Special User to create Views & Dashboards?

General
1

Hi,
we are using 2.0.0p18 cee.
As far as I know, all views & dashboards are deleted as soon as the user who created them is deleted.
Does this affect other things in checkmk, or are views & dashboard the only things that disappear when the associated user is deleted?

How do you do this if, for example, you create public views that you want to remain when your user no longer exists. Do you take a local user that is only used for views, etc.?

We actually use ldap users, but if e.g. due to a ldap malfunction as a result users are removed in checkmk, then all views, etc. would be gone.

I am currently looking for ways to somehow secure this little more.

many greetings

2

The settings of the user are stored in folder: /omd/sites/[site]/var/check_mk/web/[user] as what seems to be json files with .mk extension.

I’m assuming when user is deleted their folder is deleted as well with all content they created, whether they shared it public or not.

Perhaps copy needed content as file or parts of file content to another user before actually deleting user.

Alternatively you might be able to get (some) settings retrieved from a back up.

1 Like
3

Playing around with users I hoped by copying existing user it would also make a copy of user setting folder too, like the user views & dashboards, but sadly no…
image

Setting files of user which I am going to copy

acknowledged_notifications.mk
cached_profile.mk
discovery_checkboxes.mk
enforce_pw_change.mk
foldertree.mk
graph_pin.mk
help.mk
last_pw_change.mk
notification_display_options.mk
num_failed_logins.mk
parentscan.mk
serial.mk
session_info.mk
sidebar.mk
tableoptions.mk
transids.mk
treestates.mk
ui_theme.mk
user_bookmark_lists.mk
user_dashboards.mk
user_views.mk
viewoptions.mk
wato_folders_show_labels.mk
wato_folders_show_tags.mk

Setting files of user created based on copy

cached_profile.mk
enforce_pw_change.mk
last_pw_change.mk
num_failed_logins.mk
serial.mk
ui_sidebar_position.mk
ui_theme.mk

Definitely not a copy … )-:

And to my surprise the copied user has ui_sidebar_position.mk which the original doesn’t have. Weird!

Edit:
I deleted this copied user and my earlier assumption that the folder would be deleted was wrong.
Even after activitation of the user deleted change and after restart site, the user folder is still present on the server.

4

3 posts were split to a new topic: Highlighted Text in the Forum

5

Pain in the *ss and we are trying to pay for a feature like this since 4 years :frowning:
More or less the feedback was “we are the only ones looking for it” and as you clearly can see, “more important” thinks to develop.

The “workaround” only works, if you as the admin is designing everything but anyhow is super time consuming compared to just edit and afterwards edit permissions/ownership
Create a view/dashboard dummy user and edit everything under it - only way to got.
And if a user edits something, merge the dashboard/view, by hand (edit files on disk) and merge.

Problem still exists if a user leaves the company. As soon as his folder is deleted as well, all views/dashboards of him are gone.

I can only ask you kindly to vote for this feature here:

Happy user editing! :wink:

6

Hi @foobar ,
I voted for your two feature requests. Maybe someone from checkmk can make a statement. We actually have a little concern for 2 reasons. 1. user leaves the company. We only get to know this when the user has already been deleted during ldap-sync… and 2. user is deleted by mistake by an error in the LDAP (group membership lost), then also everything is gone, which he has created. It would be desirable in any case, if there was a possibility here, when building e.g. views to define that these do not belong to any user, but belong to e.g. “system” and are not deleted if the creator is no longer created in checkmk.

Regards
Christian

7

for us its not really the concern - its the extra work for solving simple problems and tasks in our daily business
For example: People making errors while creating views/dashboards which consume a lot of CPU or even crash CMK (not the first time that happend) - and with 300+ users just a matter of time. You cant quickly become the user and check/fix the view/dashboard.
Also you cant just create dashboards as an admin and quickly assign to a user or contactgroup/usergroup.
That extra way of switching to another dummy user costs so much extra time - more or less would create a full time job!

About your concern, you can delete the user and the folder suppsed to be still there. If you add afterwards again a user with the same name, he will get all the views/dashboards/settings back - BUT this can also clearly create another problem - depending your company and naming schemes

cheers

8

@CFriedrich
forgot another one - matching the case :wink:

1 Like
9

Perhaps some “chown” functionality for views/dashboards? restricted to admins, of course.

2 Likes
10

will not work due to design

11

“chown” wasn’t meant to refer to the specific command. I fail to see why it shouldn’t be possible (for Tribe29) to add a feature for transferring view/dashboard/… ownership from one user to another.

12

of course it possible!
Most likely not done so far is because it will couse a LOT of work due to the present design.(and other thinks, as always, have priority) you need to extract the part of the view/dashboard from the current user file and add it to another user file.

If you havn’t voted so far for it, the only chance to change something right now

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