Perle Systems STS, SCS manual Field Definitions, Remote Port Buffers

Port Buffering

Remote Port Buffers

The Remote Port Buffering feature allows data received from serial ports on the IOLAN to be sent to a remote server on the LAN. The remote server, supporting Network File System (NFS), allows administrators to capture and analyze data and messages from the serial device connected to the IOLAN serial port.

Remote Port Buffering data can be encrypted or raw and/or time stamped. The data is transmitted to an NFS server where a unique remote file is created for each serial port using the configured serial port Name for the file name. If the serial port Name parameter is left blank, the IOLAN will create unique files using the IOLAN’s Ethernet MAC address and serial port number. It is recommended that a unique NFS directory and serial port Name be configured if multiple IOLANs use the same NFS host for Remote Port Buffering.

The filenames will be created on the NFS host with a .ENC extension to indicate data encrypted files or .DAT for unencrypted files. If the data is encrypted, the Decoder utility application must be run on the NFS server to convert the encrypted data to a readable file for administrators to analyze. The Decoder Utility can be found on your installation CDROM or on the Perle website (www.perle.com).

The data that is sent to the remote buffer file is appended to the end of the file (even through IOLAN reboots), so you will want to create a size limit on the file on your remote NFS host, to keep the buffer file size from becoming too large for your system.

Field Definitions

Port buffering displays or logs data received on the IOLAN serial port.

Configure the following parameters:

Enable Local	Enables/disables local port buffering on the IOLAN.
Buffering	Default: Disabled
View Port	The string used by a a session connected to a serial port to display the port
Buffering String	buffer for that particular serial port.
	Data Options: Up to an 8 character string. You can specify control
	(unprintable) codes by putting the decimal value in angle brackets < > (for
	example, Escape b is <027>b).
	Default: ~view
Enable Remote	Enables/disables port buffering on a remote system. When you enable this
(NFS) Buffering	option, you have the ability to save the buffered data to a file(s) (one file is
	created for each serial port) and/or send it to the Syslog host for viewing on the
	Syslog host’s monitor.
	Default: Disabled

184 IOLAN SDS/SCS/STS User’s Guide, Version 3.6