running usage reports generates errors

[Anonymoose]

hello all -

need some assistance configuring a usage report. We need to determine which users are overusing the system, but the 'Top 10 users by data transfer' report doesn't appear to work correctly. I've tried running test reports for the month of July. If I select the all users checkbox, the report outputs 10 random users with 0K usage in bytes.



If I manually select all users from the candidate list and ADD them to the chosen list, the report returns an Apache error:

Request-URI Too Large
The requested URL's length exceeds the capacity limit for this server.


I've also tried just selecting random individual users and running the report, every user I've tried just returns back 0K bytes of usage.

How can I generate this report to show (ideally) ALL users' usage? If this isn't possible, the top 10 usage over a given period - week/month/etc?

[Anonymoose]

What I would really want is the ability to track usage upload/download for all users in a given period ie: last 24 hours, last hour, etc, not just the current session as shown in the Status page. Is this possible at all?

[whizkidz]

If you want to measure total data transfer per user.
you must enable total data transfer counting during user creation or enable it afterwards.
this not selected by default, only upload/download counting is selected.

[Anonymoose]

>>If you want to measure total data transfer per user.
you must enable total data transfer counting during user creation or enable it afterwards.
this not selected by default, only upload/download counting is selected.

I have examined the User accounts settings now, and I see that UPLOAD, DOWNLOAD and TOTAL data transfer logging are three separate functions, and of course- only two of them are enabled. Yet any useful report such as the Top 10 users by bandwidth is impossible to run with this default setting because this obviously implies that this report requires the TOTAL bandwidth value.

Does anyone else see the failure in logic of this? Why would you record two separate statistics, but not the combination of them? Why is this even a separate function to be enabled if you're already recording values (A) and (B) by default, why do you need (C) when you can add (A)+(B) to tabulate the report? And thirdly, this means some of the most immediately useful reports do not work at all by default.

Also, why is there no option to export the report in any format either? To make use of the report you are reduced to copy and paste functionality and the graph it generates is absolutely useless.

[alan]

One of the reason is that some operators want to restrict data transfer by Download or Upload specifically. The Total is actually another requirement so they serve different purpose.
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[Anonymoose]

>>One of the reason is that some operators want to restrict data transfer by Download or Upload specifically. The Total is actually another requirement so they serve different purpose.

But TOTAL data transfer is a sum of UPLOAD + DOWNLOAD, is it not? So why would it need to be a separate logged counter *which is not enabled by default*??

If an operator wanted to use this as a function to restrict usage why wouldn't the system simply ADD THE TWO EXISTING DEFAULT COUNTERS TOGETHER to calculate it? As it stands, the system:

1) does not record a value for TOTAL usage by default
2) cannot add the two existing values it does record by default to generate its own Top 10 Users report
3) forces an operator to copy and paste DOWNLOAD and UPLOAD values, calculate and sort the values manually in a spreadsheet in order to generate a useful report

And to top it off, I now find that the system cannot edit account properties in bulk to enable the TOTAL usage counter- I must enable this counter on each individual account. Thankfully there are only 200 of them!

I wanted to run a simple report to determine which users were using excessive bandwidth so they can be notified, as we do not restrict access otherwise. But I cannot run any report which shows usage by user, except to run a report on each individual user.. 200 times. Because the system:

A) does not record total usage as a default value
B) the system does not/cannot calculate total usage by adding the two values it does record by default and
C) requires the total usage value to generate a ranked report on usage and
D) does not allow administrators to change/enable the total usage counter on all users in bulk

I believe these are serious mistakes in the implementation of Firstspot. Either all these counters should be enabled by default, or the system should simply derive the missing values from those it does collect. The system should also allow global changes to user accounts- to enable or disable features, permissions or logging. The system also needs the ability to export its reports in some editable format - perhaps HTML or CSV at least.

[alan]

Again, not all operators need reporting. Some of the them just want restrict download specifically (Data Transfer Quota). That is the reason we separate download and upload. Only from the reporting point-of-view total=upload+download. From Data Transfer Quota point-of-view, download/upload/total are three distinct attributes can be used separately.

How do you create the username is in the first place? Unless you create 200 users under Configuration Manager -> Users one-by-one, strictly speaking there is no concept of "default value". Any user attribute can be (and should be) initialized by Plan. You should adjust and test the Plan value to suit your need before the actual deployment.

For your case, you simply use SQL statement to change all the user attributes all at once. Below are the steps:

1) backup the table fsusr by backing up the three files fsusr.dbf, fsusr.inf, fsusr.mdx under FirstSpot\datasource directory

2) shutdown FirstSpot

3) execute the below SQL using Microsoft Query (which is included in Microsoft Office) or PHP. Refer to http://patronsoft.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1514 for more information. Also, refer to chapter 5 of firstspot_guide.pdf for the table fsusr definition as you may need to adjustment the field value accordingly.

[Anonymoose]

[alan]

Based on your feedback and internal discussion, we decide to create a patch for Reporting for you. The new reporting behavior will use Download and Upload Data Transfer value if Total is zero. Below is the instruction:

1) download the unzip the file at http://patronsoft.com/firstspot/download/patch/8011/reportResult.zip

2) copy and replace the php file under FirstSpot\cfgmgr directory (backup the original file first)

This patch will be included in FirstSpot v8.0.11.
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