--------------------------- LANtronix ---------------------------- EZWebCon Management Software ---------------------------- Tutorial ---------------------------- Version V1.1/6 October 5, 1998 Copyright (c) 1997 - 1998, Lantronix Introduction ============ The EZWebCon server management tool provides an easy-to-use interface for initial setup, maintenance, and monitoring/analysis of your Lantronix product. This document describes how to use EZWebCon. Overview ======== EZWebCon can be separated into two different parts: the shell and the scripts. Shell ----- The EZWebCon shell provides an interface in which you can select a server on your network to manage. The shell is independent of the other components of EZWebCon. The only currently available EZWebCon shell is called Configlet (see "Configlet Shell" below). More advanced shells are planned for future releases of EZWebCon. Scripts ------- Scripts define how to manage a specific type of server product (LRS, EPS, etc.). Each script is independent of other scripts and of the shell. General Look-and-feel ===================== Windows ------- EZWebCon's windows have a common look-and-feel. They all have two regions: content and navigation. The content area is the top portion of the window, occupying roughly two thirds of the window space. The material in the content area changes depending upon the window. The navigation area is the bottom part of the window. It always has the Lantronix logo on the left hand side (see "Logo menu" below), and often has a Help button to the immediate right of the logo. Up to three additional buttons may appear in the navigational area, depending upon the window. Logo menu --------- The Lantronix logo in the bottom left-hand corner of every window is actually a pop-up menu of six options: "About EZWebCon" displays a splash screen. "About this menu" displays a page in the Help window that describes the logo menu (see "Help window" below). "Generate technical support report" displays a window for sending electronic mail to Lantronix technical support or for saving the same information to a file. The window contains some standard information by default: EZWebCon version, script version (if done from a script's window), java version, java vendor, and location within EZWebCon (what window you chose this menu item from). "Display Lantronix web site" displays the home page of Lantronix's web site in the Help window (see "Help window" below). "Perform EZLink" checks the Lantronix web site for any new press releases or firmware updates since the last time this user checked. This option is set up from within the Options window (see "Options window" below). "Assign IP Address to Server" allows the user to enter a server's Ethernet (hardware) address and assign the server a numeric IP address. This option is useful when placing a new server on the local network because users can assign an IP address directly from EZWebCon instead of needing a terminal. Help button ----------- When pressed, the Help button pops up the Help window with general information about the current contents of the EZWebCon main window. The Help button is present in many windows. Help window ----------- If you are running the EZWebCon Browser Edition, the Help window is a separate browser window that pops up to display HTML help files. If you are running the EZWebCon Application Edition, EZWebCon displays all of its help information in a separate Help window. The Help window can display simple HTML pages one at a time. A back button allows users to return to previous help screens. The Help window is shared by the shell and all scripts. A lot of the help for each script consists of direct references to the on-line reference manual for the product family being managed. Words that are highlighted within the EZWebCon window are help links. Clicking on a highlighted word will display the Help window with available information about that item. Activity window --------------- The Activity window is automatically displayed in the event of a serious EZWebCon problem; all such problems should be sent to technical support using the window's "Send" button. Please note that when running the EZWebCon Browser Edition, the Activity window is not used currently. Instead, error information is displayed in the Java Activator Console window. For information on how to display the console window, please refer to the Technical Support section of the README document. The Activity window has four buttons: Clear, Send, Save, and Close. Clear erases all the text in the window. Send displays a window to send the current contents of the activity window along with other relevant information (version numbers, etc.) to technical support. Save displays a window to save the current contents of the activity window along with other relevant information to a file so you can send it to technical support. Close closes the Activity window, but does not clear its contents or stop EZWebCon from adding messages to it. Configlet Shell =============== The main Configlet window has the normal EZWebCon look-and-feel including the logo menu and Help button. There are two additional buttons: Options and Close. The Options button displays the Options window (see "Options window" below). The Close button quits EZWebCon. The Configlet shell displays icons in its main window for each type of server it supports. When an icon for a server family is clicked, the server selection dialog is displayed. Within this dialog, the user enters the IP address or DNS-resolvable name of the server to manage. In addition, a Browse... button displays a dialog containing a list of servers of the desired type that are discovered on the local area network. The user can choose one from the list and EZWebCon launches the script used to manage that server type. Options window -------------- The Options window is displayed using the Options button found in Configlet's main window (see "Configlet Shell" above). The window has three tabs: Default Base Help URL, EZLink, and Mail Setup. "Default Base Help URL" sets the location of the on-line reference manual for the product family being managed. The product family name is automatically added to the value set in the Options window before being displayed as the default value in the server selection dialog. "EZLink" allows the user to setup the update notification feature provided within EZWebCon. EZWebCon can fetch press releases and firmware update notices (collectively referred to as 'updates' in the text below) from Lantronix and display them to the user in the EZLink window. The EZLink tab lets the user specify when EZWebCon should check for updates automatically: "Never", "At Startup", or "Periodically". Choosing "Never" means that EZWebCon will not check for updates unless the user specifically chooses to do so (i.e. by choosing the 'Perform EZLink' option from the Logo menu). Choosing "At Startup" means that EZWebCon will check for updates when the application first starts. "Periodically" means EZWebCon will check for updates hourly as long as the application is running. The user can force a check for updates at any time by selecting 'Perform EZLink' from the Logo menu. "Mail setup" allows the user to enter the DNS-resolvable name or IP address of the local area network's SMTP server for sending outgoing email. If this value is not set and the user tries to send mail to technical support, he will be prompted for a value for this field. Scripts ======= Main Script Window ------------------ The main script window has the standard EZWebCon look-and-feel including the logo menu and Help button. The content area is referred to as a "page" because it varies during the life of the script. The help displayed when the Help button is clicked varies based on the current page contents. A script consists of six basic modes: page one, interview, maintenance, statistics/monitoring, firmware reloading, and rebooting. Page one (often called "script page one"), displayed when a script starts, provides a menu of options. Five of the options in the menu are the same as the remaining five basic script modes, while the other two simply perform modal operations which do not require pages for user input. All of the menu choices are discussed below. Interview Wizard(s) ------------------- After the user chooses an interview from a main interview selection page, the script window enters interview mode. While in interview mode, the navigational area at the bottom of the script window always has the logo menu, the Help button, a Previous button, and a Next button. An interview consists of an ordered set of pages, some of which contain links to optional advanced pages. The user steps through the interview by answering the questions on the current page and then clicking the Next button. The contents of subsequent pages are determined by the user's entries so far. The user can click the Previous button to return to previous pages if desired. The first page of an interview is always textual. It describes the interview's purpose and what special information, if any, will be needed to complete it. The final page of an interview is always a menu of three options: Summarize and edit, Save, and Download. "Summarize and edit" displays a hierarchical table of entered data from the entire interview. The user can choose to re-visit the entry page for a piece of data by selecting its row in the table and clicking on the Re-visit button. After the user re-visits a page, he must use the Next button to step through the remaining portion of the interview which will still contain all of his entries. The reason the user must step through the interview again is that changing an entered value may affect what pages are displayed or what items are available on future pages. "Save" saves the configuration generated in the interview to either a configuration file or a command file (see "File Formats" below). A window pops up in which the user can choose the desired file type and specify a pathname. "Download" sends the generated configuration directly to the server. EZWebCon prompts the user to reboot the server so that the configuration takes effect immediately. Maintenance ----------- Maintenance mode itself consists of two different modes: the initial maintenance screen and maintenance pages (interviews). The initial maintenance screen has the standard EZWebCon look-and-feel including the logo menu and Help button. There is also a Menu button and a Select button. The Menu button returns the user to script page one while the Select button switches the user to the page or interview associated with the currently selected item in a navigator. The maintenance screen content area consists of two navigators (right and left), a Help area (middle), and a Search area with a text field (bottom middle). The left navigator consists of a hierarchical list of parameter sets. The items in the left navigator usually lead to single pages that allow the user to change a number of related parameters. The right navigator consists of a hierarchical list of tasks. These items are usually short interviews for performing tasks that are more complex than changing a single value or a few related values. The central Help area displays a short description of the item currently selected in one of the navigators. The Search feature allows users to find the appropriate maintenance page used to configure a specific parameter. Users enter a search term into the text-entry field and press the Find button. If a match is found, the related maintenance item is marked in the navigator. The maintenance pages have the standard EZWebCon look-and-feel including the logo menu and Help button. There are three additional buttons: Abort, Restore, and OK. The Abort button returns the user to the initial maintenance screen, ignoring any changes made on the current maintenance page. The Restore button returns the settings on the current page to what they were when the user first entered the page. The OK button accepts any changes made to the parameters on the page, sends them to the server, and then returns the user to the initial maintenance screen. Maintenance interviews work the same as normal interviews. Statistics/Monitoring --------------------- The statistics pages have the standard EZWebCon look-and-feel including the logo menu and Help button. There is also a Menu button for returning to the statistics menu page. Statistics mode starts with an initial menu page. Each menu option leads to a separate statistics page consisting of a table or graph for monitoring the server. Extract Configuration --------------------- This option initiates an extract on the current server. The server's complete configuration is learned and saved in either the configuration file format or the command file format (see "File Formats" below). Download Configuration ---------------------- This option prompts the user to enter the pathname of a configuration or command file to download to the current server (see "File Formats" below). Reload Firmware --------------- This interview wizard allows the user to reload the firmware on the current server. The software reload operation requires a TFTP server or EZWebCon (which has a TFTP server built in). EZWebCon detects if a TFTP server is running on the local machine or not. If one is running locally, the wizard gives the user the option of using that to reload the current server. If no local TFTP server is running on the local machine, the user has the option of letting EZWebCon do the reload. In either case, the user can elect to use a TFTP server running on some other computer on your local network for doing the firmware reload. The firmware file to reload can be chosen from the files accessible on the local machine or from the firmware files available at Lantronix's FTP site (ftp.lantronix.com). If the user chooses to use a firmware file on the Lantronix FTP server, that firmware file can also be saved locally for future reloads. Reboot ------ This page lets the user initiate a firmware reload, initialize the server to factory defaults, or simply reboot the server. The firmware reload option just sends the command to initiate a firmware reload to the current server and does not let the user set up the software file to load or the loadhost to load from. In most cases, users should use the Reload Firmware interview wizard discussed above for reloading a server with new firmware. File Formats ============ Configuration file ------------------ A configuration file is written in an EZWebCon-specific file format. It saves more information than a command file and therefore can be used in more ways in future versions of EZWebCon. Command file ------------ The command file format is simply a text file containing the command line interface (CLI) commands that need to be sent to the server in order to achieve the desired configuration. The format is the same one used by EZCon and by the servers themselves (as startup files). Users who are familiar with the product's CLI command set can edit the command file using any text editor.