[hobbit] Xymon Protocol

[ulric at siag.nu]

Citerar TJ Yang <tjyang2001 at gmail.com>:

> Hi, Ultric
>
> Nice to see you speak up on hobbit windows client issue.
> I didn't have a need to run hobbit client on windows at work thus I
> wasn't paying too much attention on this subject.
>
> I quickly browsed the src code at
> http://mrbig.365-24.se/MrBig/Doc/Archive/Sources/MrBig-0.19.1/.
>
> One question to you,
> Does Mr. Big hobbit client support client side binary/module update
> from central hobbit  server ?

I'm not a big fan of individual applications managing their own patch 
policy, so no. The client is a single exe file, so the update procedure 
is:

net stop mrbig
copy the new version on top of the old
net start mrbig

A colleague wrote a script to update all servers in an AD automatically.

That said, a gimmick to perform the three steps above could easily be 
implemented.

>> I think Hobbit needs *any* maintained Windows client. I am the author of the
>> Mr Big client, which I wrote for my previous employer. When I quit in April
>> I warned that since my new employer doesn't use Hobbit I would no longer
>> maintain the client, so they would eventually need to find a replacement for
>> me or a replacement for Mr Big.
>>
>> As it is, the situation wrt monitoring Windows servers with Hobbit is:
>>
>> - Big Brother client: costs $$$ and is ignored by Quest. Not an option.
>
> Can you explain more about " BB client is ignored by Quest" part ?
> Are you saying even one pay for bb windows client license, Quest is
> still not provide good support on BB Client ?

When Quest bought Big Brother, we were very excited because we used Big 
Brother to monitor something like 1000 nodes, and we thought they would 
delevop it into something even better, more scalable, more capable etc. 
But all they did was raise the price. We moved our bbdisplays to Hobbit 
and I wrote Mr Big.

I evaluated the "new" Big Brother a year ago and got the impression it 
has seen virtually no development since I last saw it. That's a shame 
because Quest have a good reputation and I don't understand why they 
would let the product rot.

If you search for Big Brother on the Quest web today, they guide you to 
the "new" page at bb4.com. My interpretation is that they want nothing 
to do with it.

> I hope you still stick around in xymon community using your  free time.

What's that? ;)

> If Mr Big is functional equivalent to BBwin, then I will roll you src
> into main xymon src tree.
>
> Using same src tree and dev machine to create binary for Unix(and
> MacOSX) and Windows is a great time-saver for xymon development work.

Brilliant. The source is available here:

http://mrbig.365-24.se/Archive/Sources/

The last version is 0.19.3.

The minicfg program runs on the bbdisplay and provides automatic client 
configuration. Optional but very very convenient. I think I can dig up 
a more recent version than the one in the source package. I should also 
be able to dig up a description of how to set up a cross-compiling 
environment.

Ulric