topic Re: Users last logon time in Administration and Deployment

Users last logon time

Srdjan — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 09:11:39 GMT

Hello,

Does anyone know if is it possible to list all users and their last login time?
Also how to list when the last changes were made to all groups-add\remove users, and a description of what exactly was done?

Thanks!

Re: Users last logon time

JosvanderVelden — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 09:51:45 GMT

You'll have to elaborate on the scenario! Users of what? Base SAS, the SAS metadata server, SAS BI web clients, SAS Viya GUI-users, users that consume SAS via APIs?
Provide as much details as possible so we don't have to guess.

Re: Users last logon time

Srdjan — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 10:05:25 GMT

Hi,

Users are connecting to SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Miner, so I guess users are connecting to SAS metadata server.

The Metadata server is on Windows.

Feel free to ask additional questions if something is unclear.

Thanks in advance

Re: Users last logon time

MarcoGhiglieri — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 11:18:42 GMT

AFAIK there's nothing working Out o the Box. For a similar audit activity, I put together some code to get users list, creation and last update dates from Metadata, and parse the Metadata server logs to get the last access timestamp.
Never gone farther with groups.

Re: Users last logon time

andreas_lds — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 11:27:01 GMT

You need to process the logs of the metadata server. Parsing those logs can be done with sas - not to difficult. Or with any other scripting language.

Re: Users last logon time

Srdjan — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 11:34:59 GMT

Hi Marco,

Could you please share this code here in chat?

I couldn't find it in the link you post.

Thanks in advance

Re: Users last logon time

Srdjan — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 11:55:44 GMT

Hi Andreas,

Could you please give me some examples of how to process the logs of the metadata server?

Thanks in advance

Re: Users last logon time

AhmedAl_Attar — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 12:25:59 GMT

Hi @MarcoGhiglieri @Srdjan

I'm not sure I agree with your statement "AFAIK there's nothing working Out o the Box" here!

You'll need to put it in the correct context! It would be true if you are talking about SAS Base/SAS Foundation.

Otherwise if you are talking about the SAS Enterprise Business Intelligence platform (EBI), SAS Institute has added this sort of functionality back in SAS 9.4 M2 (Aug 2014) SAS Environment Manager Service Architecture Framework , and provided Report Center with SAS 9.4 M3 (Jul 2015) "Report Center: SAS SysAdmin's secret weapon"

@Srdjan Double check with your SAS Administrator the version and bundle of your SAS Deployment to see if the SAS Environment Manager is part of your Licensed SAS Software.

Here is a video link on how to use the Report Center: Using the SAS Environment Manager Report Center to Explore Auditing Data

Hope this helps,

Ahmed

Re: Users last logon time

AhmedAl_Attar — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 12:42:39 GMT

One more link from 2016 to look into
Opening Up the SAS Environment Manager Report Center

Re: Users last logon time

Srdjan — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 13:07:21 GMT

Hi Ahmed,

Thanks for your suggestion.

Unfortunately, I would say we don't have the Report Center configured.

Is there any other way to get the required data?

Kind regards

Re: Users last logon time

AhmedAl_Attar — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 13:14:40 GMT

@Srdjan

Open this page SAS Environment Manager Service Architecture Framework

Scroll down till you see this section

Initializing SAS Environment Manager Service Architecture Framework for SAS 9.4M8 quick start guide (or the corresponding guide for SAS 9.4M7, SAS 9.4M6, SAS 9.4M5, SAS 9.4M5, SAS 9.4M4, SAS 9.4M3)

Select the link that matches your SAS deployment, and go through the initialization steps

Re: Users last logon time

gwootton — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 13:24:58 GMT

If you have not enabled the SAS Service Architecture to use it's built in report, you could use this program I wrote:

https://github.com/sascommunities/technical-support-code/blob/main/usage/administration/metadata_server_log_parser_s9.sas

It does not read in information about group or user modifications.

Re: Users last logon time

Srdjan — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 14:21:47 GMT

Thank you very much Ahmed,

We will definitely try to set up the Report Center.

For now I'm good with the code that @gwootton posted on the github.

Kind regards

Re: Users last logon time

Srdjan — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 14:29:52 GMT

Thank you gwootton,

This is what I needed.
I will try another way to find information about group or user modifications.

Kind regards

Re: Users last logon time

Jlochoa — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 14:47:04 GMT

Hi Greg,
Is there a way to use (with SASSTUDIO) your code on a Metadata Server running on a separate machine?

Re: Users last logon time

AhmedAl_Attar — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 15:05:43 GMT

Hi @Jlochoa

For any SAS Client connecting to SAS Metadata Server, the following code sholuld allow you to access what needed

/* Assign Metadata Server Options */
OPTIONS METASERVER=<metaDataServerHost>
	METAPORT=<metaDataServerPort>
	METAUSER="<metaUserId>"
        METAPASS="<metaUserPw>"
        METAPROTOCOL=bridge;

PS. Replace the values inside the <> with your site settings

You'll be connected to the metadata server, and running the %mdxxxx macros will extract the data correctly.

Hope this helps,

Ahmed

Re: Users last logon time

gwootton — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 15:19:36 GMT

FYI, I've updated the program to also read in the audit lines for creating and deleting users and adding and removing members from a group. This should get published to the github this evening.

Re: Users last logon time

gwootton — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 15:21:34 GMT

The code reads Metadata log files, so those files would need to be accessible to the SAS session. You would copy them from the Metadata Server host to the Compute tier host before running the program.

Re: Users last logon time

gwootton — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 15:23:35 GMT

A SAS Studio session runs on a Workspace Server which should already have a connection to the metadata server, however this particular program does not pull information from the Metadata Server, it reads supplied log files line by line and puts the information gathered into a series of SAS data sets.