Documentation forKiwi CatTools

About the Kiwi CatTools Interface

After you have completed the CatTools Setup Wizard, your monitored devices, activities, and logs live on the dashboard of Kiwi CatTools. From the dashboard, you can add, remove, or edit your devices, start and stop individual activities, view reports and logs, or customize your CatTools interface and theme.

Kiwi CatTools Dashboard Panes

The Kiwi CatTools dashboard provides a quick overview of the devices and activities that you have added and are currently monitored by your environment.

Devices Pane

Lists network devices currently in the CatTools database and Trivial File Transfer Protocols (TFTP) messages.

  • The Devices tab lists the devices you have defined.
  • The TFTP tab lists messages originating from the CatTools TFTP server.
Activities Pane

Provides information about configured activities, comparison reports, and queued messages.

  • The Activities tab allows you to start, stop, and configure individual activities.
  • The Compare tab enables you to generate a comparison report of two files of your choice.
  • The Mail tab displays messages and alerts currently in the mail queue waiting to be sent.
Logs and Reports Pane

Lists activity logs, reports, and information logs based on activities that have been executed against devices in the CatTools database.

  • The Activity Log tab displays a log of all activities that have run since CatTools was started the last time.
  • The Report tab enables you to open any text reports that are created by CatTools.
  • The Info Log tab displays a grid of all messages displayed by CatTools while it is running, in the order that they occur.

Example scenario: Use CatTools to update passwords on multiple devices

Here is a common scenario: several of your network devices use an server for remote authentication and according to your company's security policy, the password for each of the devices must be updated. Normally, after updating the server password, you have to manually edit each network device individually to apply the new password.

Using the Kiwi CatTools DB.UpdateDevice.Password field activity, this process can be automated to push the new password to all of your devices at once. Additionally, to avoid disrupting productivity, you decide to run this activity Friday at midnight.

  1. Using the Setup wizard, add your devices to Kiwi CatTools and ping to confirm your connection.
  2. After adding required device information, continue to Add Activity.
  3. Select DB.UpdateDevice.Password field as the activity type.
  4. Enter a unique name and a description for the activity.
  5. For Persistence, select Run once then deactivate.
  6. Select the folder where you want to save the log file for this activity, if different from the default location.
  7. Select Maximum available for Client Threads, and then click Next.
  8. On the Add Activity Schedule window, configure the activity to run on Friday at midnight:
    1. Select At midnight from the drop down list.
    2. Select Friday under Days of the week.
  9. Click Next.
  10. On the Activity Options window, select AAA Password and enter the new server password in the SSH password field.
    1. (Optional) The Stop of error check box will quit the activity should an error be encountered at any stage of processing.
  11. Click Next to add the activity to Kiwi CatTools.

Now on Friday at midnight, Kiwi CatTools will automatically begin to change the passwords on network devices maintained in the CatTools database Device table.