[hobbit] dialup directive not implemented?

[Henrik Stoerner]

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