A combo message of questions

[Charles Jones <jonescr (at) cisco.com>]

I have several questions, so I'm just going to ask them all at once :)

1. Is there any way to define the amount of space put between displayed 
groups? When I use several group-compress sections in bb-hosts, hobbit 
renders the page with a rather large amount (seems like 6+ lines) of 
blank space between them.  I have lots of hosts and want to get as many 
of them on the page as I can.

2. It would be nice to be able to use regular expressions in the 
"expect" option of bb-services. For instance I want to check the status 
of several IRC servers, and they all have different output in response 
to telnetting to them, but they all have the word "NOTICE", I would like 
to be able to do something like: expect ".*NOTICE.*", so that I could 
use one check for multiple servers.

3. Whenever I use the "apache" keyword in bb-hosts, it crashes hobbit, 
and subsequently everything turns purple.  I made sure the host I had 
specified had the server-status option configured and enabled. I would 
happily provide dumps and do any troubleshooting you need, as I would 
really like to have the apache performance graphs.

4. Is there any way to put a header OVER a displayed group-compress? Any 
text you specify next to group-compress gets put in the column over the 
hostnames, Is it possible to have an option to have that text go 
centered over the entire group (over the column headers)?

5. What rules does hobbit follow for looking up hostnames? I put the IP 
of a host in bb-hosts, along with a "fake" hostname.domainname.  Hobbit 
insisted on trying to ping (and other tests) on the DNS looked up IP of 
the hostname.domainname, instead of using the IP I specified in 
bb-hosts. Basically I have a host with IP 1.2.3.4, so in bb-hosts I have 
"1.2.3.4  foo.bar.com # ssh smtp ftp". foo.bar.com actually resolves to 
some other IP, and hobbit is trying to do the network tests against that 
instead of the 1.2.3.4 I specified. I have temporarily resolved it by 
using a fake name that doesnt resolve to anything, which seems to make 
hobbit use the IP in bb-hosts.

6. bb-services has an option to give a service multiple names. It would 
be nice to be able to define multiple ports as well, or even better by 
specifying them in bb-hosts.  For example if I want to check an IRC 
server, it is easy to create an irc service in bb-services, but if I 
want to check multiple ports of the same service on the same hosts, I 
would have to make multiple service definitions. How about being able to 
define a service, and have some keyword for port that indicates the 
port(s) are passed from bb-hosts, and then in bb-hosts you would specify 
the port, ie. "1.2.3.4 irc.bar.com # conn irc:6667 irc:6668 irc:6669"

7. Do you accept donations via PayPal? I would like to send you a 
donation for all your hard work. :-)

-Charles