Check the forums on SourceForge too.
This is a collection of the most common questions people have asked.
A: Installing IPplan requires advanced skills in php, databases and webservers ie. WAMP or LAMP. If you do not have these skills or do not know what WAMP or LAMP is then IPplan may not be for you. Installing IPplan is NOT a one click operation. If you are uncomfortable with editing configuration files, then IPplan is definitely not for you.
A: Are you using MS Windows with Appserv/Wampserver? This has been seen when using either of these two packages - better luck was achieved with Wampserver. Contact the package maintainers as this is not an IPplan issue.
A: Some pages could generate a very large amount of output causing either your webbrowser to get confused, or for php to hit a memory limit. For the later, check the Apache error log - you may need to increase the php memory limit in php.ini or you may have found a scalability issue with IPplan. Follow the instructions in “I have found a bug!” if you think there is a scalability issue.
A: You might have found a bug! Some newer versions of Redhat/Fedora suppress error messages to the Apache Webserver log only - you cannot see them on the screen, thus a blank screen. Follow the instructions in “I have found a bug!”
A: Are you using IPplan in some or other VM (virtual machine) environment? Try not using a VM or try to increase the memory allocated to the VM significantly. On a multi CPU machine it may help to set VMware to only use one CPU.
A: IPplan may have difficulty automatically figuring out how to determine the correct URL under which IPplan was installed. Try setting the BASE_URL config.php option. More information can be found in the config.php file.
A: This is a php installation issue and has nothing to do with IPplan. Your chosen database driver is not installed/compiled correctly into your copy of php. This is totally dependent on your installation of php and the operating system you are running on. Head over to http://www.php.net and have a look at the php FAQ for answers.
A: This is now tested for in the installation script - make sure that you run the installation script as per the INSTALL and UPGRADE files whenever you make changes to IPplan.
A: If you get authentication protocol errors, you may need to issue the following on a MySQL prompt:
set password for 'ipplan'@'localhost' = old_password('password');
Replace password with the password you want to use for your database
A: The following config.php settings should work for the odbc_mssql driver:
define("DBF_TYPE", "odbc_mssql");
define("DBF_HOST", 'Driver={SQL Server};Server=MYSERVER\SQLEXPRESS;Database=ipplan;');
define("DBF_USER", "ipplan");
define("DBF_NAME", "");
define("DBF_PASSWORD", "xxxxxxx");
This assumes a server called MYSERVER, database called SQLEXPRESS and a database called ipplan. Using the SQL enterprise manager, you will also need to create a user called ipplan with the following settings:
no DSN using "SQL Server Authentication" password does not expire default database is "ipplan" the user will require the db_owner right on the ipplan database
A: This can be one of many things, but most likely a configuration setting on the webserver. With Apache (especially on Redhat systems), make sure that you adjust the LimitRequestBody setting in the httpd.conf file - the default setting is 524288 bytes on Redhat systems. This setting can usually be found in /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf on late release Redhat systems. Look in the Apache error log for additional hints to the problem and also the PHP manual
You will also need to modify the php.ini settings of post_max_size and upload_max_filesize too.
A: Your php might be configured to run in safe mode. Did ipplan/admin/install.php say so? Try setting the safe_mode_exec_dir php.ini setting for executable files like nmap, ping, traceroute etc. This will only work for files that do not have the S bit set (ping and traceroute do!). Try enabling DEBUG in config.php to see the php warning messages for hints.
A: SELinux (secure linux) could be preventing access to the executables. This normally results in “Access denied” type messages. See this message for suggestions: http://forums.cacti.net/about7759.html
A: Note that nmap will scan using a TCP connect to port 80 when using an unprivileged user (this is the case when used under Apache). This may not be acceptable due to your security policies.
A: The admin user allows you to create regular users. Before you can log in and create customers etc. you need to create a regular user and attach this user to a group - you need at least one user/group pair. If you have not done this you will get “Access denied” messages.
A: The realm authentication method used sometimes has problems with broken web browsers (especially the MS variety!). This manifests itself by prompting to authenticate for every page opened. To correct the problem, use a newer version of your browser or better yet, change to something that works like Netscape or Mozilla. There are also issues with browsers that remember passwords - if you have problems, turn this feature off.
A: Yes. Use the “Display subnet information” search, fill in the IP address into the “Partial subnet address” field, select “Match any IP address in subnet”. If you want to search all the customers, you need to create the “all” customer - see elsewhere in the manual how to do that. See the section on “Searching” in this manual for more information.
A: The access method has changed preventing all user from seeing everything in IPplan. The default is now for users to only see customer info for which they are part of a group that has access to the customer. The user can see everything for all customers if the IPplan administrator makes the user part of a group that can see everything.
A: Because the forward DNS zone can have many A records pointing to the same IP address - this is used for virtual web servers. There could also be many forward zones with the same IP address, so which one do you pick? Reverse zones which contain PTR records are picked from the IP record host name field. Reverse records have a one to one relationship with IP records. When you update the DNS hostname for an A record, the hostname of the subnet IP record will be replaced with the updated hostname ONLY in there is exactly one A record with the associated IP address across all domains for this customer. Similarly, changing the IP record will change the DNS forward A record if there is exactly one A record for the customer.
Note that this feature is enabled via a config.php option.
A: Use the command line poller.
A: IPplan was not designed with this in mind - this design will not change. Only masks that are valid in a routing table and are routable can be accommodated. Suggest updating multiple addresses and giving them a unique handle to signify the block or pool they belong to eg. ‘Reserved - DHCP pool 1’ and ‘Reserved - DHCP pool 2’
A: The following solution was provided by disp507 in a Sourceforge post.
You can do what you want to do, you just need to create a minimum of 3 groups.
The 1st group is a read only group that all your users that need access to that subnet are in. You assign that subnet to that read only group.
The 2nd group is an admin group that the users that need full access to the subnet are in. This group can have either no boundary or have a boundary that covers the entire subnet, be careful though if these users need access to other subnets and are members of groups that have no boundary’s or have boundary’s it will cause you some headaches. I find it best to have a single all inclusive admin group with no boundaries that way they reign supreme.
The 3rd group is the group where you place the users that only get the restricted access. You place your restrictive subnet boundary here.
The reason this works is simple. IPplan evals all the groups that user is a member of and looks to see what boundaries fit. So the user being in a group that has read only access and a group that has restricted access, they get the restricted access.
A: Hey, I think it is rather easy and makes perfect sense to me, but then I wrote it! If you find things confusing, either ask in the forums on SourceForge (see elsewhere in the manual), or supply CONSTRUCTIVE tips on how to make it better.
A: For two reasons. Firstly if was designed to be functional and not pretty. My time is limited and as any programmer knows, most time is spent on the user interface. I am also no user interface guru. If you want it to look better, either help out or go and buy a multi-million $ IP address management system. There is also a stylesheet called main.css which can be modified.
A: Internet Explorer does not render HTML pages correctly. Simple things like borders around table cells are ignored (frame=void rules=none border=0). This can be seen on the page headings which look ugly. Your solution would be to get a working browser like Firefox
A: Yes and no. This question usually relates to the displaysubnet.php script. The reason why you are not able to change the column layout is that most of the display information is computed and much magic happens behind the scenes. Changing the number of displayed columns is even more difficult. Displaying any of the user defined template fields is even more difficult. But it is not all bad news - you can substitute the telephone number column for the MAC address column by editing the /ipplan/user/displaysubnet.php script and changing the TELNO define at the start of the script.
A: These browsers do not support the “overflow: auto” stylesheet element correctly. Either use the Firefox browser, or change the /ipplan/themes/default.css file by removing all the “overflow” tags. The page will not be pretty, but it will work.
A: Use the tools supplied by your database of choice. NEVER copy the database files from one server to another. This is bound to fail and potentially corrupt and destroy your data. If you are using MySQL, read the manual section on Database administration. mysqldump is the tool you need to use for this task.
A: Add the following to the config.php file:
setcookie("ipplanParanoid","1",time() + 10000000, "/");
A: Use external authentication to obtain the previous login credentials of the superior directory - see the documentation.
A: Create an .htaccess file in the IPplan subdirectory consisting of only one line:
Order Deny,Allow
This will make the authentication that was made by a superior-directory .htaccess gone.
A: See this forum post: Radius
A: If you found a bug, try firstly turning on debugging in config.php. Have a look at the SQL output for any errors. Also look at the Webserver/Apache error logs (normally in /var/log/httpd) - newer versions of Redhat/Fedora suppress errors to the screen and ONLY log them to the error log. Then either log a bug request or post a message to the forums on Sourceforge with a FULL, DETAILED explanation on how to re-create the bug step-by-step. A bug report of “its broken” is not sufficient. IPplan works on a diverse set of operating systems, versions, databases and weird site setups that I have no control over. You are my eyes and ears to get the problem resolved. Don’t expect me to do the legwork for you - I do not get paid to do this!
A: If you have a new feature request, log a feature request on Sourceforge or email me directly. If you want to implement a feature, I will ONLY accept features in diff format against the latest CVS snapshot - use
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@iptrack.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/iptrack checkout ipplan
to get the latest version. See the “Working with CVS” link on Sourceforge. If you cannot access CVS, you can also get the latest CVS snapshot here
A: My time is limited and as I am the only developer actively working on IPplan, only features that are of use to me or are interesting to code up will get added quickly. Other requests will probably get added to the TODO but will receive no attention.