Logging and audit

Console servers provide a selection of monitoring facilities that help diagnose the cause of problems and support Sarbanes-Oxley, GLBA, NERP and HIPAA conformance. 

The console server can maintain a record of all the direct access and communications with the serially managed devices and network attached devices. A log of all system activity (syslog) is also maintained. These logs can be stored locally "on-box" - or they can be stored on a remote server (or on the USB flash for ACM5000, ACM5500 and IM4200). 

The /var is a temporary directory in the console server RAM used among other things for on-box logging. Models with 16M RAM get 256k of /var, models with 64M or more RAM get 512k of /var. If there's no off-box logging, logs have a pre-set limit before earliest log messages are over written (e.g. General (syslog) has 32k, Serial (portmanager) has 8k, EMD/RPC (monitor) has 64 lines, UPS (upslog) has 64 lines, whereas Host logs (sshd) keep going until the /var temp space fills up). 

From the command line you can allocate more RAM as temp space on the fly. To increase the /var size to 2048k, run mount -t tmpfs -o remount,size=2048k tmpfs /var. This sizing change will be lost after a reboot however you can make it permanent by adding this code line to /etc/config/rc.local. 

If remote or USB logs are enabled, old log messages are never discarded. 

 

When configuring Serial ports and Network Hosts you can activate and set the desired level of logging for each port. Similarly when the console server has attached Managed UPS or PDU hardware, the status of each power device can be logged. As can the environmental status when EMD5000 devices are attached. 

From the Manage: Devices menu the Administrator will can view serial, network and power device logs stored in the console reserve memory (or flash USB). The User will only see logs for the Managed Devices they (or their Group) have been given access privileges for. 

 

Event logs on the USB can be viewed using the web terminal or by ssh/telnet connecting to the console server.