From: announce-admin@opennms.org
To: announce@www.opennms.org
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 21:21:33 -0600 (CST)
Subject: [opennms-announce] OpenNMS Update v1.39

================   
 OpenNMS Update
================   
Vol 1., Issue 39
================   

   In this week's installment...

     * Project Status

          + More 0.4.x Info

          + Getting Things Right

          + Coding Projects Underway

     * Curious Bostonians?

     * New Features En Route

     * The Wish List


==============
Project Status
==============

More 0.4.x Info:

   Effective today, 0.4.1 has been released, and it incorporates fixes to
   a couple of bugs from 0.4.0. If you haven't gotten it yet, and you
   aren't heavily invested in your 0.4.0 install yet, make life easier
   for yourself--download the RPMs for 0.4.1 and install those.

   I also wanted to take a minute and address some of the more common
   questions that we've been getting. These answers will be pushed into
   the FAQ at some point, hopefully sooner than later.

     * Minimum System Requirements

       P200, 256MB RAM, Linux, JDK 1.3+, OpenNMS

       Yeah, it's a memory pig, but this is effectively an untuned first
       release, so we're looking at that. And don't forget, this is
       intended to scale WAY up, so it's going to need more system
       resources than office apps. Look at the bright side, memory is
       cheap

     * Starting Things Up

       0.4.1 includes the latest and greatest init scripts, which Ben is
       quite proud of and embarrassed by, all at the same time. Big
       thanks to those of you that contributed code and ideas and fixes
       for our earlier scripts.

       Also, keep in mind that OpenNMS is expecting the following rough
       order for firing stuff up:

          + Postgres 7 is running

          + icmpd is running

          + /opt/OpenNMS/RunSCM.sh

          + /opt/OpenNMS/RunOpenNMS.sh

     * Troubleshooting

       If it is just not working, you can help everyone out a bit by
       enabling a higher level of logging. This is pretty easily
       accomplished by mucking with the "bluebird" properties file in
       /opt/OpenNMS/data/common/properties/. Find the section on logging,
       read the comment block, and then change the "logLevel" entries
       appropriately. Also, note that the logs get written to
       /var/log/opennms/.

       Consider yourself forewarned: We enabled maximum logging on
       discovery and let it run over night. In doing continuous discovery
       of a small subnet overnight, our log file was over 70MB by the
       next morning. Make sure you have plenty of disk space if you
       decide to turn this on!

     * Typical Errors

       Depending on available system resources, we do generate errors
       that have become pretty common for us, at least in our little
       development testbed.

       JSDT Timeouts: Typically indicates that for some reason the JSDT
       Channel has gone away. Happens more often when you are constrained
       for memory/resources.

       JSDT NoSuchChannelException: Typically means that you've either
       tried to start things out of order or something has mysteriously
       gone away while you weren't looking.

     * Buttloads of Java Processes

       With the way Linux handles Java's native threads, every thread
       shows up as a separate process to "ps". In limited testing, it
       looks like a lightly loaded system will have around 420-450
       processes alive as it runs. You can count yours with a "ps -ef |
       grep -i java | wc -l". It may not be an official count, but since
       the electoral college has already voted, it really doesn't matter
       anyway...

       And yes, "Buttload" is the scientific term for over 300 and less
       than 1000 (in a process-counting context).
       
Getting Things Right:

   This interim "Testdrive" release has proved to be a blessing in
   disguise for many of our efforts. It seems that what we've been
   missing to date is user feedback. Until this release, that was
   impossible and now, we're starting to see some things that we didn't
   consider earlier.

   As a result, we're changing up our development efforts a little bit to
   continue to focus on some of the problems inherent to the Testdrive
   release that will impact the project moving forward. This will change
   our delivery timeframes for the distributed architecture to some
   extent, but it also ensures a much sounder release when distributed
   architecture is announced.

   Some of the things we're adding back to the development "To-do" list
   includes performance data collection, easily customizable pollers,
   white papers that provide a HOWTO on writing custom pollers, and
   perhaps some further discussions on adding a web interface.
   You ask--we deliver. Who could ask for anything more? (Other than
   Toyota, of course.)
   

Coding Projects Underway:

     * Servlets -- Actively working on building/tuning the "extractors".

     * SCM -- Jason is introducing Pause/Resume functionality for the
       schedulers. Once complete, we'll instrument all SCM processes with
       this ability.

     * TCP Poller -- Mike is working on a generic TCP service poller that
       will read an XML file for its configuration (port info, banner
       description, etc) and poll based on your configuration. Makes it
       easier for you to poll your custom services and applications.

     * Maji Prelim Work -- Rick is active on the "events" mailing list.

     * Distributed Architecture -- Work continues...
       

===================
Curious Bostonians?
===================

   Are you in the Boston area? Are you curious about OpenNMS from a
   technical/business/strategic perspective?

   Luke "Flip-flops" Rindfuss and I will be in the Boston area and thanks
   to our ever-accommodating friends at the airlines, we have the
   afternoon free on Thursday, Dec 21, 2000.

   We can handle just about anything you'd like to do/know/argue, so if
   you are looking for a presentation, a conversation, an excuse to
   exercise your expense account, a way to kill the afternoon, or you
   simply want to see the winter flip-flops, please advise.

   So if you'd like to hook up, let us know. Otherwise, the airport bars
   stand to make a killing.
   

=====================
New Features En Route
=====================

   As mentioned earlier, we've got some neato stuff in the works. Here's
   the 50,000 foot view:

     * Generic TCP Poller: Poll services running on the port you
       configure, looking for the response you configure to expect.

     * Portable Agent Technology: We're early in the process of a
       collaborative effort with another open source project to provide
       an "agent" that will run on your systems to provide you a means to
       remotely gather performance and system "health" information.

     * Performance Data Collector: joeSNMP has been around for a while
       now, and we're just about ready to push it into use. We'll be
       building a configurable SNMP poller that will grab the various
       data points we (or you) want and will slam them into a back-end
       performance database.

     * Distributed Architecture: This is a major effort and I didn't want
       to leave it out. But the major buzz we're hearing now suggest that
       some of these other items may be of greater importance to the
       community at large, so we're not abandoning those in lieu of the
       Distributed Architecture. It seems our full plates just got
       moreso.

     * Reporting: The data collection piece doesn't make a whole lot of
       sense without the means to report on that data. This effort has
       been underway for a while, but will require a slight dusting off
       before we delve back into it. The good news is that some of the
       XSLT stuff has revved since we were into this before, so some of
       the bugs have likely been addressed.

     * Bug Fixes: As you'd likely surmise, with actually having a a
       functional product out the door, some people are finding bugs and
       we're doing our best to get those fixes prioritized and into the
       system where appropriate. Note that if the bugs are related to
       some throw-away piece of the software (e.g., something that was
       written to get the Testdrive release out the door and is not there
       for the long haul), then there's a pretty good chance your bug
       will be prioritized as "WONTFIX" and you'll hear very little back.
       The good news is that you've got the source and you can fix your
       own bugs if it comes right down to it. Open Source Rocks!
       

=============
The Wish List
=============

   Given that the entire newsletter was pretty much dedicated to some of
   the new efforts/features/fixes we're working on, a Wish List seems
   pretty redundant at this point.

   That said, I elect to forego the Wish List this week.

   If there are features or fixes you'd like to see incorporated into
   upcoming releases that I've not mentioned here, please let me know.
   You can reach my jam-packed email box directly at shaneo@opennms.org .
   

=============
Afterthoughts
=============

   I like the thought of Christmas and all, but man, it's hell on
   productivity. And it seems like when I do finally get a little bit of
   time to myself, I'm either decorating something or buying something or
   going somewhere, all Christmas related.

   Here's an idea: how about we spread Christmas out over a few months,
   and let's get it away from New Years and Thanksgiving--how about late
   March. Now there's a month hurtin' for a holiday (Work holiday that
   is. I've been lobbying for March 18th as Hangover Day, but haven't
   gotten far. Although I haven't approached Teddy Kennedy yet...but
   that's a different story)

   Anyway, we move Christmas to late March (OK. Prove it to me that Jesus
   was born on 12/25 and I'll back-off). Then, we put into place a set of
   very particular rules about how it is celebrated. First off, no "Eve"
   celebrations. Day of. Nothing else. Next, no decorating allowed. Trees
   are allowed, but only fake ones. No more of this "Killin' trees for
   Jesus" crap. I'm no tree-hugger, but the whole tradition does seem
   rather insane when you think about it. And finally, all celebrations
   on the day of New Christmas must be in one location and one location
   only. If you have multiple places to go (your place and your
   significant other's place) pick one and stay there. Tell the other
   folks that you'll go there next year and that they should know the
   rules.

   In my mind, anyway, this buys us back time, productivity, and it gets
   us a holiday in late March. Come to think of it, why don't we just
   make it March 18th. We can kill 2 birds with one stone, and a lot
   fewer trees.

Color me outta here,

Shane O.
========
Shane O'Donnell
OpenNMS.org
shaneo@opennms.org
==================
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