Included with the Georgia SoftWorks Universal Terminal Server for Windows is a powerful administrative, development and training tool - the Session Administrator. The session administrator is a standalone utility that allows users within a certain group to perform many useful tasks associated with the active SSH2/Telnet sessions on their system. You may Observe, Monitor, Shadow, Attach and Terminate other SSH2/Telnet sessions. Observe the connection state, the Team Services State, logon time. etc.

Monitoring and Shadowing are features pioneered by Georgia SoftWorks for SSH2 and Telnet Servers. With Monitoring you can connect to existing SSH2/Telnet sessions and observe the screen exactly as the client sees the screen. You may Shadow as session in the event you need interactive input capabilities with that session. You may use this utility as a local Windows user or as a user connected via SSH2/Telnet.

Session Monitoring Uses

There are many uses for session monitoring. A few are listed.
• Quality Assurance - A supervisor can monitor data entry of employees.
• Training - A senior application user can remotely help a trainee understand and use an application.
• Debugging - A developer can remotely observe an application phenomenon that a user is describing.
• Administrative - A system administrator can ensure that users are using/setting up resources properly.
• Security - Administrator monitor users that are using SSH2/Telnet.
• Terminating Sessions that have been abandoned.
• Terminating Sessions that are connected to applications which are behaving abnormally etc.
• Attaching to Suspended Sessions
• Shadowing another Session

Session Monitoring Privileges

To use the GS Administrator a user [23] must belong to the local group Gwtn Monitors. The system administrator must first create the group Gwtn Monitors. Next all users allowed to use the Session Administrator must be added to the group. You will have to restart the Windows server after creating the group and adding users. Windows does not instantaneously update the group membership after the user manager is closed and thus restarting the server is prudent.

The standard Windows graphical User Management tools can be used to create the local group Gwtn Monitors and add users to the group. Tools to perform these actions are also available from the command line and you may find that they are faster and easier to use.

To add the group from the command line please log on as an administrator [24], open a Command Prompt window on the server and run the following command:

net localgroup "Gwtn Monitors” /ADD

To add a user to the group, run the following command:

net localgroup "Gwtn Monitors” username /ADD

(username parameter must be replaced with the actual name of the user who will be allowed to run the GSW Session Administrator)

You need to restart the server after this command completes successfully.

To find out who is allowed to run the GSW Session Administrator use the command:

net localgroup "Gwtn Monitors"

The command will provide the listing of the members of 'Gwtn Monitors'.

Starting the Session Administrator

The name of the session administrator utility is gs_admin.exe and resides in the UTS installation directory. The Georgia SoftWorks Universal Terminal Server program group has an entry to start the Session Administrator. It may also be started from the command line locally or via SSH2/Telnet.

When the session administrator is executed a window is opened that dynamically displays all SSH2/Telnet sessions. For each session the Logon Id, the Logon time, the Process ID, the Monitor ID, the IP address and the Connection State are displayed. The menu bar contains the items File and Sessions. The bottom right corner of the Session Administrator displays the number of SSH2/Telnet Sessions that are currently active.

For each SSH2/Telnet session the following information is displayed:

User Name - Login ID of the Windows user [25]

Logon Time - Date and time the user logged on to the system via SSH2/Telnet.

Process ID - Process ID assigned to the SSH2/Telnet Session

Monitor ID - Process ID of the GS_Admin that is monitoring the session. This indicates that this session is being monitored or shadowed.

IP Address - IP address of the computer where the client is located.

State - Connection State of the SSH2/Telnet session.

Defined States are:

Logon - A User is in the process of logging in via SSH2/Telnet.

Conn - SSH2/Telnet session is Connected

Disc - A User is disconnecting

NoRsp - The Application has not responded to the data in its input queue

Susp - A SSH2/Telnet Session is Suspended. That means the Session Reconnect feature is enabled and the client or link has failed leaving the session Suspended. A Suspended session can be reconnected to via the Auto-Reconnect feature or via the Attach feature of the Session Administrator. A Suspended session can be terminated via the Terminate feature of the Session Administrator or when the gwtn_reconnect_timeout timer expires.

TeamS - The GSW Team Services state.

Observing SSH2/Telnet Sessions

Using the Session Administrator allows observation of all telnet sessions on the SSH2/Telnet Server. Relevant information is displayed in an easy to read format. Figure 96: Session Monitor - Observing Telnet Sessions The initial display is sorted by the Logon Time for each session (Note the Arrow adjacent to the Logon Time heading). The session that has been logged on the longest is displayed first and the most recent is displayed last. The display may be sorted by User Name, Logon Time, Process ID, IP Address or State. You can use the View menu item to select the column to sort on, or you may click on the column heading. Figure 97: Session Monitor - Menu Sort Options You may also reverse the sort by re-checking the User Name menu item or by clicking the column heading again. Click the heading to toggle between the ascending and descending sort order. Again, note the arrow beside the column heading to indicate the sort order. Figure 98: Session Monitor - Descending Sort Order

Exiting the Session Administrator

You may exit the Session Administrator either by the File then Exit Menu item or depressing the key

Figure 116: Session Administrator – Exiting