Hi Frédéric,

Thank you for the feedback.

2006/4/3, Frédéric Mangeant < frederic.mangeant at steria.com>:

Hi Etienne

many thanks for your work, BBWin 0.5 works great (tested on Windows XP Pro). Some settings in BBWin.cfg (like "report empty CD-ROM drives")are very useful.

I have a few questions / remarks :

• do you plan to add a "time-of-day" setting in BBWin.cfg (it will be supported by the Hobbit client 4.2) ?

Well, this setting doesn't seem to be for the client. I'm not familiar with this setting but I think it is only useful on hobbit server side. Could you give me an example of when you would need that setting from the client ?

• maybe BBWin.log should be moved from C:\ to C:\Program

Files\BBWin\logs, I don't like files in the root directory ;-)

You are right, I will create a logs directory and certainly create a registry entry for this useful path.

• do you think a GUI (like the one from the BB client) will exist one day ?

For the moment, the most important is to get a full stable client even if we have to edit the file by hand. However, I plan to try to develop a small mmc or a small gui tool to configure the XML BBWin.cfg file easily

• do you plan to add dynamic settings in the next release ?

Yes, may be not the future release, but I plan to be able to reload settings from BBWin.cfg dynamically when BBWin.cfg time stamp has changed for example without restarting the service.

Thanks for you answer !

--

I hope I answered all your questions.

-- Etienne

Hi Dave,

2006/4/3, David Gilmore <david at stenhouseconsulting.com>:

Etienne,

Have you made this available for download?

Dave

Yes, it is available for download. You can download the Windows Installer package from the url :

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bbwin

If you meant the GUI tool, it is not available for the moment because I didn't decide yet the tools I will use :)

-- Etienne GRIGNON

2006/4/3, David Gilmore <david at stenhouseconsulting.com>:

Just looking for the code. Thank you.

Dave

Source code is available here :

http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.cgi/bbwin/

-- Etienne GRIGNON

Etienne,

Excellent work.

The client is working good.

Regards,

Mario.

Hi Steven,

There is only notion of bbdisplay in BBWin. green, yellow and red status are sent to the different bbdisplay specified in the BBWin.cfg file. I never used the bbnt pager feature. That's why I didn't implemented it but if you give me some details about how bbpage is working, and if you really need it, I can implement a bbpage setting in BBWin.

Could you give me some details ?

Thanks in advance.

2006/4/3, Aiello, Steve (GE, Corporate, consultant) <steve.aiello at ge.com>:

Did a quick read through the documentation, but did not see this mentioned. Is there a configuration parameter to tell the client to page on any report that had a yellow status ?

Steven

-----Original Message----- *From:* mario andre [mailto:rower.master at gmail.com] *Sent:* Monday, April 03, 2006 3:36 PM *To:* hobbit at hswn.dk *Subject:* Re: [hobbit] BBWin 0.5 available

Etienne,

Excellent work.

The client is working good.

Regards,

Mario.

-- Etienne GRIGNON

On Mon, Apr 03, 2006 at 04:42:35PM -0400, Aiello, Steve (GE, Corporate, consultant) wrote:

On the *NIX servers you had the 'pagelevels' setting in the bb/etc/bbwarnsetup.cfg file. I believe this setting configures the client to send status reports as 'page' instead of 'status' when the color matches... Thus if I want the client to page on yellow I just set to 'pagelevels: red yellow'.

You misunderstand how paging works in Hobbit.

The BBWin client should never care about paging. All of the paging is configured on the Hobbit server, in the hobbit-alerts.cfg file. The BBWin client just sends a status message to the Hobbit server; the Hobbit server then decides if an alert should be sent, based on the color of the status, the configuration in the hobbit-alerts.cfg file, the time of day ...

So, there is no reason to implement this unless you want to be compatible with an original Big Brother server.

Henrik

Etienne,

A problem has come up with the Externals. I had been calling all of my external scripts from one batch file when I was using BBNT, which worked fine. I ran the vbs script to convert my BBNT setting to BBWIN and checked the XML file to see that it had imported c:\bblogs\bbexternals.cmd. However, all my externals are reporting purple.

I did read through the docs and changed the scripts and registry to point to the BBWin\tmp directory, but still no reports. If I manually execute the scripts, then they show up in the BBWin\tmp directory. I even changed the XML file to call the scripts directly. But still no luck. After a few service restarts I got the following in my APP log

App: W 'Mon Apr 03 16:28:55 2006': BigBrotherHobbitClient - " The agent externals generated this event message : Failed to launch c:\bblogs\BBsav.vbs: " App: W 'Mon Apr 03 16:28:55 2006': BigBrotherHobbitClient - " The agent externals generated this event message : Failed to launch c:\bblogs\IIS-Check.vbs: "

Any suggestions?

Dave

From: hobbit-return-6219-david=stenhouseconsulting.com at hswn.dk [mailto:hobbit-return-6219-david=stenhouseconsulting.com at hswn.dk] On Behalf Of Etienne Grignon Sent: Monday, April 03, 2006 11:07 AM To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: Re: [hobbit] BBWin 0.5 available

2006/4/3, David Gilmore <david at stenhouseconsulting.com>:

Just looking for the code. Thank you.

Dave

Source code is available here :

http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.cgi/bbwin/

-- Etienne GRIGNON

Yep, that was the fix. I should have realized that.

Any idea why my "catch all" external did not work? With BBNT I called bbexternals.cmd to run all of the external scripts.

bbexternals.cmd

cd c:\bblogs cscript //b bbsav.vbs cscript //b iis-check.vbs cscript //b exchange.vbs

Thanks,

Dave

From: hobbit-return-6230-david=stenhouseconsulting.com at hswn.dk [mailto:hobbit-return-6230-david=stenhouseconsulting.com at hswn.dk] On Behalf Of Etienne Grignon Sent: Monday, April 03, 2006 4:50 PM To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: Re: [hobbit] BBWin 0.5 available

Hi Dave,

2006/4/3, David Gilmore <david at stenhouseconsulting.com>:

Etienne,

A problem has come up with the Externals. I had been calling all of my external scripts from one batch file when I was using BBNT, which worked fine. I ran the vbs script to convert my BBNT setting to BBWIN and checked the XML file to see that it had imported c:\bblogs\bbexternals.cmd. However, all my externals are reporting purple.

I did read through the docs and changed the scripts and registry to point to the BBWin\tmp directory, but still no reports. If I manually execute the scripts, then they show up in the BBWin\tmp directory. I even changed the XML file to call the scripts directly. But still no luck. After a few service restarts I got the following in my APP log

App: W 'Mon Apr 03 16:28:55 2006': BigBrotherHobbitClient - " The agent externals generated this event message : Failed to launch c:\bblogs\BBsav.vbs: " App: W 'Mon Apr 03 16:28:55 2006': BigBrotherHobbitClient - " The agent externals generated this event message : Failed to launch c:\bblogs\IIS-Check.vbs: "

Any suggestions?

For vbscript, you should write externals rules like this :

<load value="cscript.exe c:\bblogs\IIS-Check.vbs" />

You have to specify the executable used for the script. It should work well after that.

Please let me know if it still doesn't work.

-- Etienne GRIGNON

Etienne Grignon wrote:

2006/4/3, David Gilmore <david at stenhouseconsulting.com <mailto:david at stenhouseconsulting.com>>:

Yep, that was the fix.  I should have realized that.
 
Any idea why my "catch all" external did not work?  With BBNT I
called bbexternals.cmd to run all of the external scripts.
 
bbexternals.cmd

    cd c:\bblogs
    cscript //b bbsav.vbs
    cscript //b iis-check.vbs
    cscript //b exchange.vbs

Thanks,
 

Well, I didn't implement the externals launch part as the original bbnt I think. I will look at this to be able to launch cmd files. (Added to the bottom of the TODO list :) ) However, for the moment, I think you can try to fix it by doing this :

<load value="cmd.exe /C bbexternals.cmd " />

-- Etienne GRIGNON

whoa I don't think I've seen a post have that many replies with nothing else in between in such a short peroid of time.

I get the feeling theres quite alot of people hanging out for a free alternative to the Big Brother client. I hope it all goes well as I will certainly be one of the people along for the ride.

Allan

Hi Dave,

2006/4/4, David Gilmore <david at stenhouseconsulting.com>:

Etienne,

Thank you. There are several useful NT Scripts on Deadcat that are .cmd files. It would certainly be useful to carry those over to BBWIN. I'll give your suggestion a shot and let you know how it works out. Again, thank you for your effort on putting this together, and putting up with "annoying" questions.

Dave

Don't hesitate to let me know strange behaviors of BBWin or bugs, it will help me a lot to make BBWin stronger. (You can use the BBWin sourceforge page to send your reports to get an online history and a constructive approach to build a better client).

Thank you in advance,

Regards,

-- Etienne GRIGNON

Etienne Grignon a écrit :

2006/4/3, Frédéric Mangeant < frederic.mangeant at steria.com <mailto:frederic.mangeant at steria.com>>:

Hi Etienne

- do you plan to add a "time-of-day" setting in BBWin.cfg (it will be
supported by the Hobbit client 4.2) ?

Well, this setting doesn't seem to be for the client. I'm not familiar with this setting but I think it is only useful on hobbit server side. Could you give me an example of when you would need that setting from the client ?

Hobbit (at least the 4.1.2p1 server) supports this syntax :

HOST=%db.*.foo.com TIME=W:0800:1600 LOAD 8.0 12.0 DISK /db 98 100 PROC mysqld 1

This is an example taken from ~server/etc/hobbit-clients.cfg; I thought it was supported by the 4.2-pre Hobbit client (which supports locally configured clients), but I can't find it anymore...

--

Frédéric Mangeant

Steria EDC Sophia-Antipolis

Etienne,

On Mon, Apr 03, 2006 at 10:32:06PM +0200, Etienne Grignon wrote:

2006/4/3, Fr?d?ric Mangeant <frederic.mangeant at steria.com>:

...

Hobbit (at least the 4.1.2p1 server) supports this syntax :

HOST=%db.*.foo.com TIME=W:0800:1600 LOAD 8.0 12.0 DISK /db 98 100 PROC mysqld 1

This is an example taken from ~server/etc/hobbit-clients.cfg; I thought it was supported by the 4.2-pre Hobbit client (which supports locally configured clients), but I can't find it anymore...

TIME=W:0800:16:00 means that from 16:00 to 8:00, every thing is understand as green ? is that right ? and yellow or red colors appears only between 8:00 and 16:00 ? Or, doest it means that between 8:00 to 16:00, the default rules are overridden by the special rules ?

Frederic is referring to the syntax you can use in the hobbit-client.cfg file.

This is for configuring the client from a central location. If you can make the client report its data using a "client" message like the Hobbit Unix clients do, you'll get all of this automatically.

My idea with the clients is that they should just collect data, not make any decisions about whether a status should go yellow, red, blue or any other color. That's for the Hobbit server to decide. So the clients just gather whatever data is needed, sends it off to the Hobbit server, and a back-end module there generates the actual status messages from the raw data that the client reports.

I know this is very different from how BB works. For people familiar with BB, it usually takes a while to adjust mentally :-)

Regards, Henrik

Hi Frédéric,

2006/4/4, Frédéric Mangeant <frederic.mangeant at steria.com>:

Hi Henrik

I have to say I like the choice offered by the 4.2-pre Hobbit client ("local" thresolds vs. centralized configuration).

Etienne, would it be difficult for BBWin to handle these 2 configurations ?

Thanks for your answer.

Well, even if for the moment, BBWin uses only local configuration. I want it build as the Unix client to handle both modes so the client can satisfy a larger number of users. However, it will take some times to get the 2 modes fully implemented.

Regards,

-- Etienne GRIGNON

Hi Hermann,

2006/4/5, Hermann-Josef Beckers <hj.beckers at kreis-steinfurt.de>:

Hi Etienne,

bbwin 0.5 crashes on a german Win2000. Sorry for the german error message:

BBWin.exe - Fehler in Anwendung: Die Anweisung in "0x778cc024" verweist auf Speicher in "0x00000000". Der Vorgang "written" konnte nicht auf dem Speicher durchgeführt werden.

basically: Error in application. directive in "0x778cc024" points to memory in "0x00000000".

but in eventlog:

"The service BBWin has been successfully started. The hostname setting is set to ps0114 " "The agent disk.dll has been successfully loaded. Agent name : disk Agent version : 0.1 BBWin agent version : 1 Agent description : disk agent : report disk usage" "The agent cpu.dll has been successfully loaded. Agent name : cpu Agent version : 0.1 BBWin agent version : 1 Agent description : cpu agent : report cpu usage"

My hobbit server receives no messages, everything goes purple.

Thank you for the report.

Could you try to set the log level to 4 (debug level) and send me by mail the log file ? <setting name="loglevel" value="4" /> Also, would it be possible for you to load agents one by one by commenting the other load directives ? By order, try to add one by one :

externals procs memory disk stats uptime cpu

It will help me to find out what's going on. BBWin is currently tested on :

Windows NT 4 SP 6 US Windows 2000 SP4 US Windows XP SP2 FR Windows XP SP2 US Windows 2003 SP1 US

-- Etienne GRIGNON

Hello,

2006/4/6, cits.bogajewski at daimlerchrysler.com < cits.bogajewski at daimlerchrysler.com>:

Hello Etienne,

i have some problems to get my external scripts running, using bbwin 0.5 The main problem is, that i cant troubleshoot in the right manner, because the output of script execution does not appears in any kind of log, even thought the logging level is set to debug. the only reporting i get is those from CPU Test and some startup/shutdown messages.

Would you mind to redirect the output of external script launched in any manner to dedicated or at least main log file in future releases? This would be helpful in some situations.

Anyway, the core part of your client seems to work perfect out of the box. So finally my monitoring solution is 100% Open Source. Thanks.

Cheers,

I will try to help you. If BBWin can't execute the external, you should see a warning event in the eventlog. If no event is present with externals agent loaded then, it means that the external has been executed with success. The first thing you should do is to run from a command line console each one of your externals to be sure where reports files are saved. If the directory is different than the BBWin tmp directory default, then, change the path inside your externals or if you can't modify it, just change the BBWin registry setting.(LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\BBWin\tmpPath).

For the future versions, I have to do logging smarter. For example, too much debug in CPU and not enough in the others one (for externals agent for example as you suggest me). I will work on it. About the debug mode, you should only put it on when you have troubles because if you let the debug mode on during too much time, the log file may fill all your space :)

Thank you for your feedback,

-- Etienne GRIGNON

I believe I have the same issue. Nothing in the event viewer, not much in my logs either. Also, bbwin process will crash/disappear for me. Only hangs around when I have the debug level at 3 or 4. The only time I have seen it run, and actually send an alert is when I just have the cpu module loading. I can also load the external module, but I do not have any external processes so far. It stayed up with the procs module but I never got a report for it, and I was unable to stop the process, had to kill it. I believe the disk & memory modules crash it instantly.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Ehrenberg [mailto:jmenys at gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, April 07, 2006 1:24 PM
To: hobbit at hswn.dk
Subject: Re: [hobbit] BBWin 0.5 available


I have not been able to successfully start the BBwin service on

WIndows 2000 Server SP4. It worked on my XP machine and I tried the same settings on 2000 but it just won't start. I tried verbose logging (4) but it does not show much. My event log shows the following: Event Type: Warning Event Source: BigBrotherHobbitClient Event Category: Service Event ID: 5 Date: 4/7/2006 Time: 12:41:51 PM User: N/A Computer: XXXX Description: The configuration file bbwin.cfg in namespace bbwin has an unknown setting : logreportfailure

Event Type:    Error
Event Source:    Service Control Manager
Event Category:    None 
Event ID:    7031
Date:        4/7/2006
Time:        12:45:53 PM
User:        N/A
Computer:    XXXX
Description:
The Big Brother Hobbit Client service terminated unexpectedly.

It has done this 4 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 0 milliseconds: No action.

I tried to remove the logreportfailure setting, but it makes no

difference.
bbwin.log 7/4/2006 12:45:17:[DEBUG]: Thread for agent started. 7/4/2006 12:45:17:[DEBUG]: Thread for agent started. 7/4/2006 12:45:17:[DEBUG]: Thread for agent started. 7/4/2006 12:45:17:[DEBUG]: Thread for agent started. 7/4/2006 12:45:17:[INFO]: bbwin is started. 7/4/2006 12:45:17:[DEBUG]: Thread for agent started. 7/4/2006 12:45:17:[DEBUG]: Thread for agent started. 7/4/2006 12:45:17:[DEBUG]: Thread for agent started. 7/4/2006 12:45:17:[DEBUG]: [cpu]: Init cpu started 7/4/2006 12:45:53:[DEBUG]: Thread for agent started. 7/4/2006 12:45:53:[INFO]: bbwin is started. 7/4/2006 12:45:53:[DEBUG]: Thread for agent started. 7/4/2006 12:45:53:[DEBUG]: Thread for agent started. 7/4/2006 12:45:53:[DEBUG]: Thread for agent started. 7/4/2006 12:45:53:[DEBUG]: Thread for agent started. 7/4/2006 12:45:53:[DEBUG]: Thread for agent started. 7/4/2006 12:45:53:[DEBUG]: Thread for agent started. 7/4/2006 12:45:53:[DEBUG]: [cpu]: Init cpu started

any help is appreciated.



On 4/3/06, Etienne Grignon < etienne.grignon at gmail.com

<mailto:etienne.grignon at gmail.com> > wrote:

	Hello everyone,

	
	I publish today the second preview of BBWin, a free Big

Brother Hobbit Windows client.

	You can download the MSI installer of this preview from

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bbwin

	This preview contains the new following stuffs:

	
	* The Cpu agent dll : it will monitor your cpu with a

full ps report sorted by cpu usage

	* The Disk agent dll : it will monitor your disks usage

	* The Memory agent dll : it will monitor your memory

usage

	* The Stats agent dll : just to send statistics reports

like netstat for trends purpose

	* The external fsmon: a small script used to monitor

folders (files counting for IIS smtp queue for example)

	* The externals agent can now work with report file

using lifetime feature

	* The uptime agent doesn't use anymore the pdh library

	* The converting tools: migrate your current bbnt

configuration to the BBWin configuration format instantaneously

	Note : the cpu, disk, memory and stats agents are bbnt

trends back compatible. So, you will be able to keep your trends history if you are moving from bbnt client.

	Also, it contains the already existing stuffs with some

bugs corrections. You may look at the change log file to get more details.

	* The executable BBWin: it is the native service in

charge of executing the agents

	* The executable BBWinCmd : it is a command line utility

to send messages to an hobbit server

	* The Externals agent dll: it is an agent in charge of

executing all your existing BB scripts or executables

	* The Procs agent dll : it is an agent in charge of

checking running processes

	* The Uptime agent dll: it will monitor uptime of the

server including an alarm if reboot recently. It was interesting to separate this alarm from cpu column.

	* The external wlbs.vbs: monitor wlbs (nlb) windows

clusters

	* The external cluster.exe: monitor mscs windows

clusters

	* The agents SDK: contains an example and the necessary

headers to develop your own C++ BBWin agents

	After installing the BBWin package, please read the

Readme.txt file to understand its working. It is located in C:\Program Files\BBWin\doc if you installed it by default.

	Note : If upgrading from BBWin 0.4, just install the new

version, it will upgrade your BBWin agent without erasing your existing configuration files.

	The centralized BBWin version is not ready (I have to

provide some hobbit server side code to Henrik) so BBWin agents need local configuration for the moment.

	The next preview (0.6) should be delivered on April

17th. It will contain :

	* the Services agent dll : monitor Windows services with

autorestart features

	* the Event agent dll : a small version to monitor the

windows event log

	* Improvement of the cpu agent

	* Improvement of the BBWin core service (To be more

robust)

	* A better documentation

	
	

	Also, I created a newsletter that you can use for

questions, requests or bug reports about BBWin.

	You can subscribe to the list on : 

	http://sourceforge.net/news/?group_id=136450

	
	

	Etienne.