Because of several issues with SAS VA Auditing (table audit_visualanalytics has not been updated for months, despite va.AuditingEnabled=true) , I finally found a checklist, which was very helpful: "http://support.sas.com/kb/60/182.html#Checklist"
With #6 of this checklist I found that sasadm did not have a session in the pooled workspace server
In this checklist at #6 It says:
For releases 7.1 and 7.2, the pooled workspace server session for auditing is still active. There are several ways to check this. For example, you can review the object spawner logs, or you can perform the following steps in SAS Management Console:
Because I want to automate some checks, I would like to know how I can identify from the object spawner log that the session for sasadm@saspw is active or not? As I have already spent some time in investigating and don't want to re-invent the wheel, I would like to know if someone knows how to retrieve this information (Linux / SAS 9.4 M2).
Thanks in advance for your help
Marco
Hello @Marco_Eandis,
you have a few ways to do what I think you need, I will list them below.
But I think it would be much better if you check and install available hotfixes (or maintenances, or both), to properly solve all of those problems. There are several that are related to the audit tables.
1- Re-active option: to parse the Obj Spawner log - it should appear the user and if the session was created or terminated. Challenge: identify and keep track of the right session you look for.
2- Pro-active option: you could add some additional logic to the autoexec of the pooled workspace server (autoexec_usermods) that, if user is sasadm, and the PID Y, it can write to a log or table. Challenge: you won't know when the session terminates. For that purpose, you would need an additional script to read this table and check the status of the process with PID Y, to know when that session terminates.
Regards,
Juan
Hello @Marco_Eandis,
you have a few ways to do what I think you need, I will list them below.
But I think it would be much better if you check and install available hotfixes (or maintenances, or both), to properly solve all of those problems. There are several that are related to the audit tables.
1- Re-active option: to parse the Obj Spawner log - it should appear the user and if the session was created or terminated. Challenge: identify and keep track of the right session you look for.
2- Pro-active option: you could add some additional logic to the autoexec of the pooled workspace server (autoexec_usermods) that, if user is sasadm, and the PID Y, it can write to a log or table. Challenge: you won't know when the session terminates. For that purpose, you would need an additional script to read this table and check the status of the process with PID Y, to know when that session terminates.
Regards,
Juan
Hi Juan,
thanks for your reply. First of all: the issues we had were mainly cause by different encoding. In the past there has been a change from UTF-8 to Lantin1, but the data was not converted. After solving that issue it appeared that there were duplicate records in hq_metric_data, easy to solve. I will certainly check out if there are hotfixes available, but I don't think we have any issue on that side.
As I need a daily check, option 1 is not suitable. Option 2 looks exactly what I need. However I need some time to implement it and because I am off next week I cannot do it this week. Too much to do in a short time 🙂 . I will mark your answer as the solution.
Thanks for your help (it was great meeting you at Generali some time ago!)
Best Regards
Marco
Oh, you are *that* Marco. Very nice to meet you here as well !
Hard to find time for everything, big truth. For now, hope you can enjoy of your time off. 🙂
Please let me know how it goes when you give it a try!
Best regards,
Juan
There's only 1 like me 🙂
First of all I will try to get the output fixed the right way, the rest is easy to fix. As soon as I've got it working (or encounter problems) I will post my solution here, so it might help others.
Cheers
Marco
In 1 environment we have the sasadm session disappearing within an hour after starting up the environment. In my search for the cause of this, I found the solution for the monitoring issue and finished the script today.
The steps to take are:
1. determine which ObjectSpawner log to check
2. determine the process id from this log
3. determine which PooledWSServer log to check
4. determine the portnumber from this script
5. monitor with netstat -oanp on the combination of port and process
6. send a mail when no longer running
This script will be implemented as last step in the start of the VA environment.
Feel free to contact me for more detailled information
Cheers
Marco
Update:
this morning I tested the script 'live' after a restart and found out the portnumber and process-Id are not related to eachother in the netstat command. The processid in the netstat command is a main process. So instead of using netstat, I've changed this into a two-step check with netstat on the port and ps for the process.
Cheerzzzz
Marco
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