flags>
 

The Survivor Web Interface allows the examination of, and with appropriate access controls in place the manipulation of, check and alert state. By default, anybody may view state who otherwise has access to the URI used to access sw.

The user interface is not described in detail here since it should be fairly self-explanatory.

Dependencies

• The web interface must run on the same host as the scheduler.
• sw uses the standard Instance configuration file /etc/survivor/instance.cf to obtain information about the configured Instances. The location of this file cannot be overridden.

In addition to viewing and modifying survivor state, sw also offers the ability to keep notes in Clipboards. A Clipboard must be configured before it can be used. Multiple Clipboards may be configured. Clipboards are not locked against simultaneous update, and so should be restricted by policy to one owner (user or host) each. Only users with proper authorization as defined in cgi.cf may access Clipboards.

A Clipboard may be edited by viewing it, making changes, and then updating the Clipboard. Additionally, the details of a current service@host may be appended to a Clipboard by viewing the details and selecting an appropriate link.

The contents of a Clipboard may be sent to any Call List or Call List member defined in the calllist.cf of any configured instance. The sending option is available when viewing the Clipboard.

When the contents are sent to a Call List, Call List rotation does not occur. This is because Call List rotation is not atomic: a value is read (lock enforced during read), a new value is computed, and then the new value is written (lock enforced during write). The scheduler maintains the master lock over Call List state updates, and sw does not have access to this master lock.

• A Simple Call List will work correctly if it contains only one member. If it contains multiple members, whichever address is "next in line" will receive the Clipboard, and this address will remain "next in line".

• A Broadcast CallList will work correctly.

• A Rotating CallList will work correctly, provided the scheduler has initialized the list.

The web interface is capable of executing Report Modules. This option requires exec authorization.

The look and content of the web interface is fully customizable, as is its authentication infrastructure.

For information on customizing the web interface, see the specification on Web Interface Page Filters. For information on adding custom authentication modules, see the documentation.

The web interface is installed in $INSTDIR/sbin/sw. It is installed setgid $INSTGROUP so that it may have write access to the survivor state files. If the web interface will only be used read-only, or if the web server can be configured to run sw as $INSTUSER or a user in $INSTGROUP, the setgid bit may be removed.

The easiest way to make sw available is to symlink to it from the web server's cgi-bin directory. This would make the URI http://survivorhost/cgi-bin/sw. Further information regarding the configuration of web servers is beyond the scope of this document.

sw uses its own configuration file, cgi.cf, to determine some of its behavior. Among the configurations specified there, a state directory must be defined and created. This directory must be owned and writeable by the user that the web server runs as, or writeable by a group that the web server user is in.

 survivor# mkdir $STATEDIR
 survivor# chown $WWWUSER $STATEDIR
 survivor# chmod 755 $STATEDIR