Administration

Table Of Content

About

Icons used in this guide

Some icons are used to alert you about additional informations.

"Important", showed by an exclamation mark, alerts you about important informations about the administration area of Ametys Runtime.

"Remark", showed by an i, alerts you about additional informations, for example it gives you others methods to reach your goal.

"Tips", showed by a tick, alerts you about tips to work with more efficiency.

Targeted public

This manual is intended to be read by persons who want to administrate the CMS system.

No technical skills are required to understand this manual. All features are accessible through a Web interface.

Comments

If you need some help using the administrator area of Ametys, do not hesitate to ask mailing-lists users@lists.ametys.org (users @ ametys.org) or dev@lists.ametys.org (dev @ ametys.org), and to add your comments and informations to this documentation.

Introduction

 
The administrator area is a web console used to perform usual administration tasks of the application.

The administrator area is provided by default in French and in English. The chosen language depends on the preferences of your web browser.

Access

After initial deployment, if the application is not yet configured, you are automatically redirected to the administration area and the following page is displayed: 

LoadConfiguration.png

During the runtime of the application, this area may be access at any time by targeting the CMS URL, adding _admin at the end.

The URL should look like :

http://{server[:port]}{/context}/_admin

A login pop-up should appear after your connection to the URL. See the "Connection" paragraph below for more details.

Connection

During your connection, a login pop-up appears.

ConnexionAdmin.png
The user name is always admin. The default password is admin.

For security reasons, don't forget to change the password at your first connexion.

If you forgot the password, please check the operating manual to reinitialize the password to its default value.

Administration area screen

If you have been redirected to the administration area because of an incomplete configuration, the configuration screen will be automatically displayed.

Otherwise, the home page of the administration area is displayed:

admin.png

Sidebar

System Admin

Password

This functionality allows you to change the password of this area.

Password.png

Don't forget to change your password at the first login and then regularly.

The password is stored crypted on the hard-drive, but it is sent without encryption through the network (excepted if you set-up the servlet engine with https). Usually this area is only used on an internal network so it does not require so much security.

System announcement

This functionality allows you to activate a multilingual system announcement for users of the application: for example to alert users about maintenance.

Access.png

In the CMS itself, the announcement is displayed as an alert pop-up when the user connects to the contributor interface for the first time.

Configuration

This functionality allows you to modify the configuration of the application. The list of the parameters depends on the features actually deployed in your application.

The parameters are ordered by categories. A table of content of the categories is displayed on the right side of the screen in order to access directly to the category.

TOC-Config.png

It is possible to fold/unfold the categories by clicking on the small arrow on the left of the title of the category. Some tool tips are displayed when you move the mouse over the ? icon on the right of every field, this should help to set-up the value.

System status

This functionality allows you to check the status of the Java Virtual Machine and its properties. The table of content on the right contains tabs (General, System properties, Monitoring). Click on a tab to display the categories and the details.

General 

 
Generam.png
The category System gives information about the OS, the processor(s) and the current date of the server.

The category Java gives information about the JAVA set-up and the JAVA starting date.

The category Memory usage gives information about the status of the memory:

• Main : This is the memory we are used to describe and that is used to store Java Objects. On Sun JVM, it is configurable with the parameters Xmx et Xms : see the java documentation for more details.
• Internal : It is a secondary memory, less known, which is used to load the code of the application on the Sun JVM. It can requires to be modified if you load a lot of applications in one servlets engine. It is configurable with the parameters -server ou -XX:[MaxPermSize] : see the Java documentation for more details.

On the right of the Main memory you have a button "Trash" that allows you to force a garbage collecting. This functionality allows you for example to detect memory leaks.

The category Server processing gives informations about the usage of the server:

• Open sessions displays the number of users who used the application recently. (The administrator connection is also in this count)
• Current requests displays the number of requests currently processing (included the request displaying this screen).
• Running threads displays the number of total threads in the JVM. It gives an indicator on the number of requests simultaneously processed.

In case of a deadlock on a Thread, a label is displayed to alert you.

Keep in mind that the memory is shared among all the applications running in the servlets engine.

System properties

SystemStatus.png

This tab displays the list of Java properties.

Monitoring

Monitoring.png

This tab displays the system state graphs:

• Time since application startup
• HTTP request executed
• Running HTTP sessions
• Running Threads
• Main memory (HEAP)
• Internal memory (NON-HEAP)
• Processor usage

You can use the "<<" and ">>" to change timeline (last hour to last year).

Every graph can be exported into XML files following the RRD specification.

Logs

This screen allows you to consult the logs of the application and to modify their levels on the fly.

The configuration of the logs of an Ametys application does a daily rotation by default. In this screen, the logs are ordered by Log type and then by date. The order can be modified by the user.

The table of content on the right contains tabs (View, Configuration). Click on a tab to display the categories and the details.

View

View.png

This tab allows you to view the logs and also to delete them.

The available actions are :

• select a log file then click on Display file : the file is downloaded (size < 1Mo) or zipped (size > 1Mo)
• select one or many log file(s) then click on Download file(s) : the files are downloaded into a zip.

• select one or many log file(s) then click on Delete file(s): the files are deleted.

  It is really not recommended but not forbidden to delete log files of the day.
  

• click on Remove obsolete log file(s) : delete all the files older than 12 days in order to save some disk space.

Note that the view screen only operates on log files located under the WEB-INF/logs directory.

Configuration

logs.PNG

 
This tab allows you to set-up log levels for the current running time (does not persist after a restart).

The tree is made by the categories of logs. The icons are describing the log level. A translucent icon is used for a category which level is not specified and is using the level of the parent (inheritance).

Look into the tree for the category you wish to modify the log level, select it, then the actions available are:

• Change to DEBUG (except if the current level is debug)
• Change to INFO (except if the current level is info)
• Change to WARN (except if the current level is warn)
• Change to ERROR (except if the current level is error)
• Inherit mode (except if the mode is already inheritance) : used to indicate that the log level is not specified for this category. So it gets the same level as its parent.
• Force inheritance: Does the action "Inheritance" recursively on every children

For example to have the whole application into INFO, you only need to :

• Click on the root node,
• Chose the action "Change to INFO"
• Choose the action "Force inheritance" (otherwise it is possible that some of the subcategories has been previously set to another level than INFO)

User and Rights

Users

Users.png

This screen allows you to manage users who are known by the application. When this screen is displayed, the list of users may be empty, you need to launch a search to get results.

The users can be managed by different sources of data (LDAP, MySQL...).

The available actions on this screen depends on the chosen data source. If users are managed by a read-only source (from the CMS point of view) the only available actions are "Search" and "Impersonate".

Otherwise you'll have access to the following features:

• Search for a user : fill the field Search and click on the search button.
• Create a user : Click on this link to create a user. A pop-up is displayed, fill the required fields (login, user name...) and click on OK to validate the creation.
• Impersonate (only when a user is selected) : Click on this link to go to the application as the selected user. A pop-up is displayed to alert you because you are going to take the control of the application with a specific user without requiring his password. You will then access to the CMS as if you were really the specified user.
• Modify a user (only when a user is selected) : Click on this link to modify a user. A pop-up is displayed, then you can modify the user, validate your modifications with OK.
• Delete a user (only when a user is selected) : Click on this link to delete a user. A confirmation pop-up is displayed.

Users groups

UserGroups.png

This screen allows you to manage groups of users.

The available actions on this screen depends on the chosen data source. If groups are managed by a read-only source (from the CMS point of view) the only available action is "Search".

 On groups, the available actions are:

• Add group : Click on the link to add a group. A pop-up is displayed to give a name to the group.
• Rename the group (only when a group is selected) : Click on the link to rename the selected group. A pop-up is displayed with the current name, change the name and validation your modification.
• Delete group (only when a group is selected) : Click on the link to delete the selected group. A confirmation pop-up is displayed.
• Add user (only when a group is selected) : Click on the link to add a user into the selected group. A pop-up is displayed with a search engine on the users. Search and select a user to add it to the group.
• Remove a user (only when a group is selected) : Select a user and click on the link to remove a user.

You can add/delete users to group only if the used group instantiation can be edited (groups managed in SQL database for example).

Profiles

Profiles.png

This screen allows you to manage the profiles. A profile is composed by a list of rights. The profiles are listed on the top part of the window, under the title Profiles list. The rights on a profile are listed on the bottom part of the window, under the title Associated rights.

There are two tabs available: Viewing and Editing. The Viewing tab is used to view rights available in a profile, the Editing tab is used to add or remove rights from a profile.

• Editing tab: Click on the link to edit the rights of the profile. The list of available rights is displayed on the bottom part of the frame. The rights with a tick are the one used in this profile. Select or unselect the checkbox to activate or unactivate a right on the current profile. Click on Confirm changes to validate your modifications.

Available actions:

• Create a profile : Click on the link to create a new profile. A new profile is created and you are asked to set the name of the profile.
• Rename the profile (only when a profile is selected) : Click on the link to rename a profile. You are asked to rename the profile.
• Remove the profile (only when a profile is selected) : Click on the link to remove a profile. A confirmation pop-up is displayed to validate your choice.

Application

Sites (versions 3.0.x to 3.2.x)

This screen allows you to manage the websites of the CMS.

During the first connexion, this screen may be empty because there was no site created.

sites.jpg

The available actions are:

• Create new site : This action allow you to add a new site to the CMS. A pop-up is displayed to set the information about it. See above Create new site.
• Open website as a contributor (with a site selected) : This action allows you to open the selected website as a contributor.
• Configure (with a site selected) : This action allows you to modify the parameters of a site. A screen is displayed to set the parameters (depends on your instance).
• Set manager (with a site selected) : This action should be used only one time by site. It creates a new profile 'Temporary administrator' containing all the rights and it sets the selected user for this site. See below Set manager.

• Rebuild live workspace(with a site selected) : This action alows you to rebuild the site workspace, re-index all content and reset the front-office cache.

  Rebuild preview action temporarily makes website unavailable for contributors and visitors during the process.
  

• Delete: (with a site selected) : This action delete your site.

  This actions deletes all your contents and pages of the selected website.
  

Create new site / Configure a site

sitesNew.jpg

This screen is used to create a new site or to configure an existing one.

The available fields are:

• Name: the website name in minus caps without space, for example: mywebsite;
• Title: the website title that can be displayed in the header;
• URL: the URL of the website;
• Skin: the skins available for this website;
• Languages: the languages available for this website.

Click on OK to validate your setting.

Set manager

sitesSetManager.jpg

This screen is used to set a manager to the selected website. The pop-up contains a search engine to the database of users (It can be plug into a LDAP, MySQL...). Select a user and click on OK to validate your choice.

Sites (versions 3.3.x or later)

In 3.3.x or later versions, sites are hierarchical : a site can have children sites.
In screen for sites management, sites are represented in a tree.

Create a new site or copy a site

To create a new site :

1 - Select the sites root or the parent site and click on "Create new site".

2 - You can choose to create an empty site (a new site without page, content nor resource) or to copy an existing site (copy of pages, contents, services and resources of the site)

image2011-12-15 18:13:29.png

3 - If you choose the first option, you need to select the type of site. Available type of sites depends on your application.

image2011-12-15 18:14:54.png

3bis - If you choose the second option, select the site to copy

image2011-12-15 18:17:49.png

4 - Click "Ok"

You will redirect to the configuration screen of the site.

image2011-12-15 18:25:7.png

Fill the form and click "Save the parameters" to validate yours settings.

Site's statistics

Statistics on site give you some information on data of the site : number of contents, pages, resources, services ...

Click on "Site statistics" on screen management to see the statistic of your site.

image2011-12-15 18:25:59.png