OPS435 Python Assignment 2
Assignment 2 - Usage Report
Weight: 15% of the overall grade
Due Date: Ask your professor for exact date
Late Penalty: 20% per school day, and note that this assignment must be completed satisfactorily in order to pass the course even if you get zero mark for this assignment.
Overview
Most system administrators would like to know the utilization of their systems by their users. On a Linux system, each user's login records are normally stored in the binary file /var/log/wtmp. The login records in this binary file can not be viewed or edited directly using normal Linux text commands like 'less', 'cat', etc. The 'last' command is often used to display the login records stored in this file in a human readable form. Please check the man page of the 'last' command for available options. The following is the contents of the file named "usage_data_file", which is a sample output of the 'last' command with the '-Fiw' flag on:
$ last -Fiw rchan pts/9 10.40.91.236 Tue Feb 13 16:53:42 2018 - Tue Feb 13 16:57:02 2018 (00:03) cwsmith pts/6 10.40.43.94 Tue Feb 13 16:51:47 2018 - Tue Feb 13 16:56:13 2018 (00:04) mlee18 pts/6 10.40.43.94 Tue Feb 13 16:50:20 2018 - Tue Feb 13 16:51:27 2018 (00:01) hfang pts/4 24.114.50.50 Tue Feb 13 16:31:38 2018 - Tue Feb 13 17:48:39 2018 (01:17) bigia pts/8 24.114.50.50 Tue Feb 13 19:28:43 2018 - Tue Feb 13 20:28:31 2018 (00:59) rchan pts/2 10.40.91.236 Tue Feb 13 16:22:00 2018 - Tue Feb 13 16:45:00 2018 (00:23) asmith pts/2 10.43.115.162 Tue Feb 13 16:19:29 2018 - Tue Feb 13 16:22:00 2018 (00:02) tsliu2 pts/4 10.40.105.130 Tue Feb 13 16:17:21 2018 - Tue Feb 13 16:30:10 2018 (00:12) mshana pts/13 10.40.91.247 Tue Feb 13 16:07:52 2018 - Tue Feb 13 16:45:52 2018 (00:38) asmith pts/11 10.40.105.130 Tue Feb 13 14:07:43 2018 - Tue Feb 13 16:07:43 2018 (02:00)
It is always desirable to have a daily, weekly, monthly usage reports by user or by remote host based on the above information.
Tasks for this assignment
In this assignment, your should preform the following activities:
- Work out an algorithm for producing daily, weekly, and monthly usage reports by user or by remote host based on the information obtained from the 'last' command or any given files which contain similar information as the 'last' command.
- Once you believe you have a workable algorithm, you should then design the structure of your python script by identifying the appropriate python objects and functions to be used for each task in your algorithm and the main control logic. Make sure to identify all the input data, computation tasks, and outputs.
- implement your computational solution using a single python script. You can use any built-in functions and functions from the allowed python modules to implement your solution.
- review your working python code to see whether you can improve the interface of each function to facilitate better code re-use (this process is called refactoring).
Allowed Python Modules for this assignment
- the os, sys modules
- the argparse module
- Argparse Tutorial - should read this first.
- Argparse API reference information page
- the time module
Instructions
Program Name and valid command line arguments
Name your Python3 script as ur_[student_id].py. Create a symbolic link to your script as ur.py (e.g. use the command ln -s ur_rchan.py ur.py to create the link) so that you can refer to your script as ur.py. Your script must accept one or more "file name" as its command line parameters and other optional parameters as shown below. Your python script should produce the following usage text when run with the --help option:
[rchan@centos7 a1]$ python3 ./ur.py -h
usage: ur_rchan.py [-h] [-l {user,host}] [-r RHOST] [-t {daily,weekly,monthly}]
[-u USER] [-v]
F [F ...]
Usage Report based on the last command
positional arguments:
F list of files to be processed
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-l {user,host}, --list {user,host}
generate user name or remote host IP from the given
files
-r RHOST, --rhost RHOST
usage report for the given remote host IP
-t {daily,weekly,monthly}, --type {daily,weekly,monthly}
type of report: daily, weekly, and monthly
-u USER, --user USER usage report for the given user name
-v, --verbose tune on output verbosity
Copyright 2019 - Raymond Chan
Replace the last line with your own full name
If there is one file name provided at the command line, read the login/logout records from the contents of the given file. The format of each line in the file should be the same as the output of 'last -Fiw'. Filter out incomplete login/logout record (check for the number of fields in each record).
If there is more than one file name provided, merge all the files together with the first one at the top and the last one at the bottom. Read and process the file contents in that order in your program.
Header
All your Python codes for this program must be placed in a single source file. Please include the following declaration by you as the script level docstring in your Python source code file (replace [Student_id] with your Seneca email user name, and "Student Name" with your own name):
OPS435 Assignment 2 - Winter 2019
Program: ur_[Stduent_id].py
Author: "Student Name"
The python code in this file ur_[Student_id].py is original work written by
"Student Name". No code in this file is copied from any other source
including any person, textbook, or on-line resource except those provided
by the course instructor. I have not shared this python file with anyone
or anything except for submission for grading.
I understand that the Academic Honesty Policy will be enforced and violators
will be reported and appropriate action will be taken.Sample outputs
The following are the reports generated by the usage report script (ur.py) with the "usage_data_file" mentioned in the overview section. You can download the file here for testing your ur.py script.
User List
The following is the user list extracted from the usage_data_file created by the command:
[rchan@centos7 a2]$ ./ur.py -l user usage_data_file
User list for usage_data_file ============================= asmith bigia cwsmith hfang mlee18 mshana rchan tsliu2
Remote Host List
The following is the remote host list extracted from the usage_file_file created by the command:
[rchan@centos7 a2]$ ./ur.py -l host usage_data_file
Host list for usage_data_file ============================= 10.40.105.130 10.40.43.94 10.40.91.236 10.40.91.247 10.43.115.162 24.114.50.50
Daily Usage Report by User
The following is a Daily Usage Report created for user rchan by the following command:
[rchan@centos7 a2]$ ./ur.py -u rchan -t daily usage_data_file
Daily Usage Report for rchan ============================ Date Usage in Seconds 2018 02 13 1580 Total 1580
Daily Usage Report by Remote Host
The following is a Daily Usage Report created for the Remote Host 10.40.105.103 by the command:
[rchan@centos7 a2]$ ./ur.py -r 10.40.105.130 -t daily usage_data_file
Daily Usage Report for 10.40.105.130 ==================================== Date Usage in Seconds 2018 02 13 7969 Total 7969
Weekly Usage Report by User
The following is a Weekly Usage Report created for user rchan by the command:
[rchan@centos7 a2]$ ./ur.py -u rchan -t weekly usage_data_file
Weekly Usage Report for rchan ============================= Week # Usage in Seconds 2018 07 1580 Total 1580
Weekly Usage Report by Remote Host
The following is a Weekly Usage Report created for the remote host 10.40.105.130 by the command:
[rchan@centos7 a2]$ ./ur.py -r 10.40.105.130 -t weekly usage_data_file
Weekly Usage Report for 10.40.105.130 ===================================== Week # Usage in Seconds 2018 07 7969 Total 7969
Monthly Usage Report by User
The following is a Monthly Usage Report created for user rchan by the command:
[rchan@centos7 a2-2018fall]$ ./ur.py -u rchan -t monthly usage_data_file
Monthly Usage Report for rchan ============================== Month Usage in Seconds 2018 02 1580 Total 1580
Monthly Usage Report by Remote Host
The following is a Monthly Usage Report created for remote host 10.40.105.130 by the command:
[rchan@centos7 a2-2018fall]$ ./ur.py -r 10.40.105.130 -t monthly usage_data_file
Monthly Usage Report for 10.40.105.130 ====================================== Month Usage in Seconds 2018 02 7969 Total 7969
Suggested Script Development and Testing
The following python functions (to be created) are useful in handling the following sub-tasks:
- reads login records from files and filters out unwanted records
- convert login records into proper python object type so that it can be processed using as much built-in functions as possible
- create function which generates daily usage reports by user and/or by remote host
- create function which generates weekly usage reports by user and/or by remote host
- create function which generates monthly usage reports by user and/or by remote host
To help you with this assignment, here is a template you can use as a starting point in designing your own Python Usage Report script.
For each function, identify what type of objects should be passed to the function, and what type of objects should be returned to the caller.
Once you have finished coding a function, you should start a Python3 interactive shell, import your functions and manually call the function you want to test under interactive mode and verify its correctness.
Once you have all the individual function tested and that each is working properly, perform the final test with test data provided by your professor and verify that your script produces the correct results before submitting your python program on Blackboard.
Sample login/logout records file and sample test run results
Rubric
| Task | Maximum mark | Actual mark |
|---|---|---|
| Algorithm and program design | 15 | |
| Program Authorship Declaration | 5 | |
| Program usage | 5 | |
| Program Options | 15 | |
| Generate user name list | 10 | |
| Generate remote host IP list | 10 | |
| Daily Usage Report by User | 10 | |
| Daily Usage Report by Remote Host | 10 | |
| Weekly Usage Report by User | 5 | |
| Weekly Usage Report by Remote Host | 5 | |
| Monthly Usage Report by User | 5 | |
| Monthly Usage Report by Remote Host | 5 | |
| Total | 100 |
Bonus item 10% extra
- Create a function to capture that output of the 'last -Fiw' on the system your script is being executed and return the contents in the type of object as what you get from a regular login/logout record file.
- Call this function and use the objects it returned when the file name input at the command line is 'last'.
Submission
After fully testing your program, submit your python script ur_[student_id].py and your algorithm and program design report ur_[student_id].pdf in pdf format on Blackboard by April 5th, 2019.