| | | Using JFFNMS |
If just want to use JFFNMS rather than configuring and expanding it, this is the chapter you are looking for.
JFFNMS has a standard look to all its screens. Right at the top is the control frame. This frame is on every screen and has the same look. Figure * has an example screen showing interfaces and events.
The top line is where the controls go. Every screen has the same set of controls. These allow the operator to move around in the various screens in JFFNMS.
Starting on the left is the JFFNMS button. This button takes you to the about page on the sourceforge network. The website is a good place to learn about JFFNMS including updates. There is an online version of this manual linked from the site too.
The username appears next. This is the name the operator is logged in as. If you click on the name you will be able to view the user profile. If granted user administration privileges, you will be able to see other users' profiles.
In the middle of the control bar is the view selection controls. Clicking on the Views link takes you to the currently selected view. If you want to see a different view select a different one from the combo box. The icon with the white arrow in a blue box immediately to the right of the combo box works like the Views link.
To the right of the views controls is the Performance link. As is implied by its name, clicking on this link will take you to the performance screens which will display graphs.
If the person logged in has Administration access, there will be an Administration link. See Chapter * Administrating JFFNMS for information on Administration. Clicking on this control will open up the Administration menu, which appears on the right of the window.
Finally, the far right hand side has a small button with an X. This button logs the current user out of JFFNMS.
The frames below the control bar vary depending on what mode you have JFFNMS is in. There can be generally one or two frames vertically split. In the example shot in Figure * JFFNMS is displaying the "Interfaces and Events' view. The top frame is showing the Interfaces, including a pop-up window giving greater details of an interface. The bottom frame is showing events.
The profile menu option allows user to setup preferences and extra information. An important option is the email address of the user. You will need to set this if you want to receive alerts.
The event viewer is one of the more often used views in JFFNMS. It displays events as colored horizontal bars. The color is the severity of the event.
The viewer can be access via the view control either by itself or as a combination of an Map view. In addition the viewer can appear from certain actions such as clicking on an interface icon.
By default the events are ordered by date, with the event at the top of the view being the most recent and all events are displayed with the exception of the Unknown events.
The top of the event viewer has some icons to assist in filtering and moving around the events. Table * shows the list of icons and their Functions.
|
Icon | Function |
| two up arrows | Go to first (newest) event |
| two left arrows | Go to previous event page |
| two right arrowss | Got to next event page |
| Arrows in a circle | Refresh current event page |
| + | Double the maximum number of visible events |
| - | Halve the maximum number of visible events |
| all | Show all events |
| Speaker | Mute/Permit sounds for new events |
| Page with blue X | Open another window that will export current events into CSV format |
| Funnel | Open express filter - see Event Express Filter |
On the far top-right of the event viewer there is a drop-down box that allows you to select from the predefined filters. It is by default "All Events" but you can use this when you have consistent filtering requirements.
Each event has the following column:
Expanding the event shows the details of the 5 common event fields (Username, Interface, Severity, State and Info). If you then click on one of the values for this field the event viewer is filtered by that item. For example if the event has a Username field of value `jsmith' then clicking on that will show all events which have `jsmith' as their username.
Besides the standard sets of filters, an operator can produce an ad-hoc set of filters for events. The express filter is accessed by clicking on the funnel icon at the top of the event viewer. This brings up a new window, as show in figure * that has various rows of items that you are able to filter on.
Each row starts with 3 radio buttons labelled `Yes', `No' and `Dont' which mean display events that match, display events that don't match or just don't use this row for filtering respectively.
The contents of the rows is reasonably self explanatory as most are based upon aspects of the event, such as the date it happened or the event fields.
The free-text fields are exact matches only, you cannot use regexp there.
Once you have selected your filter criteria, Choose if you want the filtered events to appear in a new or existing window and click the Filter Events button. If you decide not to filter events then just click the close link.
JFFNMS is capable of displaying graphs for various values for interfaces. The type of graphs is dependent on the Interface Type, for more information see the section on Interface Types.
The graphs can be reached by clicking on the Performance link that appears in the control tool bar. This will first bring up another window that is split horizontally.
On the left of the Performance screen is the Interface Selector. This selector is used throughout JFFNMS to choose a list of interfaces based upon various criteria.
There are four ways interfaces can be grouped. You can only choose one item from one group. For example you cannot select an interface type and customer at the same time. The four groups you can select interfaces are:
Selecting a group will then display a list below the group boxes that have all interfaces that match that selection. You then have the choice of viewing all interfaces JFFNMS knows, viewing all interfaces for that group or viewing some selected interfaces.
The interface list allows you to choose one or many interfaces. The way of choosing multiple interfaces is browser independent, but normally control-click will choose multiple interfaces while shift-click will choose a group of interfaces. Obviously just clicking an interface de-selects others in the list and chooses that one.
Click on either the links or the button to choose the interfaces.
The performance trend window will appear to the right of the Interface Selector and is where the graphs will appear.
Along the top is the window title and some icons. The icon with the two green arrows will refresh the graph, although the graph will automatically refresh itself at a given amount of time. To stop the automatic refreshing, click the "stop refresh" link.
If you have interface administration privileges, you will see a note and pen logo. Clicking on this logo takes you to the interface administration screen with the interface for this graph selected.
The spanner icon will take you to the set of tools for this interface. The last icon is the report screen.
The next row have a box selecting the graph type you want to see, and then time selection. Time can either be selected by a span, giving a start and finish time, or it can be selected by a preset time such as "Last 6 Hours".
Finally below the graph and time selection controls is the graphs. If multiple interfaces have been selected then each interface will have its own graph. For graph types that permit aggregation, all interfaces of the same interface type will appear on the aggregated graph as well.
JFFNMS Manual, last changed March 29, 2008
| | | Using JFFNMS |