Hobbit 4.2 alfa release available

[Henrik Stoerner]

It's been close to 6 months since I last released a version of Hobbit
with new features and improvements, so I am making an alfa version
available for more widespread testing.

It's been uploaded to Sourceforge now, and will be available shortly at
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=128058&package_id=140220&release_id=407174

The main features of this release are:
* Client logfile monitoring has been implemented (at last!)
* A completely new "Critical Systems" view with a separate
  configuration file and web-based GUI for editing it.
* All configuration files now support the "include" directive.
  In addition, you can include entire directories with a
  single "directory" statement in the config file.
* Acknowledgments now stay around for a while after the status
  goes OK, so if a service crashes after a few minutes, the
  acknowledgment is automatically revived.
* DOWNTIME can be applied to individual statuses.
* Performance improvements throughout all of the Hobbit core tools.

There has been a lot of internal code improvements, and it is almost
guaranteed that I have broken something along the way. So the primary
purpose of this alfa release is to sniff out those regressions and
make sure that they get fixed before the final release.

Documentation on the new features is still being worked on, but there
are some preliminary docs included that should get you started. Use
the mailing lists if you need help.

And last, but certainly not least, I am thrilled to see that some of
you have taken up the challenge of improving Hobbit by providing
add-on modules:
* Devmon (SNMP testing): http://devmon.sf.net
* BBWin, an Open-Source Windows client: http://sourceforge.net/projects/bbwin

So lots of things for you to test.

Thanks for your help.


Regards,
Henrik