notetaker

Set of scripts and configurations that make it easy to keep a system changelog.

Task that it tries to solve is described at TaskServerSystemLog.

It is installed on our testing server valter.

latest news

see latest source at http://dev.riseup.net/websvn/

key files

/var/local/log/Dec-2003

text file to which notes are added, format is Month-Year

/usr/local/bin/notetaker

shellscript with two commands:

• add - add new note, with auto date-username stamp

• mail - emails latest log to address specified in the script, with

yesterdays date, so that cron job can run at the beginning of a new month, yet email previous month's log

/usr/local/bin/motd.diff

motd.diff was written to make motd useful again, so that it only shows new motd messages, since the last time user loged in.

if you run motd.diff from your .login or .profile files, it will watch the system log file i.e this months file in /var/local/log/Month-Year in the case of notetake. if the message hasn't changed since the last time you logged in, or if part of the message has been deleted, motd.diff won't show anything. otherwise, motd.diff will show you any lines that have been added to the file (these are usually new notices).

after showing you the new messages, motd.diff will wait for you to press the return key. this keeps messages from scrolling off the screen before you read them. (note: it won't wait if the standard input is not a terminal -- if you're running it from an at job, for instance.)

issues

who gets to see messages

not all users need to see system log message, yet, if we add a line to run motd.diff to /etc/profiles, they are likely to see them. Solution could be to add a wrapper around motd.diff that checks whether user should see the messages, by some criteria (a sudoer/superuser, or member of some group), before it displays the message.

Another issues is that many sys-admins use screen and therefore might not see motd for days, weeks, if not months.

meeting of system log requirements

wiki features give us far richer documentation environment than we have with plain text files. Yet, when working on the command line (cl), which is what we do almost all the time, switching to web posting is a real pain. That is where notetaker shines, with instant posting from the cl. Another good thing about it is that each time we enter our work environment, we automaticaly get to see the system log since the last time we were there. Notetaker lacks: links, metadata, ability to be edited, history of edits.