Table Of Contents

Monitoring and Managing Folder Attendant Jobs

Monitoring Tasks

Monitoring FTP Directories

Viewing Directory/Watch Status

Managing Jobs

Monitoring Job Status

Showing Job XML

Rescheduling Jobs

Stopping Jobs

Deleting Jobs

Resetting Job Priority

Filtering Jobs

Viewing System Status

Logging

Monitoring and Managing Folder Attendant Jobs

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Revised: October 10, 2008, OL-16995-01

This section includes the following topics:

•Monitoring Tasks

•Monitoring FTP Directories

•Viewing Directory/Watch Status

•Managing Jobs

•Viewing System Status

•Logging

Monitoring Tasks

Monitoring tasks include the following:

•Monitoring FTP Directories

•Monitoring Directory/Watch Status—Directory/Watch Status can be viewed from the Folder Attendant Administration page. View the directories and watches that have been defined and determine the state (online or offline) of any watched directory.

•Monitoring Job Status—Job Status can be viewed from the Job Status Monitor page. From this page, view the status of jobs that are being processed. The jobs that appear on this page were automatically submitted from watched directories.

•Monitoring System Status—System Status can be viewed from the System Status page. From this page, view the status of tasks being processed on the hosts in the system. There is one line per host.

Monitoring FTP Directories

In addition to monitoring a normal directory, Folder Attendant can monitor an FTP directory. To enable this feature, set the directory path to an FTP URL as follows:

•ftp://[username:password]@hostname[:port]/path[;passive=yes|no]

Where:

•username = optional FTP login username; default is anonymous

•password = optional FTP password; default is "" (an empty string password)

•hostname = FTP server hostname

•port = optional FTP server port; default is 21

•path = directory path to monitor.

To specify an absolute path (%2f is escaped /): ftp://username:password@hostname/%2fpath

To specify a relative path. Current path is set to <UserLoginDirectory>/path: tp://username:password@hostname/path

•passive = if yes then use FTP passive mode, if no then use FTP active mode; default is yes

For FTP directories, the Copy Complete Method must be set to file-size-delay. In addition, the delete-source-after-process option must be set to false.

Folder Attendant detects new or modified files and submits the source media file with the FTP URL as follows:

	<planner-submit>

		<source-name>ftp://[username:password]@hostname[:port]/path</source-name>

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Note•The%2f will be stripped off

•This FTP source-name will leverage the FTP pre-processor planner in the API to generate the appropriate Fileman and FilemanNet tasks.

•In order to monitor the FTP directory, the FA uses the FTP directory listing command. The implementation of the FTP directory listing command varies by FTP server (Windows, UNIX version, etc.). Folder Attendant uses a list of regular expressions to support several popular FTP directory listing formats. This list may need to be modified to support new formats.

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Viewing Directory/Watch Status

The Folder Attendant Administration page, shown in Figure 14-1, shows the directories and watches that have been defined.

Figure 14-1 Folder Attendant Administration Page

If a directory has been defined, but a watch has not been defined for the directory, the Profile, State, and # Files fields are blank for the directory. If a watch has been defined for the directory, those fields are populated, as described in Table 14-1.

Table 14-1 Folder Attendant Administration Page Fields 

Field	Description
Directory	Displays the name of the directory currently being monitored. This information is entered when you add a new directory.
Profile	Displays the watch profile that applies to the managed directory. A watch is a unique combination of the Directory and Profile. This information is entered when you add a new watch. If this field is blank, a watch has not been set up for this directory.
Priority	Displays the job priority of the watch. This information is entered when you add a new watch. If this field is blank, a watch has not been set up for this directory.
State	Displays the availability of the monitored directory. Possible values are: •Online: Directory is currently being monitored. •Offline: Directory cannot be accessed by Folder Attendant for monitoring (probably because of an error). •Disabled: User has disabled the directory so it cannot be monitored.
# Files	Displays the number of files (media or XML) submitted in the monitored directory. The information is filled in automatically. If this field is blank, a watch has not been set up for this directory.

You can also filter the directories that are displayed in this page to view only those directories of interest.

Managing Jobs

This section includes the following topics:

•Monitoring Job Status

•Showing Job XML

•Rescheduling Jobs

•Stopping Jobs

•Deleting Jobs

•Resetting Job Priority

•Filtering Jobs

Monitoring Job Status

Monitor the status of all submitted jobs from the Folder Attendant Job Status Monitor page.

To access the page, from the Toolbox, expand Monitoring, and click Job Status.

Each job contains multiple tasks. To view the tasks associated with a job and their status, double-click the job row in the upper pane (shown here in green in Figure 14-2). The tasks display in the lower pane on the Tasks tab.

Figure 14-2 Job Status Monitor Page

Figure 14-2 shows several jobs that are in progress or that have recently been completed. Jobs are color-coded based on the status, as described in Table 14-2.

Table 14-2 Job Status Color Coding 

Status	Color	Description
Pending	Yellow	The job has been submitted, but work has not yet begun.
Running	Green	The job has been submitted and work has begun. The job stays in Running status until all tasks in the Job Profile have been executed or until the job is determined to have failed.
Completed	Blue	All the tasks in the job profile have completed successfully.
Failed	Red	One or more tasks in the Job Profile could not be completed successfully. For example, if communication with an FTP service cannot be established, the job will fail because the distribution task cannot be completed successfully. Similarly, if you stop a job, it will fail with the following error message: user stop request. If a job fails, select the Errors tab for a summary of errors that have occurred. (To obtain additional details on why jobs failed, contact your Cisco MXE 3000 administrator.) Take the necessary actions to correct any jobs that have failed, and resubmit or reschedule the job. You may also view the XML code for a selected job for more detail on how it is being processed.

If all of the jobs are not displayed, use the scroll bars to view the remaining jobs.

Showing Job XML

Job XML provides detailed instructions used to execute a job. If you encounter any job submission problems, the Cisco TAC may request XML code (and log files) to assist them in troubleshooting the issues.

Procedure

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Step 1 Access the Job Status Monitor page.

Step 2 Select the job, and click Show XML. The XML code displays on a new page.

Step 3 If all of the XML code is not displayed in the page, use the scroll arrows on the right side of the page to view all the code.

Step 4 When you are done viewing the XML, select the X in the top right corner to return to the Job Status Monitor page.

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Rescheduling Jobs

Rescheduling a job will requeue it. If the job is currently running, all of its tasks are stopped, and then the job is rescheduled. If you reschedule a job that has failed, it will attempt to run again, as soon as it is able. When you reschedule jobs, you do not have the option of specifying an exact time when they will run.

If there was a network problem that prevented the job from running, you can reschedule the job after the network problem clears to attempt to process it successfully. However, if the job failed because of a problem with the profile, examine the Error tab on the Job Status Monitor page and the LCS log file, make the necessary changes, and then resubmit the job.

Procedure

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Step 1 Access the Job Status Monitor page.

Step 2 Select the job(s), and from the Job Options drop-down, click Reschedule. A message displays at the top of the page indicating that the job has been successfully rescheduled.

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Tip You can then double-click the job to monitor its progress.

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Stopping Jobs

You may choose to stop a job for a number of reasons: You may have chosen the wrong profile, or the job may be taking too long to process and you want to stop it to free up resources for other more critical jobs.

If you stop a job, the status of the job will change to failed and the failure message on the Errors tab will indicate that there was a user stop request.

Procedure

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Step 1 To stop a job, access the Job Status Monitor page.

Step 2 Select the job(s), and from the Job Options drop-down, click Stop. A stop confirmation message displays.

Step 3 Select OK to stop the selected job(s). A message displays at the top of the Job Status Monitor page indicating the ID number of the job that was stopped. The Status field updates with the current status (failed).

Step 4 Select the Errors tab to view the failure message.

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Deleting Jobs

When you delete a job, it no longer appears in the status monitor and cannot be stopped, rescheduled, or viewed. Any job (in any state) can be deleted.

Procedure

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Step 1 Access the Job Status Monitor page.

Step 2 Select the job, and from the Job Options drop-down, select Delete. A delete confirmation message displays.

Step 3 Select OK to delete the selected job(s). A message displays indicating which job has been deleted. The deleted job is removed from the job list.

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Resetting Job Priority

Increase or decrease the priority of a job to change the order in which jobs are processed if multiple jobs are pending. Job priority can be set from 1-100 with 1 as highest priority and 100 as lowest priority.

Jobs with higher priority (a lower priority number) will be processed before jobs with lower priority.

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Note Job Priority is a goal. Due to resource availability and the job profile selected, a lower priority job may still be scheduled before a higher priority job. There are also special cases where certain higher priority jobs can preempt a lower priority job (as in the case with Live jobs) if there are no resources available.

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Procedure

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Step 1 Access the Job Status Monitor page.

Step 2 Select the job(s), and from the Job Options drop-down menu, select Reset Job Priority. A Reset Job Priority pop-up displays.

Step 3 Enter the new number (1-100), and click Set Priority. A success message displays, and the Priority field is updated.

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Filtering Jobs

The Filter button on the Job Status Monitor page allows you to display a subset of all the jobs. Filter jobs using any of the following parameters (or any combination of these parameters):

•Job ID

•Job Profile Name

•Title

•Author

•Submit Time

•Priority

•Status

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Note Even if jobs are filtered, they are still being processed as usual. This function only limits the number of jobs displayed on the page.

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Procedure

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Step 1 Access the Job Status Monitor page, shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3 Jobs Before Filters Have Been Applied

Step 2 Select the Filter button from the menu bar. The Job Status Filter pop-up, shown in Figure 14-4, displays.

Figure 14-4 Job Status Filter Pop-Up

Step 3 Complete one or more fields to specify how to filter the job status display, as described in Table 14-3.

For example, if you enter All Streaming in the Job Profile field that means only the jobs that have the All Streaming profile are displayed.

Table 14-3 Directory Filter Field 

Field	Description
Job ID	Enter the unique numerical Job ID for the job to be displayed.
Job Profile Name	Enter the name of the Job Profile for the job(s) to be displayed.
Title	Enter the title of the job to be displayed.
Priority	Enter a numerical priority (between 1 and 100). If the priority for the selected job matches this priority, the job will be displayed.
Author	Enter the author of the job(s) to be displayed.
Status	Select the status of the job(s) to be displayed from the drop-down menu.
From Date	Click the calendar icon to select the first date of jobs to be displayed. Note When filtering by date, you must enter a From Time and a To Time. Otherwise, these fields will default to 00:00:00, and no results will display.
From Time	Enter the start time in hh:mm:ss.
To Date	Click the calendar icon to select the last date of jobs to be displayed.
To Time	Enter the end time in hh:mm:ss.

Step 4 When you have completed the desired fields, click Set Filter. The Job Status Monitor page is updated and displays only jobs matching the filter fields.

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Viewing System Status

The System Status Monitor page displays information about system components currently involved in processing jobs. The status area displays online for each host in the system as shown in Figure 14-5. (Hosts are assigned individual tasks defined in the Job Profile.)

Figure 14-5 System Status Monitor

The name of the host is displayed in the first column of each line. Information to the right of each host shows the tasks that are currently running on that host.

The bar for each task shows the type of task, the Job ID of the associated job, and the percent of completion.

The status area may extend beyond the visible area of the page because the width of the status area is determined by the capacity of the hosts. The overall width of the status area is determined by the host with the largest capacity. If a portion of the status area is not visible, use the horizontal scroll bar to view all data.

The differing resources for each host display on each line, allowing you to obtain a quick, visual reference of overall system resource usage. The tasks running extend from left to right, indicating how much of the host capacity is currently being used.

The overall resources available on a particular host (capacity) and the expense of each worker are set at the time of installation.

Each colored bar displayed for a host represents one task. The size of the bar will vary depending on the resources required for each individual task, or the expense of the task. For example, if the prefilter task that executes preprocessor settings is set to be twice as resource intensive as a QuickTime encoder task, the bar for the preprocessor will be twice as long as the bar for the encoder.

The status area shows only tasks that are currently running. Once tasks are completed, they are no longer displayed in this portion of the page.

Logging

Folder Attendant is preconfigured to log all informational, warning, and error messages to a rolling daily log file in the [Folder Attendant Service Install Directory]/bin/logs directory. For example: C:\program files\Cisco\MXE Folder Attendant Service\bin\logs\fa.log

Each day a new fa.log file is created and the old log file is copied to fa.log[DD] where DD is the day number (1 - 31) that the log file was created. If the day log file already exists, it will be overwritten.

Logging is performed using the log4net framework (http://logging.apache.org/log4net), and the logging configuration is defined in the application configuration file (bin/FolderAttendantService.exe.config) under the log4net section.

Additional logging capabilities/filtering can be enabled by changing the configuration file and restarting the service. Logging to additional log destinations (called appenders in log4net) can also be configured. Optional appenders include logging to a Windows Event Log (using the CISCOFA event source), database, SMTP, socket, etc. Details of available the log4net configuration options can be found on the aforementioned web site.

To view the log files:

Navigate to the appropriate directory path and click on the log file to open it.

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Note Use a text editor to open the file, but the extension may need to be mapped for the file to open with the selected text editor.

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