OK, interesting discovery here. It seems that the hostname given to the dialup directive must be included elsewhere in bb-hosts. Our modem bank is on a host called xxx, and when I put xxx on its own page with the dialup directive, bbgen goes yellow and complains "Confused: can't find host xxx." But when I add a prior, standard entry for xxx on another page, the dialup directive works. In a way this makes sense, because normal bb-hosts entries are supposed to have an IP addr and a hostname, but the dialup directive asks only for a hostname -- so how can it know the address unless there has been a prior entry for that host? So I suppose this was the intended behavior, but still it seems like the admin should be given the option not to include this host in another page. Anyway the problem is only half solved: the new dialup page works, but it shows a row of yellow question mark bubbles, instead of clear or green ones. When clicked, these bubbles lead to a white "Status not available" page. Something else is wrong?

• ms

Mike Serra wrote:

Hi Greg, The bb-hosts man page has a description of a "dialup" tag in the way that you are using it, in the section titled "Bbgen Display Options." But, there is also a later section called "Ping Test of Modembanks." It describes a directive of the form "dialup <hostname> <startIP> <count>." The idea is that you can do a ping test that goes clear instead of red, but for a range of IP addresses, instead of just one (and it appears the addresses do not need to have matching DNS entries). That is what I am trying to use. I'm not sure I have the syntax correct: can anyone out there using this explain where the dialup tag goes in relation to the page tag, etc?

• ms

Hubbard, Greg L wrote:

...

Mike,

I use "dialup" to flag a host that may or may not be there when I ping it. If the host is not accessible, the status is clear instead of red. Handy for test machines. This dates back to Big Brother. Could this be what you are trying to use?

GLH

-----Original Message----- From: Mike Serra [mailto:mserra at iwu.edu] Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 9:03 AM To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: [hobbit] dialup directive not implemented?

Hi Hobbit users, I have a simple question about the "dialup" directive in bb-hosts, the one that is supposed to come immediately after a page or subpage directive, and is used to ping a range of hosts, like a modem pool. Our sysadmin tells me that he read (in a man page online?) that this directive is not implemented. And it's acting like it isn't: we can't get it to do anything, despite trying every possible syntax that could make sense. But on the other hand people online talk about this as if they're using it just fine. So -- is it implemented? We are using hobbit version 4.2-beta-20060605. Thanks,

• Mike Serra

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We use dialup on individual hosts, not in the way that Mike describes. If you're coming up with a different way to identify hosts that should not go red nor notify when they are down, that's fine, as long as the capability is still there.

Henrik Stoerner wrote:

On Tue, Aug 08, 2006 at 09:03:04AM -0500, Mike Serra wrote:

...

I have a simple question about the "dialup" directive in bb-hosts, the one that is supposed to come immediately after a page or subpage directive, and is used to ping a range of hosts, like a modem pool. Our sysadmin tells me that he read (in a man page online?) that this directive is not implemented. And it's acting like it isn't: we can't get it to do anything, despite trying every possible syntax that could make sense. But on the other hand people online talk about this as if they're using it just fine. So -- is it implemented? We are using hobbit version 4.2-beta-20060605.

It was implemented some time ago, but I've had reports coming in over the past couple of months that it doesn't work in the 4.2 test releases that are out. I then asked if anyone was using it, because if not I'd prefer to just rip it out instead of trying to fix it - and so far noone has stepped forward to say they really need it.

So ... do you need it ? If people want it, I'd really rather implement it quite differently than the old BB implementation - as a normal network test associated with a host, e.g.

0.0.0.0   vpnpool.foo.com  # iprange=172.16.1.1-172.16.1.100

Regards, Henrik

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On Tue, Aug 08, 2006 at 10:57:41AM -0500, Mike Serra wrote:

(heh) Sorry, I thought I had searched the archives thoroughly before asking about this, but I somehow missed the earlier extensive discussion. My apologies. At any rate it seems like it would be useful; we're interested in it for our modem pool, and I've seen people in mailing lists (for BB?) who found other uses, like monitoring which desktop machines in the office are up, etc. But making it into a normal network test associated with a host has one confusing aspect -- why should it be associated with a host?

"Host" is not the right word. The lines in the bb-hosts files really need not be real hosts, they are just a kind of container for the various tests we run. A label so you can recognize it on the webpage. E.g. you could have a line in the bb-hosts file with the "www.microsoft.com" hostname - but in reality, this is a virtual thing because that website is physically being handled by many hosts.

In fact the old BB syntax called for a "hostname," but I can't think what it could want it for except as a label to put on the display webpage.

Exactly.

But other than that confusion, the old syntax makes sense.

Well, I don't agree :-) I think the old syntax is confusing - there's a "dialup" property that you can apply to individual hosts, and it is something *completely* different when you use the "dialup" modem-pool identifier.

For the upcoming 4.2 release, I've added this to the release notes:

Modem-bank testing ("dialup" host definition) does not work

Previous versions of Hobbit supported the Big Brother "dialup" host definition for pinging a range of IP-adresses, e.g. a modem-bank or a pool of IP-adresses handed out by a DHCP server. This feature is not supported in Hobbit 4.2, but may re-appear in a different form in a later version. (Note: This has nothing to do with the "dialup" directive which can be applied to individual hosts, to make them go clear when they are offline instead of red or purple).

That at least makes it clear that it doesn't work. How it will be implemented later is then up for discussion.

Regards, Henrik