Technical documentation

Settings Tweaks

NetYCE supports some settings that can be modified by the customer to change specific behaviour. Usually these are procedure or policy related. They can be found in the Admin → Setup → Settings section of the main menu.

This article describes the Tweaks that are listed under the “Tweaks” class.

See the generic article on the General settings form on how to use it.

General Tweaks

AllowCustomReportsDecrypt

Custom reports will decrypt passwords only for those user-levels present in String (eg: '456'). Default is '456'. The Num value has no function and is ignored.

The NetYCE database has many encrypted columns that are decrypted for front-end and back-end purposes on the fly. This tweak controls the same dynamic decryption behaviour for user custom reports. Given the confidentiality of some of the information, these reports could easily circumvent the security policies of the customer. By specifying the user-levels permitted to get access to this dynamic encryption, the policies can be enforced.

These user-levels correspond to the Global Permission Level defined in the User Group the operator is a member of. The levels range from 0 to 6, mapping respectively to: 'disabled', 'browser', 'operator', 'engineer', 'modeller', 'manager', and 'system'.

Email_report_body_limit

Custom reports can be emailed after scheduled execution. The CSV output is included in the email body AND as an attachment. This tweak controls how many CSV lines may be included in the email body before truncating. The default is 500 lines.

Setting this value to “0” will result in an email with no CSV lines in the body and only an attachment. The attached CSV file is never truncated and always included.

AllowTemplateEdit

When number set <>0, editing of production template revision is allowed. Default is '0'. The String value has no function and is ignored.

The tweak removes the strict enforcing of the requirement that for any template change, a new revision must be created, providing a fully traceable change log of the templates. However for test- and development-environments this quickly results in overkill and a cumbersome process.

Allow_topo_multipoint

For Client_type in <String>, permit Service_type to add many topo links on a port when <Num> not 0.

The front-end and the Service-types do not allow a device port to have multiple topology connections since they are point-to-point by nature.

However, for migration purposes a feature to selectively allow multiple links per port is desirable. For this purpose the Lookup tweak 'Allow_topo_multipoint' is intended. It can allow or deny this behaviour per Client-type.

The default Tweak has no Client-type specified in the String value, indicating its setting applies to all Client-types. The Num value determines the setting itself: a zero for the normal not-permitted action (conform existing policies) and a non-zero for the permitted action.

A tweak record with this name (Allow_topo_multipoint) can be added for each Client-type, overruling this setting using the Num value. This permits the configuration where the default action is not-permitted, but where for one or two Client-types this operation is granted.

Change_hostname

When Num value is not 0, a Hostname change is not restricted to its node-type function

The Node details form will normally not allow you to alter a Hostname because it was generated within the constraints of the Node-type definitions.

If this tweak is enabled, the Hostname can be changed into any free hostname.

Without this tweak, the permitted name changes will be limited to the Node-type definition restraints.

Login_legal_message

If the description is set, and the numerical value is set to 1 then this text is shown at the bottom of the login page. This allows you to specify a legal message to show to users attempting to authenticate.

This feature supports html tags such as <b> and <br>

Debug_max_days

Maximum age in days before ending any NetYCE debug mode. Default = 1 day (24h), Forever = 0

NetYCE uses two flag-files to control the debugging level of nearly all of its components. The debug level is enabled by creating the file /opt/yce/etc/yce_debug. When it exists, the various daemons will create additional log files in /var/opt/yce/logs/ which will have file names like yce_<daemon>_debug.log.

The development level is enabled by creating the file /opt/yce/etc/yce_development. When it exists, the file /var/opt/yce/yce_dev_debug.log is created. It will mostly contain very detailed information on the interaction with the devices.

Due to the amount of information that will be created in these log files, they are automatically emptied out daily by the log_maint.pl script at 22:15 (see Logging aging tweaks).

To prevent the generation of debug and development log files over longer periods of time, the tweak 'Debug_max_days' is by default set to 1 day. This implies that the yce_debug and yce_development flag files will be removed 24 hours after they were created.

Only when these logging levels are required for longer periods should this tweak be set to more days. If set to '0', the flag files will never be removed.

Default_site_status

Num_value defines the initial site status (1=active, 2=planned, 0=obsolete, ..

When creating a new site it must have an initial status. This initial status is defined using this tweak. The default is '1' which is translated to 'active'. These translations are also defined in the Lookup form but under the class 'Translation'. The entries using de variable SiteStatus define the available site statuses and their corresponding translations.

Remove_deleted_supernets

Enabling this tweak will delete the supernets from the database when no longer in use. The default behavior will not delete these supernets, so they are available for re-use without re-adding them. This also allows for reservations which are to be used at a later point in time.

Send_email_to

With this setting you are able to define when an email is send, if it should go to the user defined email address, the group defined email address or both.

When the setting is set to 'user' and the email address is not defined it is send to the group email address.

Sched_ignore_locks

This setting can disable the distributed schedulers “node-lock” behaviour. Jobs will be kept in a 'waiting' state while another job on that same node is still running. These global node-locks are released after 10 minutes.

The scheduler will not wait for jobs running on same node when Num_value > 0. The default is '0'. This setting applies to all NetYCE servers and requires the 'yce_sched' process on each server to be restarted to take effect.

Main_substring_search

The 'Search' function of the main Build overview form allows the user to locate clients, sites, nodes, services and vpns using several fields of these objects. The search string can optionally include wildcards (* and ?).

When NOT using wildcards, the search string is generally taken as a literal match, not as a substring. The 'Main_substring_search' tweak, when set, will change this into a substring match.

The initial value of this tweak enables the 'substring' match.

Filter_cmdb_nodes

CMDB nodes that are assigned a client-type will be included in the node grid of the main Build overview form. As these CMDB nodes cannot be manipulated from within the grid, it might be desirable to filter the CMDB nodes from the Node grid.

The 'Filter_cmdb_nodes' tweak, when set, will hide the CMDB nodes from the node grid.

The initial value of this tweak permits the CMDB nodes to be included in the view.

Template_markers

We added support for the variables <current_template> and <current_vendor> that will have the active template name and the verdor during its generation. This allows for marking the start and end of each template and can be used in conditionals.

However, a few shortcomings with this approach were observed: First, all templates will need modification - an unpleasant task. Second, when a sub-template is done, config generation returns to its parent template to process the remaining lines of that template. It is often hard to locate which template that was, especially when the template tree has multiple levels.

To simplify these issues, this “Template_markers” Tweak inserts automatic 'current template' comments that use these new variables. It will insert comment lines in the generated output at the template 'start', template 'done' and template 'resume' places.

The inserted comments are controlled by the Num_value field of the “Template_markers” Tweak: When it equals 1 - print 'start' template info; when 2 - also include 'done'; when 3 - also include 'resume' comments. The default is to include none (0).

With hierarchical templates, the message text indentation follows the levels. The example below shows the inserted comments when all three types are enabled. The normally generated configuration lines were removed for calrity:

# -- Template start - HP5800_24_core | HP_C5
# --  Template start - Basis | HP_C5
# --  Template done - Basis
# -- Template resume - HP5800_24_core
# --  Template start - Network_mgmt | HP_C5
# --  Template done - Network_mgmt
# -- Template resume - HP5800_24_core
# --  Template start - Sflow | HP_C5
# --  Template done - Sflow
# -- Template resume - HP5800_24_core
# --  Template start - DHCP | HP_C5
# --   Template start - DHCP_RCO | HP_C5
# --   Template done - DHCP_RCO
# --  Template resume - DHCP
# --  Template done - DHCP
# -- Template resume - HP5800_24_core
::etc::
# -- Template resume - HP5800_24_core
# -- Template done - HP5800_24_core

Logging aging/ageing tweaks

NetYCE maintains many log files and logging data tables on its system(s) and database. All logs are size/age rotated or capped by a maximum age. The Tweaks in this category allow the system owner to modify the default aging parameters for the various logging types.

All (numeric) values are in days.

The logging aging is maintained by the daily logging cleanup script, bin/log_maint.pl, that is executed daily using the cron facility. It starts at 22:15 by default.

This logging cleanup script itself logs all its actions in /var/opt/yce/logs/yce_maint.log. This logfile rotates at 500.000 bytes.

The default crontab entry (from the yce user!) is listed below:

#--- YCE daily maintenance ---------------------------------
#    Log, Job and Output directory cleanup
15 22 * * * /opt/yce/bin/log_maint.pl > /dev/null 2>&1

Age_action_logs

Do not keep Action_log entries older than Num_value days. Default = 400. The String value has no function and is ignored.

The Action_log is a table in the database where user activity is logged. It also has the entries created by jobs using scenarios with the “log_action” command.