Novell Documentation: ZENworks Linux Management

Reports

The following tasks contain information on performing common reporting operations:

Working with Reports

To begin working with the report-generation features of the ZENworks Linux Management Web interface, click the Reports button in the left side navigation menu. The Reports page contains a list of available reports. You can display the existing reports by clicking their names, and edit or delete them by clicking the Edit or Delete links beside them.

At the command line, reports may be displayed, but not created. Use the command rcman report-list to list the available reports, and rcman report-get reportname to display a particular report.

Displaying Basic Reports

ZENworks Linux Management provides a series of pre-defined reports, which you can use as-is or edit to better suit your needs. They are:

Pre-defined Report	Description
Failures	Displays data about transactions that may have failed. Failures most often occur when a transaction requires the removal of software, but software removal is not permitted. They can also occur when the client requires packages that are unavailable, or when the server cannot reach the client.
Last Transaction	Displays information about the last transaction for each machine in your organization. Displays the name and time of the transaction, the machine updating, the client software it used, and any messages that the transaction may have produced.
Per Machine	Information about all transactions performed by all machines. For each machine the report displays the success and failure count, and status (failure or success) and time of the last transaction. You can see similar information by clicking on the System tab in the Machines information page. The per-machine report lets you search by hostname or partial hostname, so that you can, for example, see the reports for all the machines in a given subnet.
Pending Transactions	The list of transactions whose first occurrence time is still in the future. Does not include any repeated transaction occurrences. Transactions disappear from this report once their scheduled start time passes, regardless of whether they have actually occurred.
Past 24 Hours	For all transactions in the past 24 hours, displays the end time, the alias for the machine, the client software, and transaction messages.
Disk Usage	Displays information for machines that are using more than 90 percent of their local disk space. Disk usage is checked with the df command, and checking it does not use significant system or network resources.

Creating Customized Reports

In the Reports view, click Create New Report.
Provide a name and description, then click Next.
Choose the columns you want displayed on your report, then click Add. When you are finished selecting columns, click Next.
Specify a filter rule if necessary.
Click Save.

For example, to find out which packages were updated recently by machines in the Engineering group, you would create columns for the display of machine names, package names, and transaction times, then create filter rules to limit the display to recent transactions from Engineering group machines.

Transactions appear in your reports if they have data for one or more of the columns you create and if they match your filter specifications. Transactions that do not match any of the data are not displayed. For example, if your report displays only information about transaction scripts, transactions with no scripts do not have any rows in the report.

Adding Columns

Each column in a report provides a specific piece of information about a machine, transaction, a transaction script, or a transaction package. Each of those objects has different attributes. For example, a column might show the host name attribute for machines, or the time attribute for transactions.

For machines, you may display the following data:

Email: the email address associated with the machine.
Hostname: the hostname for the machine.
Description: the description of the machine, as set in the Machines tool.
Alias: the machine alias.
Added date: date that the machine first contacted the server.
Last contact: the last time the machine contacted the server. This could be a queue or channel refresh rather than a transaction.
Groups: The list of groups in which the machine has membership.
Channels: List of channels available to the machine.
Administrators: List of administrators who have access to the machine.
Transactions: number of transactions attempted by the machine.
Packages: The complete list of packages installed on the machine. This is normally a very long list and should be used with care.
Has Updates: Whether there are updates available for the machine in question. If the server has a newer version of a package than the machine does, this value will be "True."
Success Count: Number of successful transactions completed by the machine.
Failure Count: Number of failed transactions for this machine.
CPU: The machine CPU.
Memory: Amount of RAM installed on the machine.
Last Status: Whether the last transaction conducted by the machine succeeded or failed.
Last Transaction: Date of the last transaction performed by this machine.

For transactions, you can display:

Name: The transaction name, as set in the Transactions tool. Because each row represents a single package or script action on a single machine, many rows may have the same transaction name.
Status: Whether the transaction was successful.
End Time: Time that the machine completed the transaction and sent a success or failure message to the server.
Target: The operating system and hardware running on the machine conducting the transaction.
Message: A message from the server or client about the transaction. May be blank.
Client: The client program initiating the transaction. This is Red Carpet Command Line Client for rug transactions, GUI Client for GUI client updates, or RCServer for server-initiated transactions.
Version: The version of the client program that initiated the transaction.

If you have assigned scripts to your transactions, you can display the following information:

Type: Whether the script was set to run before or after package transactions.
Exit status: The exit status provided by the script. Typically a number, with 0 indicating success.
Stderr: The standard error, or stderr, output from the script. Contains error messages or other information, depending upon the script.
Stdout: The standard output, or stdout, from the script. Contains action messages or other information, depending upon the script.
Time: the time the script was run.

The Transaction Package refers to the software installed, upgraded, or removed during the action described in any given row. You may display the following information about the package:

Action: Whether the package was upgraded, installed, or removed. If a package has been downgraded, it will be displayed as package removal and the subsequent installation of an earlier version.
Package Name: The name of the package in this action.
Cur. Package Epoch: The epoch of the package now installed on the machine.
Cur. Package Version: The version of the package now installed on the machine.
Cur. Package Release: The release number of the package now installed on the machine.
Old Package Epoch: The epoch of the package that was installed on the machine prior to the transaction.
Old Package Version: The version of the package that was installed on the machine prior to the transaction.
Old Package Release: The release number of the package that was installed on the machine prior to the transaction.
Time: The time and date that rcd finished with the package action. This is in contrast with the transaction end time, which indicates the time that the machine finished conducting all portions of the entire transaction.

Adding Filters to Custom Reports

Once you have selected the data objects you will display, you will want to filter them by content. Depending on the data you have chosen to display in your report columns, different types of filters will be available to you.

Specifically, if you have chosen to display any information about one type of object, you can filter by any attribute of that object. However, if you do not display any attributes of an object, you cannot filter by any attribute of the object. For example, if you display machine names, you can filter by group membership, even if group membership is not one of your columns.

Click the Add New Filter Rule link to add a new filter.
Select any of the values from the drop-down list.
Select a comparison operator: Equal To, Greater Than, Less Than, or Contains.
Enter the values you wish to search for.
If you create multiple filters, decide how to relate them. Select And to show transactions that match all your filter rules. Select Or to show transactions that match one or more.