This file is maintained in parallel to the CHANGES file. It should tell you in short terms what changes in functionality we made rather than what changes in source code ... 27.12.99: Added basic trap monitoring (see HOWTO) 20.12.99: Some extensions concerning display: - Framed web pages may now display status lights in the contents frame - Tables rows are now sorted alphabetically - some special keywords in the text of status messages reported by agents are now recognized if used in the HTML log pages: &red/&green/... => status light &html => the following text is HTML - Agents may now officially send long comments. Concept: - monitors must log a short message (such as "ntp OK") - monitors may log a long descriptive text message - monitors may log a long descriptive HTML message The messages are always sorted short message (by severity) then long text message then long HTML message (so that in alarm messages the short message associated with the failed service is always appearing first in line) 20.12.99: Added a few new monitors (mostly contributed by Joseph Gooch): - fping protocol in ping test - ntp - software - snmp_trap - mrtg - atmport, etherport (snmp, not fully generic yet) see CONFIG, section adm/uxmon-net 05.12.99: Event Generator does now support sending SNMP traps for each raised or cleared alarm (see HOWTO) 05.12.99: Event Generator: stop creating zombies
14.11.99: fixed a few bugs: - uxmon: config scripts not working properly - uxmon: support for multiple running copies of uxmon per host not working properly - bswebalarm: test being placed in the ignore list were not really ignored 14.11.99: added new logging mechanism: every incoming message (bbd) is now logged to www/logs/history/status.log 03.11.99: added 'external' ping protocol (see CONFIG) as contributed by Roland Roberts
16.10.99: bb_start works on systems without 'grep -w' option 16.10.99: added Webadmin interface (bswebadmin CGI) 16.10.99: new security model (adm/permissions file) allowing more flexibility in defining which client is permitted to do what 14.10.99: uxmon: procs check accepts '(' and ')' in process names 10.10.99: uxmon: support monitoring frequencies other than 'each 5 minutes' 07.10.99: CGIs: support for POST Forms method
25.09.99: work on Win32 systems also when not installed in the default location (binary release only) 25.09.99: fixed uxmon signal handling: die on TERM, ignore TSTP/INT (fixing strange behaviour of Solaris /sbin/sh) 25.07.99: fixed bbd bug making the daemon crash if a client sent a bad leave command
17.07.99: some work for the NT version: added performance monitor support, added install procedure (services ...), etc.
-26.06.99: fixed a few things reported during the 0.32 beta test 20.06.99: added bbscript monitor: Run Big Brother monitor scripts from within uxmon. 20.06.99: added statusfile monitor allowing external monitors to write their status information to a file read by the statusfile monitor. 20.06.99: added %Option statement (bb-display.cfg) allowing to configure a few Status Collector behaviours. 19.06.99: added 'cpuload' (load as reported by the uptime command) monitor (thanks to Torben Sorensen) 17.06.99: made Big Sister ready for a binary release.
12.06.99: tested on NT 4.0 and fixed things working in a flaky way or not working at all (see README.win32) 11.06.99: added enhanced history log file housekeeping to bbd (See HOWTO) 11.06.99: bbd will read altered bb-display.cfg config files immediately after updateing pages instead of immediately before. This will stop bbd from creating empty pages after a configuration change when running with dynamic grouping. 11.06.99: bbd: now writes "check point" entries to the display.history file so that it is possible to find out when bbd was running and when not. 10.06.99: Event Generator: include the time of the alarm in the alarm and acknowledge messages 08.06.99: display maps: display positions may now be given names, lines (for e.g. network connections) now supported 08.06.99: bbd keeps track of which agent monitors which host/check, logs changes to syslog and writes the summary file adm/agents.log 07.06.99: fixed bb_event_generator behaviour regarding checks used in "check=": If bbd never received a valid status for check assume it is up (=> do not suppress alarm!) 07.06.99: fixed internal bug in HTML creation code making bbd corrupt messages containing "@" characters and in some cases loop 07.06.99: use EventLog logging on Win32 systems instead of syslog 05.06.99: added support for Win32 EventLog ("eventlog" monitor) and Services ("procs" monitor) 25.05.99: use syslog for logging Big Sister events 15.05.99: added log file rotating to Status Collector. See HOWTO ... 15.05.99: added "bsadmin" command allowing to send bbd commands from command line 09.05.99: added "-c" option to uxmon in order to allow the name of the "uxmon-net" file be passed. Changed bb_start script so that it does run multiple copies of uxmon if multiple uxmon-net files exist (uxmon-net.*) 09.05.99: uxmon-net procs check accepts now a pscomm= argument (use e.g. pscomm="ps cax" procs) 03.05.99: added alarm acknowledging 24.04.99: CGI scripts now running as either CGI or FastCGI (see Q+A) 07.04.99: added a generic logfile check used for both OV and syslog checks. So the advanced features of OV are available for syslog now too. Generic line based logs now may be checked with the 'logfile' monitor
07.04.99: fixed event generator bug: no alarms send on Linux 07.04.99: fixed event generator bug which caused the event generator to send false alarms 30.03.99: the various programs should now find the Big Sister root directory without any problems 28.03.99: the 'procs' check does now work with SNMP queried hosts too (uxmon-net: procs=... snmp) 28.03.99: internal changes to 'uxmon': does now support 'variables' and a generic way of defining dependencies between different checks (actually used in SNMP monitor - enhanced storage usage reporting) 22.03.99: the Status Collector does now create a HTML version of each status file in 'logs' and places it in 'html'. Use '%itemref html' in bb-display.cfg ... 20.03.99: added %include statement for including static sections into web pages (bb-display.cfg) 20.03.99: re-designed skin parsing code - now nested variables as well as subroutines in skins are supported 19.03.99: added bswebalarm.pl - the web frontend to alarms 16.03.99: allow and interpret quotes " and ' in uxmon-net 14.03.99: added notify.pl (notifier for event_generator) contributed by Roland Roberts 13.03.99: Finally added documentation of new event generator features to CONFIG 08.03.99: added %Frameset statement (bb-display.cfg) for generating HTML framesets 08.03.99: introduced the 'skin' mechanism (%skin statement in bb-display.cfg) for describing page layouts. 07.03.99: kill processes by name rather than by uid. Optionally start uxmon as root (currently only the ping module will insist on running as root when doing ICMP pings) when file adm/uxmon-asroot exists 07.03.99: cleaned up FQDN support: now FQDN supported can be configured for each 'bsdisplay'/'bbdisplay' individually. In compatibility mode ',' is used as the replacement for '.'.
03.01.99: FQDN support: display '.', internal representation '_', BB may use ','. 02.01.99: sort messages by severity: red first (so get the important messages first on the web pages and in alarms) 02.01.99: added support for multiline status messages in the whole Big Sister package 02.01.99: bug fixes: allow ',' in hostnames (BB fully qualified domain names) and translate them to '_', find prototype files (%Page statement in bb-display.cfg) in 'www' subdirectory 25.12.98: when a host dynamically leaves (leave statement) no "purple" status is generated any more 25.12.98: reload adm/uxmon-net and adm/grouping automatically when altered - no need to restart uxmon any more 21.12.98: behave sane when unresolvable host names appear in config files or name resolution is temporarily unavailable
19.12.98: multiple diskfree tests with different file system types are now supported 19.12.98: diskfree test does now work on HP/UX too out of the box 19.12.98: bb_start does now work if run as the bsuser too 19.12.98: install procedure does now work as non-root user too 19.12.98: "type=nt,storage,cpu snmp" check does now work together with Windows NT systems too 17.12.98: made a few Win32 specific changes (such as adding a start script, run processes in background, etc.) 15.12.98: added FQDN / noFQDN option to uxmon (see 'CONFIG') to ease handling of hostnames 15.12.98: fixed bb_start again so that it now should definitely work when installed in 'exotic' directories
06.12.98: removed the "dynamic" stuff from uxmon. Configuration/Module modifications now must be followed by a uxmon restart for changes to become effective. The automatic reload of perl code obviously was causing different troubles with different versions of perl on different platforms ... 19.11.98: bb_event_generator does now remember alarms even after restart 14.11.98: Big Sister runs on win32 platforms too now (alpha)
11.11.98: fixed "EXPIRES" time format in generated web pages 10.11.98: added HP Openview trap monitor interface to uxmon (check "OV") 10.11.98: fixed "dumpdates" check 08.11.98: bb_event_generator rewritten from scratch: quite more configurable now, is aware of grouping and reacts faster on status changes. 07.11.98: fixed 'cmd' Monitor (used especially for 'dns' check) 07.11.98: famous "last fix" to bb_start
01.11.98: started to replace a few gifs. Reason: make Big Sister look more different from Big Brother (seems to be what some people want me to do) 01.11.98: Added "Autoconn"-feature (see CONFIG, bb-display.cfg) allowing bbd to treat a connection to itself like a successfull ping and set 'conn' to green on client connects. 01.11.98: Added '-c' bbd option, semantics: "create web pages and quit" (e.g. for running bbd out of original Big Brother runbb.sh) 01.11.98: Correctly delete old image files (image maps) 27.10.98: fixed some install problems
26.10.98: fixed treatement of hosts.allow 26.10.98: a few bugfixes that should ease installation in an environment different from Tom's ...
24.10.98: support for graphical status displays (e.g. maps) and HTML image maps (%image statement) 24.10.98: the groups listed in a %table-statement in the bbd config file may now be prefixed by one or more "+" and the respective tables will contain all the groups/hosts found when recursing down the group tree. 22.10.98: Added "%Autojoin"-Statement to the Status Collector. This allows to define a group where every host automatically appears in (e.g. "ALL") as well as a group newly appearing hosts should join.
18.10.98: Added "dns" check ("cheap" implementation using nslookup rather than a full-hearted implementation as a true Monitor) 18.10.98: %Pager statement added to bb-display.cfg so that pages sent from BB clients aren't sent to the Big Blackhole anymore 17.10.98: decided to start using this file