Scripting for Server

[Techwhore]

I posted in OS awhile back, but now i have more info and need some advice.

We're looking into new server solutions at work (currently run MacOS). We have a few testbeds at our disposal and our candidates are Windows 2k or Linux. I'm pushing for Linux, but regardless of which one is implement we need to be able to do the following:

Audit specific directories to show files that have been added, removed, moved, or deleted.
Show the timestamp and user who created/modified the file.
Easily show owners, users, groups, and members of specific groups.

What i need to know is can this be done with PHP or do i need to learn some perl? I don't know shell scripting but can probably learn enough to accomplish this. The main objective is to easily access and display this information but in a "no frills" manner.

I'm aware that the logs will be quite large, but that's something I'll worry about later.

Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance

 

[Techwhore]

 

[Turkey]

I don't know about the fs in W2k, but Linux has support for at least one journaling filesystem (Reiser?) that I believe will create the first two logs automatically. You also would have to know nearly no shell scripting to show owners, users, groups, etc (ls -some option | [your script to extract stuff if you wanted] > owners.txt). Anyway, try searching for "journaling filesystem linux" and "journaling filesystem windows" on google.

 

[Nothinman]

How are they able to create/modify the files?
Is this all via a web interface?

 

[Techwhore]

<< How are they able to create/modify the files?
Is this all via a web interface? >>



I imagine we'd just map the share and allow read/write perms as needed, that's how we do it now. The web interface would strictly be for administrative use. I don't need to create a web interface, but it's not like that's difficult to do and it'd be a lot easier than parsing through text files in command line.

 

[Nothinman]

A little searching around shows that Samba now has an audit module (atleast an example one to show how to use the new VFS modules it supports), and it may do what you need.