1. Fighting Institutional Memory Loss Integrated Issue and Solution Tracking with Trackle Dan Crosta

2. 15-Nov-20062 The SCCS Swarthmore College Computer Society Public Linux/OS X multimedia lab UNIX shell accts Web space, Wikis Mailing lists Video & still cams

3. 15-Nov-20063 Student Sysadmins SCCS: unique needs as UNIX admins –Lots of us –Kind of clueless –Few regular hours –Always other or better things to do –Self-reporting stinks: rm –rf ~/bin vs. rm –rf /bin

4. 15-Nov-20064 Partial Solutions: Email Do some work Get distracted by something shiny Maybe remember what you did Maybe email staff to say what you did

5. 15-Nov-20065 Partial Solution: Wiki Do some work Write it down as you go Get distracted by something shiny Maybe email staff to say you did something and here’s a link to it

6. 15-Nov-20066 Partial Solution: Ticket System Create a ticket Do some work Record your changes as a ticket annotation Get distracted by something shiny Maybe remember to email staff to say you did something and here’s a link

7. 15-Nov-20067 We Need More Record all sysadminly actions: –Who, exactly what and how, when Records accessible from the web –Because we do everything on the web –Allow arbitrary annotation to improve clarity to future generations Not ugly –Get distracted by something shiny and useful

8. 15-Nov-20068 Trackle Web- and console-facing tools Automatic recording of system changes Minimalistic approach stays out of the way Integrated Wiki Automatic notification to staff Users may subscribe to ticket updates Appropriate support for staff and end-users

9. 15-Nov-20069 Trackle Architecture Database Web Interface Console Tools Email System Shell Tracking

10. 15-Nov-200610 Web Interface Supports 2 user classes: anonymous “users” and authenticated “staff” –Both: ticket creation, viewing –Staff only: ticket editing, shell sessions Integrated Wiki, Timeline, Milestones

11. 15-Nov-200611 Web Interface: Tickets

12. 15-Nov-200612 Web Interface: Tickets

13. 15-Nov-200613 Web Interface: Shell Sessions

14. 15-Nov-200614 Web Interface Wiki pages: public & private Wiki areas in all web components Milestones for ticket organization Timeline for tracking actions

15. 15-Nov-200615 Console Tools GUI-like interface for creation, viewing, editing Start shell tracking session Provides subset of web functionality

16. 15-Nov-200616 Shell Session Tracking Shell / trackle-cli Program Code System Libraries fopen() chmod()... libtrackle Session State To db via trackle-cli

17. 15-Nov-200617 Shell Session Tracking trackle-cli records cmds, environment trackle-cli loads libtrackle with LD_PRELOAD libtrackle tracks file-related system calls: fopen, chmod, unlink, etc State directory used for IPC from libtrackle to parent trackle-cli process

18. 15-Nov-200618 Shell Session Tracking

19. 15-Nov-200619 Email System Email confirmation for user creation Staff notified when a ticket is confirmed Users may add selves to watcher list –With email confirmation Staff, watchers notified of status changes Cron script for periodic staff reminders

20. 15-Nov-200620 Future Plans Private tickets Ticket due dates Ticket relationships (parent/child, “depends on”, etc) Incremental file diffs & version tracking Multiple machine support High-level abstractions: free tagging LISA ’06 Paper

21. 15-Nov-200621 Thanks! Currently in use at the SCCS Open Source (BSD License) Currently under active development (you can help!) Thanks to Ben Kuperman, Mustafa Paksoy for Audlib Thanks to Edgwall Software & contributors for Trac Previous names: wicket, twiki