Re: [hobbit] Xymon 4.3.0: Beta version available on Sourceforge

[Gary Baluha <gumby3203 (at) gmail.com>]

That's awesome.  Keep up the good work!

On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 9:02 AM, Henrik Størner <henrik (at) hswn.dk> wrote:

> So you didn't think I'd do two releases in one day, eh?
>
> I've uploaded the first beta version of xymon 4.3.0 to
> Sourceforge a few moments ago. If you have the time and
> a spare system to test it with, I'd appreciate any effort
> you can lend me in getting the bugs ironed out.
>
> You should be aware that there IS a lot of new stuff in
> this version, and I more or less expect it to crash
> spectacularly in your setup. So putting it on mission-
> critical systems could be seen as slightly dangerous.
>
> If you have looked at the "trunk" of the sourcecode
> repository, you will be familiar with the new stuff in
> this version. However if you compare it to what's in
> the current beta-release, you will notice that I have left
> out some of the more "dangerous" new components from this
> release. This was done to make testing a bit more manageable;
> I have a lot of new code for Xymon, and throwing all of it
> into one release would just wreak havoc on everyones
> systems.
>
> So instead I am preparing for a series of releases over the
> coming months, where new features will be introduced in a
> controlled fashion.
>
> But the current release is not void of new stuff. Far from
> it - here are the highlights of the 4.3.0 version:
>
> Core changes:
> * Hosts which appear on multiple pages in the web display can
>  use any page they are on in the alerting rules and elsewhere.
> * Support for defining holidays as non-working days in alerts and
>  SLA calculations.
> * Worker modules (RRD, client-data parsers etc) can operate on
>  remote hosts from the hobbitd daemon, for load-sharing.
> * New API's for loadhosts and sendmessage, in preparation for
>  the full 5.0 changes.
> * Always use getcurrenttime() instead of time().
> * Various bugfixes collected over time.
>
> Network test changes:
> * Merged new network tests from trunk: SOAP-over-HTTP,
>  SSL minimum cipher strength
> * Changed network test code to always report a validity period
>  for network tests, so it it possible to run network tests less
>  often than every 30 minutes (e.g. once an hour).
> * Make the content-type setting in HTTP POST tests configurable.
> * Make the source-address used for TCP tests configurable.
> * Make the acceptable HTTP result codes configurable.
> * Use and save HTTP session cookies.
>
> Web changes
> * "NOCOLUMNS" changed to work for all columns.
> * New "group-sorted" definition to auto-sort hosts in a group
> * Use browser tooltips for host comments
> * "Compact" status allows several statuses to appear as a single
>  status on the overview webpages.
> * Trends page can select the time period to show. Buttons provided
>  for the common selections.
> * Ghost list report now lists possible candidates for a ghost,
>  based on IP-address or unqualified hostname.
> * Support generic drop-down lists in templates.
>
> Report changes
> * Number of outages as SLA parameter
>
> Miscellaneous
> * hobbitlaunch support for running tasks only on certain hosts,
>  and for a maximum time.
> * Alert script get a unique ID for each alert.
>
>
> The plan for the future is to let this release stabilize for a month
> or so, depending on how many bugs show up. Then I'll introduce new
> releases about once every two months - with the following schedule
> (everything subject to change):
>
> Version 4.4:
> * SNMP support for data collection
> * Status updates based on data collected in the RRD files (this is
>  really nice - essentially, *any* value you put into an RRD file
>  can trigger a new or modified status in Xymon. So you could eg.
>  change the status of your "http" test to go red, if the response
>  time of a webpage exceeds 5 seconds).
> * Status "flap" handling, to catch statuses that change rapidly.
>
> Version 4.5:
> * Support for communication between clients and Xymon to use
>  compression and/or encryption.
> * Support for client authentication via SSL certificates (so
>  you cannot spoof a client message).
>
> Version 4.6:
> * Revised web interface - eliminate the need for webserver-based
>  authentication, and provide more fine-grained authorization
>  for the various Xymon components.
> * Per-user custom login pages, so the login will always show those
>  systems that the user has responsibility for / is allowed to
>  access.
>
> Somewhere along the road I will also introduce a new "ping" test
> daemon - I am getting to the point where ping'ing all hosts take
> longer than 5 minutes (I have a lot of hosts). So something needs
> to be done, and I think I know how to do it.
>
>
> Have fun!
>
> Henrik
>
>
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