Mobile System Administration in Unix Environment
The Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) defines a set of APIs for the java platform together with the Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC), used for writing and developing portable applications providing a complete J2ME application environment defining issues such as user interface, the application model, networking, and persistence storage for mobile devices such as cellular phones and the so-called two-way pagers. A java-enabled mobile phone is used as mobile device in this work while developing and executing the code proposed. Java-enabled mobile phones combine many accesses, and the ability to download and execute Java applications from any web site.This document provides a mobile application “Mobile System Administration”, used in unix environment according to the requirements of mobile users for securely performing communication using mobile code running on mobile devices.There are many mobile application areas used in mobile arena, but Mobile system administration is not often seen as a working area.Usually J2ME client-server works are used for web-based applications.Anyway sometimes we can hear or read some information about mobile system administration works especially for IT companies.
Mobile Systems Administration which I consider as the problem for this project, is an important solution for IT professionals. Its administrative tasks being run allow detailed monitoring of the information system and complete control over its functions. Administration is capable to monitor both state of application servers and components of operation system and analyze their interaction in real-time.
There are many features of Mobile Systems Administration solution:First of all, almost all advantages of java platform: portability, with an high-level language, widespread among developers.Continuous status monitoring of user-selected systems, feedback, effective two-way communication, mobile connectivity, and security are other features of Mobile system administration solution.
Mobile systems administration is a server administration solution that allows system administrators, support workers to search problems and repair server and other related problems as well as perform day-to-day maintenance, all hours a day. So it helps us to keep our systems up and productive.The requirements for the mobile systems administration work are mobile clients and one or more managed servers.
This work examines mobile applications, and obtains a mobile solution for basic administrative tasks for Unix Administrators, and also succeeds to collect performance data of a unix server and interprates it in a graphical interface.
There are basically two main approaches for this application being consider:One is controlling a machine from a mobile device, and the other is security.Controlling a machine from a mobile device like a java-enabled mobile phone results in data transfer from a unix environment, and security keeps information, prevents data loss, and attacks.
The central abstraction of a MIDP user interface is the screen.Simple screens help organize the user interface into manageable parts.This supports user interfaces to use and learn easily.The Mobile System Administration project has a simple and easily understandable display, so it is organized in accordance to a user who does not have administrative information about unix operating system, to know some little information is enough.But to interprate performance data and other command outputs surely needs detailed unix information.
Performance Monitoring screen aims to collect daily cpu usage, buffer activity, TTY device activity, system calls, file access statistics, run queue statistics, process, inode, and file tables, message and semaphore activity, paging(-p), paging(-g), unused memory pages and disk blocks, and kernel memory allocation data, and to interprate them in graphical interfaces using canvas.
Administrative tasks involves two parts:Displaying Unix Processes, and Server Management Applications
Displaying Unix Processes screen enables admin to see most often used unix processes pwd, ls, df, uname, uptime, swap, ps, user information, and group, hosts, passwd file contents.
Server Management Applications screen enables admin to manage the system with most often used administrative tasks such as creating new directory, killing a process, removing a file/folder, shutdown and reboot the system.Surely to shutdown and reboot the system, kill a process, removing a file or folder will be available for only users who logins with root.
Most important point for this work is to keep security, so to provide a mobile systems administration tool that enables people to securely connect to systems, search and solve problems, fix them in real time, all from a mobile phone device. Different encryption algorithms can be used in J2ME applications.There are many such works. The processing of
cryptographic mechanisms helps to protect confidentiality, integrity and availability properties. Because mobile devices are small, portable, and users can carry such devices with them most of the time, they seem to be an ideal platform to implement security services. But the security risk particular to mobile devices result from the typical properties inherent to such devices, namely, they are personal, portable, have limited resources, and are used for roaming through networks with different levels of trust.Encryption is a possible way for securing data. But only in some cases users protect their data by encrypting them. The acceptance for such technologies is nowadays too low, which might be because of the complexity of security systems.Anyway, the usage of cryptographic systems is not as far away as it seems to be.Therefore, I used pasword-based encryption algorithm using xor technique for security.It is password-based, because password can easily be changed in any period of time by a user who can login with the root user, for security cautions. Encryption/decryption codes in this work is used in
user
password
commands requested by admin
all output data being returned
Background of this application is based on a webserver, and a database.Apache tomcat is used as webserver, because tomcat is a free stand alone and easy-to-use server, and Oracle is used for database, needed for storing system information like user, password, ip, hostname etc. Oracle is usually preferred in Unix environments as database.
There are many other advantages of this application:It is always with the user, it’s personal, it has a simple user interface, user can process commands locally, it can be stored in device with a simple, and persistent.way.and finally wireless networking is another advantage for users.
This project can be improved by adding new features as much as wanted.It is designed for having this ability, therefore a user may change it or may add new commands according to the requirements he/she needs.Such as new performance commands can be added to obtain new performance outputs, or specific processes can be used which works in a machine, more management applications can be run.
This work introduced a client-server application by using the Wireless Toolkit(WTK), an integrated development environment(IDE) for creating Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME) applications, commonly referred to as MIDlets:Mobile System Administration.
To get a better feel for this work more processes can be added, and data being obtained can be interprated by different ways like using graphical tools such as I used in performance data, or designing the screen again according to new needs.
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