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Revision: 1.2
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# User Rev Content
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4     gettingstarted.shtml
5     Created by tdb1 27/05/2001
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9     <html>
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12     <title>Getting Started with the i-scream Central Monitoring System</title>
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26     <h2>Getting Started with the i-scream Central Monitoring System</h2>
27    
28     <h3>1. Installing the corba services (pre-requiste for the server)</h3>
29     <p>The server requires a CORBA Naming Service to run. It may be that you already
30     have such a system running, in which case you can use this. Simply edit the
31     jacorb.properties file to point to your Naming service. If you don't have a
32     naming service running you could just setup your own manually, but if like us
33     you want the easy approach, install our corba services program.</p>
34     <p>This program runs the naming service and provides a builtin webserver to
35     serve requests to the server application. The documentation details how to get
36     this running. It should simply be a case of extracting and running.</p>
37     <h3>1. Installing the server</h3>
38     <p>The first stage is to download and install the server application. The
39     latest versions of all i-scream applications can be found at the following
40     URL;</p>
41     <p><a href="http://www.i-scream.org.uk/downloads">http://www.i-scream.org.uk/downloads</a></p>
42     <p>Once downloaded the archive should be extracted to a directory of your
43     choice. The server will run on most Java enabled platforms (including
44     Windows, Linux and FreeBSD).</p>
45     <p>The archive consists of only a few files and directories. The main file is
46     the iscream-server.jar archive which contains all the binary code for the
47     server. The lib directory contains other JAR archives which the server
48     requires to run. The etc directory contains (or will contain)
49     configuration for most of the i-scream central monitoring system. The next
50     step is to configure the server to suit your requirements.</p>
51     <h3>2. Configuring the server</h3>
52     <p>The configuration is split into two main files. The first,
53     default.properties can be considered a bootstrap configuration. This means
54     that it provides basic configuration to get the server started, after
55     which point the main configuration system takes over. This file should be
56     checked through, and is pretty well explained by comments.</p>
57     <p>The rest of the server configuration is based on system.conf. This can
58     hold the entire system configuration, including hosts. It may also specify
59     other configuration files to be included in the main configuration. This
60     file is also commented extensively.</p>
61     <p>This step may well take some time to get right, and you can come back to
62     it at any point. Lots of the configuration can be changed "on the fly"
63     as well.</p>
64     <p>For fuller and complete details of the configuration system, and the
65     server in general, please see the Server User Guide in the documentation
66     section of the website.</p>
67     <h3>2a. Setting up the database</h3>
68     <p>The i-scream central monitoring system can make use of a database for
69     generating historical reports. The documentation explains how you would
70     configure the system to do this. You will need to create a single basic
71     table yourself, this is also explained in the documentation.</p>
72     <h3>3. Starting the server</h3>
73     <p>Starting up the server is a trivial task. Usually you can just get away
74     with running the run script provided. This will boot the server up
75     displaying some basic information to the console. If something goes wrong,
76     the error message should point to the cause.</p>
77     <h3>4. Setting up hosts</h3>
78     <p>Hosts can be run on either unix (tested with Solaris, FreeBSD and some
79     Linux distributions) or windows. Both are equally easy to setup.</p>
80     <p>Firstly, the unix host is called &quot;ihost&quot;. This can be downloaded from the
81     i-scream website. Once extracted it just needs to be started up. You need two
82     pieces of information to do this; the filtermanager (part of the server) host
83     and port number. If you haven't changed much in terms of configuration this will
84     be the machine the server is running on, and port 4567. To start ihost you
85     simply type;</p>
86     <pre>ihost.pl server.domain.com port</pre>
87     <p>ihost will then contact the server to obtain it's configuration and start
88     sending information.</p>
89     <p>The windows host, winhost, is very similar. All you need to do is install it
90     using the provided installer in the download, and then edit the ini file to
91     provide the two bits of information above. Running the application starts up
92     communication with the server and data sending commences.</p>
93     <p>Full details of both of these hosts can be found in the relevant
94     documentation on the website.</p>
95     <h3>5. Using Conient</h3>
96     <p>Conient allows you to view, in real time, the data being sent by the
97     hosts. This is a perfect way to test that all the above steps have
98     successfully been completed.</p>
99     <p>At present Conient is simply another archive which can be extracted and
100     run. However, in the near future we hope to have an installer to make life
101     easier. Conient is a Java application and will run on most Java enabled
102     platforms.</p>
103     <p>After extracting the run script can be used to start Conient, or in some
104     cases the JAR file can be executed manually. The GUI will then load. The
105     configuration section requires you to enter a host and port for the
106     server. By default this will be the machine on which the server is running
107     on port 4510. Conient will then connect upon request and start displaying
108     information.</p>
109     <p>Assuming data is displayed you have successfully setup the i-scream
110     central monitoring system. Well done!</p>
111     <p>This is explained in much more detail in the Conient documentation.</p>
112     <h3>6. Setting up DBReporter</h3>
113     <p>If you are making use of a database you can setup the DBReporter to
114     generate web-based reports of the information collected. This is just a
115     case of extracting the archive to a suitable location, configuring it, and
116     setting it to run on a regular basis (we suggest daily). DBReporter will
117     also ensure the database is kept relatively clean.</p>
118     <p>Full instructions are available in the DBReporter documentation.</p>
119     <h3>7. Setting up the Web Interface</h3>
120     <p>The Web interface allows you to view various aspects of the i-scream
121     central monitoring systems output. These include realtime viewing of data
122     (much like Conient), links to the DBReporter above, and full displaying of
123     the alerts that can be generated by the server.</p>
124     <p>The archive contains a series of PHP scripts which should be placed on
125     your PHP enabled webserver. The configuration files allow you to tailor
126     the setup to suit your needs.</p>
127     <p>Full instructions are available in the relevant documentation.</p>
128     <h3>8. Further</h3>
129     <p>You may decide to expand your setup to cover a larger network. For example, a
130     distributed filter arrangement could cut down on the amount of network traffic
131     being sent around the network. The server itself can be distributed to suit your
132     needs. You may wish to run the database section of the server on the same
133     machine as the database, while running the rest on another machine.</p>
134     <p>Some discussion about this is available in the server documentation.</p>
135     <p>If you have any questions about any of the above, please don't hesitate to
136     contact us at dev@i-scream.org.uk. If you find we've missed something out,
137     again, please let us know.</p>
138     <p>Finally, we'd like to thank you for trying an i-scream product. We realise
139     that it's still at an early stage, and we therefore appreciate you taking
140     the time to try it out.</p>
141     <p>The i-scream team.
142    
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147     </body>
148     </html>