Snooping on users

Er, not really. Just trying to find out what sites are frequently visited, then attempt to tune the proxy to efficiently cache these sites. Eherm.

Dowloaded squidview to Maui. It's a nice real-time Squid access.log viewer, with reports even for individual users, etc. But it's not really what I need. I want cumulative reports on top sites and users, how long users stay on a site, what sites are denied, where does the proxy miss, stuff like that.

Downloaded and installed SARG -- the Squid Analysis and Report Generator. I edited the SARG cron entries to email daily reports to me and set the weekly and monthly reports as HTML. Note that these scheduled jobs are to be run as root. Gave SARG a test run, looking fine, generated a report for the day. Cool.

For the rest of the day, I tried to make sense of the network infrastructure. The place has 11 servers (Web, mail, LDAP, SMS, AV, PDC, SQL), six of which run Linux (from RH7.3 to RH9). It has two leased line connections, one from the Agriculture and Fisheries Research and Development Information System (AFRDIS) and the other from the Philippine Research, Education and Government Information NETwork (PREGINET). It has two dedicated video-conferencing materials. It has wireless, fiber and copper backbones connecting the campus. It also provides internet access to the Science Community.

I don't want to be overwhelmed, so I focus on my tasks. There are other things to tackle, but I'm reserving that for later, once I get the lay of the land.