ET/BWMGR HTML Management Interface

Getting Started

The installation process will put the components of the ET/BWMGR HTML interface in place. If you have problems running it, you should make certain that the following setup had been properly implemented:

• bwadmin.htm (bwadmin.html in linux) should be in a directory accessible by an HTML browser (document root)
• bwcmd should be in subdirectory /cgi-bin/et of your HTTP server's cgi directory. Its permissions must be rwx for root and it also must run as root (chmod 4755 bwcmd). If you have problems with graphics you can also try to rename bwcmd.static to bwcmd and use that.
• bwmgrd must be in /usr/local/sbin and must be executable
• the directory /var/log/bwsessions must exist
• the directories /usr/local/etc/bwmgr/data and /usr/local/etc/bwmgr/config must exist
• the file /usr/local/etc/bwmgr/config/bwmgr.cfg must have the root directory of your http document root

an additional setup note is that you will want to run a file named rc.bwmgr on system boot. Typically this is put in /etc/rc.local at the end of the file as follows:

sh rc.bwmgr

/etc/rc.bwmgr will be created/update by the ET/BWMGR HTML interface whenever a change is made. This file will contain the command line representation of your bandwidth manager configuration that is necessary to recreate your environment upon reboot.

Logging In

The ET/BWMGR GUI implements security in the form of session ids, which are created when a user successfully logs into the system. The start-up page provided is a page named bwadmin.htm which has 2 fields, a user name and password. The system uses unix system names and passwords to authenticate rather than implementing a separate mechanism. Currently, only users that are members of the "wheel" group will be granted access to the bandwidth manager administration pages.

Simply enter your unix user ID and password and press the "Log In" button.

The Main Menu

Once you have been authenticated, you will be assigned a session_id that will expire after 30 minutes of inactivity. This id is stored in the HTML pages and is automatically checked whenever you do something.

The first page you will see is the ET/BWMGR Administration Menu as below:

The first thing to do is to view your "defaults". For most systems, these settings can be used without modification, but it is a good idea to familiarize yourselve with them: You can view and edit them by clicking the "Edit Defaults" button.

The defaults menu allows you to set the Default Root, which is the equivalent of your "DocumentRoot" in Apache. This is the default directory that your httpd server uses as "/". On BSD systems, the default is typically "/usr/local/www/data" as shown. In linux its "/home/httpd/data". If you are using the ET/ADMIN interface on ET rackmount systems, you should have this set to "/usr/local/webmin" by default.

The Session Timeout is the time afterwhich your login to the HTML interface will expire if there is no activity. The SNMP Community is really just a prefix which goes before your SNMP strings instead of "public". If you have a complicated private string you may not be able to access your machines with this product. The Stats Period is the gathering period used by bwmgrd. The internal graphs require data at 300 second (5 minute) intervals, so this setting must divide evenly into 300. 30 is the minimum, so settings of 30, 60, 100, 150, and 300 are allowed. Note that gathering data more often may substantially increase the size of your datebase, and if you have many stats rules the size increase can be significant. You should not use a setting under 300 unless you absolutely must for some external purpose.

Once you have set your defaults, you are ready to start the bwmgr on your machine. As you can see from the "Admin Menu" above both the bandwidth manager and the bwmgrd daemon are shown to be "not running". If you previously were using the ET/BWMGR then your existing configuration will be shown here and the bwmgr should be "running". In this case, the daemon may still show "not running". In either case, you should click on the "Start BWMGR" button to display the following screen:

If you are upgrading to the GUI then your startup interface and key will be displayed in the form fields. If you are running the ET/BWMGR for the first time then you will see a screen similar to the above. The fields in the startup menu allow you to tune your system, but be careful changing these settings before you understand their impact. The Window setting is the period within which bandwidth management is implemented in 1/10th of a second. The default setting of 5 is 1/2 second. A setting of 1 allows for the smoothest operation, but also has 5 times the system overhead of the default setting. You can try lower settings but you may have to increase it if your system becomes unstable. The Stats Period is the time period (in seconds) in which maximum and minimum thresholds are calculated, and is also the time period over which instantaneous statistical values are displayed. This setting should not be set to be less than 10 seconds. The Max Buffer Usage allows the system to drop traffic when this threshold is reached, which can help keep your system from running out of memory and also help from distressing a machine under attack. For FreeBSD, this should be less than your NMB_CLUSTERS setting by 10% or so.

Once your have reviewed your settings, you can start the bwmgr by clicking the "Start BWMGR" key. When you do this, /etc/rc.bwmgr will be created/updated with the information provided and will also insert the necessary command to start the daemon. The bandwidth manager will be started, and will also attempt to start the bwmgrd daemon. If the daemon doesnt show "running" afterwards, check /var/log/bwmgrd.log for information, and you may also try to start it manually.

If you have a v3.2 key you can register it with the Register BWMGR button. You cannot register keys for versions less than v3.2.

Getting an Authentication Key

Once you have run the demo and decide you want to purchase the ET/BWMGR, you will have to obtain a key from Emerging Technologies. From this Start-up screen, the pull-down field will contain all of the interfaces that can be used in this machine. For example:

the above shows that there is an ethernet card (eth0) with address 00:90:27:1c:1c:ef, and an ethernet card (eth1) with address 00:04:ac:a6:1e:0b. When requesting your key, you should provide ET with either of these numbers, unless you are running LINUX in which case you MUST use eth0 as you key address. You will only use your key to start the bandwidth manager, after which it will operate on any interface. The only requirement is that the card with the address that you give us MUST be in the PC when you start it.

When you get your key, select the interface with the address that you gave us and replace "demo" with the key provided. Then, click "Start BWMGR" and to start the bandwidth manager. If you had previously installed the daemon (that is, if you were previously running the demo), then you don't have to reboot the machine; you should be ready to go!

Adding and Editing Rules