3.3 The Administrator Tool
The Administrator Tool is a powerful application for monitoring and managing
the server.
These are some of the tasks that can be accomplished with it:
» Monitor the server status
» Browse each zone, inspecting all the details of each room and each
user connected.
» Add/Start/Stop new Zones at runtime, without restarting the server.
» Add/Start/Stop new Extensions at runtime without restarting the server. (PRO
only)
» Monitor extensions and remotely debug them. (PRO only)
» Send administrator messages to single users, rooms or the entire server.
» Kick, ban user and manage the banned user list
» Inspect the log files
» Remotely edit and save the configuration
» Restart and halt the server
» Monitor the BlueBox and the embedded web server (PRO 1.6 and higher)
» Login screen:
This is the first screen you will be presented after launching the tool.
In order to login you need to input the server address, port, your nickname
as admin and the password. If all data is correct you will be connected to
the server as administrator.
NOTE: By default the administrator account is set to:
login
= sfs_admin
pass = sfs_pass
It is very important that you change this account before putting
the server online!
The Admin tool will show you a warning message to remind you to change user
name and password.
» Server Status
This screen graphically shows the current status of the server with a number of useful informations for the administrator.
| UpTime: | Shows you how long the server has been running since it was started or restarted the last time. |
| Server Load: | This is an important indicator. It will tell you how busy is the server
at the moment. The server starts to get very busy when many concurrent requests are sent and it has to quickly respond to all of them. Another reason because the server may get busy is network congestion: when the available bandwidth is almost filled with incoming and outgoing messages the server will start enqueuing messages in the so called "Outgoing Message Queue" (OMQ) waiting for the network to get ready. As the OMQ increases in size the server load gets higher as more memory is reserved for all these messages that should be sent away but the network condition do not allow the server to send them fast enough. |
| Data Traffic: | It shows how much data has been transferred in both directions (in / out) Also it indicates the average data transfer per hour |
| Resources: | This panel shows current memory usage in the JVM and the status of the
server system queues. We have already mentioned the "Outgoing Message Queue", it represents the queue of response messages that are going to be sent to the clients . The "System Handler Queue" is responsible for holding all the incoming messages that should be processed. The "Extension Handler Queue" is responsible for holding extensions requests. In most cases these queues should be empty or contain a few hundreds messages which are usually processed in a fraction of a second. When one or more of these queues are filled with thousands of messages for long time then the server may start responding a little slower because of the work load. |
| Statistics: | This panel shows a number of runtime statistics such as: current number
of zones, rooms and users, the number of banned users, the maximum number
of concurrent connections since startup, and the number of dropped in
and out messages. What are dropped messages? In particular stress conditions or bad network performance the server may drop messages to preserve performance and system memory. For example when the maximum amount of queued outgoing messages is reached the server will start dropping. In normal conditions dropped messages are very rare, however if their number becomes consistent it could be the symptom of a lack of bandwidth. |
| Server Control: | Allows the administrator to stop or restart the server. Both tasks will disconnect all the users from the server (administrator included) so you can send a message to all clients before they get disconnected. The admin message is sent immediately while the restart or stop operation is posponed by 6 seconds to let everyone receive the message. |
» Zone Browser
The zone browser allows the administrator to inspect all the applications
running in the server.
In the top left of the screen you will find a tree-view with the list of the
currently active zones: by collapsing each node you can see all the rooms
inside the selected zone and by clicking a room name you can inspect
all the room properties.
Once you have selected a room the list box under the tree-view is populated with the names of the users connected to that room. By selecting one of those names you can view all the properties of that user.
NOTE: the tree-view and the client-view are updated in realtime,
so you may at times see rooms and users disappear as they are removed.
However, to save bandwidth, the right-side panel showing the properties of the
selected item is not handled in realtime but it is provided with a "REFRESH"
button to request and update from the server.
From the right side property-panel you will also be able to send administrator
messages to
single clients or to the entire room, plus you will be able to kick and banish
users when viewing a user profile.
» Ban Manager
This simple panel shows the list of users banned by name on the left side and the list of users banned by IP address on the right side. It provides also information about when a certain user or IP was banned. At any time you can re-enable a user or an IP address by selecting it and clicking the "REMOVE" button.
» Log Viewer
The log viewer panel allows to inspect the last lines (tail) of the log files
up to a maximum of 90 lines. This way you can always monitor the recent events
logged by the server. Due to the large size of the log files it would not
be possible to see them entirely from a remote location as this would occupy
too much bandwidth.
If you need to do a more in-depth log analysis you should access the log files
directly on the server machine.
» Config.xml
From this panel the administrator can edit and save the SmartFoxServer configuration
file (config.xml), keeping a backup copy of the previous configuration.
When this panel is activated the config file is loaded (it may take a few
seconds, depending on its size) and you can edit it.
Once you're done just click on "SAVE CONFIG" button to save the configuration
file back to the server.
We highly recommend to keep the "Make backup" checkbox activated to keep a
copy of the previous config file. The backup file is moved into the confBackup/
folder and its renamed using a timestamp formatted as follows:
backup_YYYYMMDDHHMMSS
YYYY = year (4 digits)
MM = month (2 digits)
DD = day (2 digits)
HH = hour (2 digits)
MM = minutes (2 digits)
SS = seconds (2 digits)
Once the new configuration is saved it will not be active until you will restart the server.
» BlueBox Manager (PRO 1.6 +)
In this panel you can monitor the status of the clients connected via the BlueBox. The table shows the full list of users with their session id, time of connection and time of the last activity.
At the top right corner of the panel you can toggle the status of the embedded Jetty web-server.
BEWARE: turning off the web-server with active BlueBox connections will result in the sudden disconnection of all those clients.
» Log out
When you're finished with your admin tasks you can log out by clicking the "LOG OUT" button.
» Admin tool usage
The Admin tool can either be used as a standalone application or be published
in a web page for accessing in from everywhere.
In case you choose to publish it on a website we recomend to password protect
the access to the page for even better security.
Also if you're using a static IP address you may want to configure the server
so that accepts administrator logins only from that IP. Please check the <AdminAllowedAddresses> directive
in doc section
2.1 for further details.
| doc index |