Tag Archives: fault resolution

Rizzo

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Tonight I started the process of renting a VPS (Virtual Private Server – in short it’s a server on the internet). To be named Rizzo, it will fit in with my muppet-names nicely.

Plans? Nothing specific. Mostly vague surrounding eggdrop shells, and web/mail hosting. Will also be hosting two IRCd’s, one on each of the networks I help admin. I’ll also shut down the IRCd on Telly.

The VPS will be running Debian, and I’m looking at writing a control panel for webhosting at least.

In other news, I started working on my ticket system for fault management etc again, this evening was mostly consumed in that area with drawing diagrams on paper and playing with the XML-RPC functions in PHP. Still trying to decide how to do user authentication and security options and such, but that all runs through a security function (which returns ‘yes’ or ‘no’, depending on whether the user has access or doesn’t, respectively) so would be trivial to change to LDAP or a proprietery authentication system. If I write a control panel, it’ll likely use the same database, and I’d try to tie in with FTP and such for user-accounts on the VPS too.

So, if you’re interested in webhosting (with or without domain) or an eggdrop/BNC (no interesting vhosts, sorry) account, let me know. They won’t be free, sorry.

Geeky zEkEy – Ticket Resolution Systems

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I just realised that I haven’t posted in a couple of days, and also that I haven’t posted anything remotely computer-geeky at all. It is time to rectify this.

As I’m not likely to have a work permit until some time in December, I’ve had a lot of free time on my hands. This has mostly been spent lazing around with little to no purpose, but I’ve also been thinking up various idea’s and projects to work on.

I’ve been able to implement a few network-changes at UCCN, including remote-includes (and a web interface for staff to make network-wide configuration changes, still in testing), and the safetyNet server (intended to allow young people to chat in a more secure environment than most IRC networks would otherwise permit).

I’ve also been doing some work on some small scripting projects, including the safetyNet bot in mIRC (still needs a lot of work, and may port to PHP at some point). The one I’m working on most is a complete rewrite of a 2-week old project, the Fault Management and Resolution System. This started as being a PHP-based IRC bot that would detect netsplits and send emails to admins, or even text messages if the servers were split for long time periods. It seemed to work in practice, and I then came up with the idea of a ticket-system, where admins would be able to put in notes and ‘close’ incidents whereby they had resolved a problem, so we could keep track of where problems were occuring.

Anyway, the number of ideas being implemented were fast making the code messier than it was ever expected to be, and I fast reached the limitations of the core of the project. With that being a fast-growing problem, I shut down the old system, copied aspects of it, and began work on the new one.

The new system allows much more flexibility with regard to monitoring things. It will allow for staff to be in groups (one or multiple), and where there is a fault or a request it can be assigned to a group (such as server admins, services staff, etc) and to individuals within the groups. It can also be reassigned between groups/individuals as required.

I hope to include some method of tracking how long issues take to be resolved, including as well as excluding how long we wait for other factors, such as an ISP responding to a question, or a user returning our email.

It’s not limited to faults either, tickets for faults or change requests can be manually created by staff, and potentially added by users themselves. The new system will also be much more flexible and hopefully more scalable, allowing for more organisations to utilise the software.