MATLAB Central Newsreader - flexlm log file

flexlm log file

Matt Cook — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 14:29:11 -0500

Does anyone know of, or has written, a script to analyse a
flexlm log file?

I believe there are some 3rd parts tools around but they
are quite expensive. I think it would be nice to have a m-
file that reads and analyses the data from a flexlm log
file and then presents it in a more meaningful manner.

Thanks ... Matt

Re: flexlm log file

Rob — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:44:02 -0500

Hi Matt, did you manage to find anything to do this in teh end, would be really usefull...

Thanks,

Rob.

"Matt Cook" <matt.cook@jcb.com> wrote in message <focg7n$tg$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> Does anyone know of, or has written, a script to analyse a
> flexlm log file?
>
> I believe there are some 3rd parts tools around but they
> are quite expensive. I think it would be nice to have a m-
> file that reads and analyses the data from a flexlm log
> file and then presents it in a more meaningful manner.
>
> Thanks ... Matt

Re: flexlm log file

tristram.scott@ntlworld.com (Tristram Scott) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:30:05 -0500

Rob <rmahon_spam@jaguar.com> wrote:
> Hi Matt, did you manage to find anything to do this in teh end, would be
> really usefull...
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rob.
>
> "Matt Cook" <matt.cook@jcb.com> wrote in message
> <focg7n$tg$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
>> Does anyone know of, or has written, a script to analyse a
>> flexlm log file?
>>
>> I believe there are some 3rd parts tools around but they
>> are quite expensive. I think it would be nice to have a m-
>> file that reads and analyses the data from a flexlm log
>> file and then presents it in a more meaningful manner.
>>
>> Thanks ... Matt
>

Do you mean that nice log file with the following header:

15:21:22 (lmgrd) Please Note:
15:21:22 (lmgrd)
15:21:22 (lmgrd) This log is intended for debug purposes only.
15:21:22 (lmgrd) In order to capture accurate license
15:21:22 (lmgrd) usage data into an organized repository,
15:21:22 (lmgrd) please enable report logging. Use Macrovision's
15:21:22 (lmgrd) software license administration solution,
15:21:22 (lmgrd) FLEXnet Manager, to readily gain visibility
...

As it says there, and in the end user manual, the log file is just for
debug purposes, and not reliable for accounting or tracking usage.

chicken 8% grep IN: /var/tmp/flexlog.log | wc -l
202
chicken 9% grep OUT /var/tmp/flexlog.log | wc -l
195
chicken 10%

So I have checked IN 202 features, but only checked OUT 195. The license
server has been running since the start of October.

If you can cope with missing OUT or IN lines, then you might make some good
progress by just using grep, then lining the OUT and IN lines up with each
other, but you also need to be aware that there are timestamps but not
datestamps on the OUT and IN lines. There do tend to be TIMESTAMP lines as
well, but to incorporate those requires a bit more processing.

Personally, I would probably either do a quick filter with grep, for OUT
and IN lines, then again by user, then shove the results into a couple of
columns in a text editor or spreadsheet, or alternatively write a bit of
code with perl or with awk. Either perl or awk would be ideal for this
task.

Whatever you do, though, you will need to be robust against the possibility
of missing data.

If this is important to you, I suggest you talk to Macrovision about
FLEXnet manager. Their products don't tend to be cheap, but their
technical support is excellent.

--
Dr Tristram J. Scott
Energy Consultant

Re: flexlm log file

Matt Cook — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:02:02 -0500

"Matt Cook" <matt.cook@jcb.com> wrote in message <focg7n$tg$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> Does anyone know of, or has written, a script to analyse a
> flexlm log file?
>
> I believe there are some 3rd parts tools around but they
> are quite expensive. I think it would be nice to have a m-
> file that reads and analyses the data from a flexlm log
> file and then presents it in a more meaningful manner.
>
> Thanks ... Matt

An Update:
Thanks for the replies.
I did manage to write my own script that produced some basic metrics. Basically it looked at just one flexlm managed application and totalled up the number of users and the amount of time each had used it for. I'm happy to post it for others to reference it if may be of use to someone .... but basically it's just reading data in from a text file.
It's also worth remembering that id the flexlm server gets reset/restarted for any reason then the log file is overwritten with a new log (hence losing any old data).
This topic isn't very imortant for me now so I haven't done any work on it for a while, nor am likely to in the near future.
Once again, thanks for the replies ... and my best regards to you ... Matt

Re: flexlm log file

Steve Amphlett — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:38:02 -0500

"Matt Cook" <matt.cook@jcb.com> wrote in message <gkikuq$pcq$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> "Matt Cook" <matt.cook@jcb.com> wrote in message <focg7n$tg$1@fred.mathworks.com>...
> > Does anyone know of, or has written, a script to analyse a
> > flexlm log file?
> >
> > I believe there are some 3rd parts tools around but they
> > are quite expensive. I think it would be nice to have a m-
> > file that reads and analyses the data from a flexlm log
> > file and then presents it in a more meaningful manner.
> >
> > Thanks ... Matt
>
> An Update:
> Thanks for the replies.
> I did manage to write my own script that produced some basic metrics. Basically it looked at just one flexlm managed application and totalled up the number of users and the amount of time each had used it for. I'm happy to post it for others to reference it if may be of use to someone .... but basically it's just reading data in from a text file.
> It's also worth remembering that id the flexlm server gets reset/restarted for any reason then the log file is overwritten with a new log (hence losing any old data).
> This topic isn't very imortant for me now so I haven't done any work on it for a while, nor am likely to in the near future.
> Once again, thanks for the replies ... and my best regards to you ... Matt

I wrote a C++ program for digesting a FLEXlm log to work out the usage of each feature by each user. It was an interesting exercise, done in my own time (how else can one earn favour points with the IT dept?). The FLEX people tell you that this shouldn't be done, but it seems reasonably OK for indication purposes. I was told that the "official" tool costs loads.

Word of warning though: Do not write scripts to regularly poke the license manager. Bad idea.

Re: flexlm log file

Philipp Feldpausch — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:34:21 -0500

What a intresting thing - I am also intrested in analysis of FlexLM log files!
I found your toppic by accident :-)
One of my scopes are to analyse the deniede-requestes but also to make statistics about feature usage over a certain period
Does anyone could handl me an already existing code (m-file)?

It would help me a lot.
The other and mybe easy way would be using Excel-Pivot-Tables.

Thanks for your reply.

P.