- Petter Reinholdtsen + Petter Reinholdtsen
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@
I regi av +personvernforeningen har jeg +startet på +et +kart over overvåkningskamera i Norge. Bakgrunnen er at det etter +min mening bærer galt avsted med den massive overvåkningen som +finner sted i Norge i dag, og at flere og flere overvåkningskamera +gjør det vanskeligere og vanskeligere å gå igjennom livet uten at +små og store brødre trenger inn i ens private sfære. Datatilsynet +har et register over kameraovervåkning, men det viser seg å være +ubrukelig både til å finne ut hvor det er kamera plassert, og til å +sjekke om et kamera en kommer over er registrert. Dette nye kartet +fikser en av disse manglene, men det vil fortsatt være umulig å vite +om et kamera er registrert etter lovens krav eller ikke. Pr. nå er +22 kamera i Oslo registrert, og det trengs flere til å registrere +alle. Informasjonen registreres direkte inn i OpenStreetmap, sa hentes det +automatisk over i spesialkartet.
+ +At work with the University of Oslo, we have several hundred computers +in our computing center. This give us a challenge in tracking the +location and cabling of the computers, when they are added, moved and +removed. Some times the location register is not updated when a +computer is inserted or moved and we then have to search the room for +the "missing" computer.
+ +In the last issue of Linux Journal, I came across a project +libdmtx to write and read bar +code blocks as defined in the +The Data Matrix +Standard. This is bar codes that can be read with a normal +digital camera, for example that on a cell phone, and several such bar +codes can be read by libdmtx from one picture. The bar code standard +allow up to 2 KiB to be written in the tag. There is another project +with a bar code +writer written in postscript capable of creating such bar codes, +but this was the first time I found a tool to read these bar +codes.
+ +It occurred to me that this could be used to tag and track the +machines in our computing center. If both racks and computers are +tagged this way, we can use a picture of the rack and all its +computers to detect the rack location of any computer in that rack. +If we do this regularly for the entire room, we will find all +locations, and can detect movements and removals.
+ +I decided to test if this would work in practice, and picked a +random rack and tagged all the machines with their names. Next, I +took pictures with my digital camera, and gave the dmtxread program +these JPEG pictures to see how many tags it could read. This worked +fairly well. If the pictures was well focused and not taken from the +side, all tags in the image could be read. Because of limited space +between the racks, I was unable to get a good picture of the entire +rack, but could without problem read all tags from a picture covering +about half the rack. I had to limit the search time used by dmtxread +to 60000 ms to make sure it terminated in a reasonable time frame.
+ +My conclusion is that this could work, and we should probably look +at adjusting our computer tagging procedures to use bar codes for +easier automatic tracking of computers.
+ +At work, we have a few hundred Linux servers, and with that amount +of hardware it is important to keep track of when the hardware support +contract expire for each server. We have a machine (and service) +register, which until recently did not contain much useful besides the +machine room location and contact information for the system owner for +each machine. To make it easier for us to track support contract +status, I've recently spent time on extending the machine register to +include information about when the support contract expire, and to tag +machines with expired contracts to make it easy to get a list of such +machines. I extended a perl script already being used to import +information about machines into the register, to also do some screen +scraping off the sites of Dell, HP and IBM (our majority of machines +are from these vendors), and automatically check the support status +for the relevant machines. This make the support status information +easily available and I hope it will make it easier for the computer +owner to know when to get new hardware or renew the support contract. +The result of this work documented that 27% of the machines in the +registry is without a support contract, and made it very easy to find +them. 27% might seem like a lot, but I see it more as the case of us +using machines a bit longer than the 3 years a normal support contract +last, to have test machines and a platform for less important +services. After all, the machines without a contract are working fine +at the moment and the lack of contract is only a problem if any of +them break down. When that happen, we can either fix it using spare +parts from other machines or move the service to another old +machine.
+ +I believe the code for screen scraping the Dell site was originally +written by Trond Hasle Amundsen, and later adjusted by me and Morten +Werner Forsbring. The HP scraping was written by me after reading a +nice article in ;login: about how to use WWW::Mechanize, and the IBM +scraping was written by me based on the Dell code. I know the HTML +parsing could be done using nice libraries, but did not want to +introduce more dependencies. This is the current incarnation:
+ +
+use LWP::Simple;
+use POSIX;
+use WWW::Mechanize;
+use Date::Parse;
+[...]
+sub get_support_info {
+ my ($machine, $model, $serial, $productnumber) = @_;
+ my $str;
+
+ if ( $model =~ m/^Dell / ) {
+ # fetch website from Dell support
+ my $url = "http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/no/details?c=no&cs=nodhs1&l=no&s=dhs&ServiceTag=$serial";
+ my $webpage = get($url);
+ return undef unless ($webpage);
+
+ my $daysleft = -1;
+ my @lines = split(/\n/, $webpage);
+ foreach my $line (@lines) {
+ next unless ($line =~ m/Beskrivelse/);
+ $line =~ s/<[^>]+?>/;/gm;
+ $line =~ s/^.+?;(Beskrivelse;)/$1/;
+
+ my @f = split(/\;/, $line);
+ @f = @f[13 .. $#f];
+ my $lastend = "";
+ while ($f[3] eq "DELL") {
+ my ($type, $startstr, $endstr, $days) = @f[0, 5, 7, 10];
+
+ my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
+ localtime(str2time($startstr)));
+ my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
+ localtime(str2time($endstr)));
+ $str .= "$type $start -> $end ";
+ @f = @f[14 .. $#f];
+ $lastend = $end if ($end gt $lastend);
+ }
+ my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
+ tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
+ if ($lastend lt $today);
+ }
+ } elsif ( $model =~ m/^HP / ) {
+ my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
+ my $url =
+ 'http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/ewarranty/warrantyInput.do';
+ $mech->get($url);
+ my $fields = {
+ 'BODServiceID' => 'NA',
+ 'RegisteredPurchaseDate' => '',
+ 'country' => 'NO',
+ 'productNumber' => $productnumber,
+ 'serialNumber1' => $serial,
+ };
+ $mech->submit_form( form_number => 2,
+ fields => $fields );
+ # Next step is screen scraping
+ my $content = $mech->content();
+
+ $content =~ s/<[^>]+?>/;/gm;
+ $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
+ $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
+ $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
+
+ my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
+
+ while ($content =~ m/;Warranty Type;/) {
+ my ($type, $status, $startstr, $stopstr) = $content =~
+ m/;Warranty Type;([^;]+);.+?;Status;(\w+);Start Date;([^;]+);End Date;([^;]+);/;
+ $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty Type;//;
+ my $start = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
+ localtime(str2time($startstr)));
+ my $end = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d",
+ localtime(str2time($stopstr)));
+
+ $str .= "$type ($status) $start -> $end ";
+
+ tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
+ if ($end lt $today);
+ }
+ } elsif ( $model =~ m/^IBM / ) {
+ # This code ignore extended support contracts.
+ my ($producttype) = $model =~ m/.*-\[(.{4}).+\]-/;
+ if ($producttype && $serial) {
+ my $content =
+ get("http://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/warranty?action=warranty&brandind=5000008&Submit=Submit&type=$producttype&serial=$serial");
+ if ($content) {
+ $content =~ s/<[^>]+?>/;/gm;
+ $content =~ s/\s+/ /gm;
+ $content =~ s/;\s*;/;;/gm;
+ $content =~ s/;[\s;]+/;/gm;
+
+ $content =~ s/^.+?;Warranty status;//;
+ my ($status, $end) = $content =~ m/;Warranty status;([^;]+)\s*;Expiration date;(\S+) ;/;
+
+ $str .= "($status) -> $end ";
+
+ my $today = POSIX::strftime("%Y-%m-%d", localtime(time));
+ tag_machine_unsupported($machine)
+ if ($end lt $today);
+ }
+ }
+ }
+ return $str;
+}
+
+
+Here are some examples on how to use the function, using fake +serial numbers. The information passed in as arguments are fetched +from dmidecode.
+ +
+print get_support_info("hp.host", "HP ProLiant BL460c G1", "1234567890"
+ "447707-B21");
+print get_support_info("dell.host", "Dell Inc. PowerEdge 2950", "1234567");
+print get_support_info("ibm.host", "IBM eserver xSeries 345 -[867061X]-",
+ "1234567");
+
+
+I would recommend this approach for tracking support contracts for +everyone with more than a few computers to administer. :)
+ +Update 2009-03-06: The IBM page do not include extended support +contracts, so it is useless in that case. The original Dell code do +not handle extended support contracts either, but has been updated to +do so.
+ +
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