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Revision: 1.7
Committed: Sun Mar 21 23:58:16 2004 UTC (20 years, 7 months ago) by tdb
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.6: +20 -23 lines
Log Message:
Commit new website. The old site is tagged, so this won't change the live
site... but it does move HEAD on to the new site.

Too many changes to list really. General points are:

- Moved to a XHTML CSS compliant site.
- Reorganised the site into a more multi-project based look.
- Removed a lot of cruft.

Still to do:

- Fix all the zillions of bugs stopping the whole site from validating :-)
- Tidy up the HTML in terms of layout and indentation.

Thanks to AJ for his help this weekend in doing this.

File Contents

# User Rev Content
1 tdb 1.7 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
2     "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
3 tdb 1.1
4     <html>
5    
6     <head>
7 tdb 1.7 <title>Getting Started with the i-scream Central Monitoring System</title>
8     <!--#include virtual="/style.inc" -->
9 tdb 1.1 </head>
10    
11 tdb 1.7 <body>
12    
13     <div id="container">
14 tdb 1.1
15 tdb 1.7 <div id="main">
16 tdb 1.1
17 tdb 1.7 <!--#include virtual="/header.inc" -->
18    
19     <div id="contents">
20     <h1 class="top">Getting Started</h1>
21 tdb 1.4
22 tdb 1.1 <h2>Getting Started with the i-scream Central Monitoring System</h2>
23    
24 pjm2 1.3 <h3>1. Installing the corba services (pre-requisite for the server)</h3>
25 tdb 1.1 <p>The server requires a CORBA Naming Service to run. It may be that you already
26 pjm2 1.3 have such a system running, in which case you can use that. Simply edit the
27 tdb 1.1 jacorb.properties file to point to your Naming service. If you don't have a
28 pjm2 1.3 naming service running you could just set up your own manually, but if like us
29 tdb 1.1 you want the easy approach, install our corba services program.</p>
30     <p>This program runs the naming service and provides a builtin webserver to
31     serve requests to the server application. The documentation details how to get
32     this running. It should simply be a case of extracting and running.</p>
33     <h3>1. Installing the server</h3>
34     <p>The first stage is to download and install the server application. The
35     latest versions of all i-scream applications can be found at the following
36 pjm2 1.3 URL:</p>
37 tdb 1.6 <p><a href="http://www.i-scream.org/downloads">http://www.i-scream.org/downloads</a></p>
38 pjm2 1.3 <p>Once downloaded, the archive should be extracted to a directory of your
39 tdb 1.1 choice. The server will run on most Java enabled platforms (including
40     Windows, Linux and FreeBSD).</p>
41     <p>The archive consists of only a few files and directories. The main file is
42     the iscream-server.jar archive which contains all the binary code for the
43     server. The lib directory contains other JAR archives which the server
44     requires to run. The etc directory contains (or will contain)
45     configuration for most of the i-scream central monitoring system. The next
46     step is to configure the server to suit your requirements.</p>
47     <h3>2. Configuring the server</h3>
48     <p>The configuration is split into two main files. The first,
49     default.properties can be considered a bootstrap configuration. This means
50     that it provides basic configuration to get the server started, after
51     which point the main configuration system takes over. This file should be
52     checked through, and is pretty well explained by comments.</p>
53     <p>The rest of the server configuration is based on system.conf. This can
54     hold the entire system configuration, including hosts. It may also specify
55     other configuration files to be included in the main configuration. This
56     file is also commented extensively.</p>
57     <p>This step may well take some time to get right, and you can come back to
58     it at any point. Lots of the configuration can be changed "on the fly"
59     as well.</p>
60     <p>For fuller and complete details of the configuration system, and the
61     server in general, please see the Server User Guide in the documentation
62     section of the website.</p>
63     <h3>2a. Setting up the database</h3>
64     <p>The i-scream central monitoring system can make use of a database for
65     generating historical reports. The documentation explains how you would
66     configure the system to do this. You will need to create a single basic
67     table yourself, this is also explained in the documentation.</p>
68     <h3>3. Starting the server</h3>
69     <p>Starting up the server is a trivial task. Usually you can just get away
70     with running the run script provided. This will boot the server up
71     displaying some basic information to the console. If something goes wrong,
72     the error message should point to the cause.</p>
73     <h3>4. Setting up hosts</h3>
74 pjm2 1.3 <p>Hosts can be run on either Unix (tested with Solaris, FreeBSD and some
75     Linux distributions) or Windows. Both are equally easy to setup.</p>
76     <p>Firstly, the Unix host is called &quot;ihost&quot;. This can be downloaded from the
77 tdb 1.1 i-scream website. Once extracted it just needs to be started up. You need two
78 pjm2 1.3 pieces of information to do this: the filtermanager (part of the server) host
79 tdb 1.1 and port number. If you haven't changed much in terms of configuration this will
80     be the machine the server is running on, and port 4567. To start ihost you
81 tdb 1.5 simply type:</p>
82     </font>
83 tdb 1.1 <pre>ihost.pl server.domain.com port</pre>
84 tdb 1.5 <font face="arial,sans-serif" size="2">
85 tdb 1.1 <p>ihost will then contact the server to obtain it's configuration and start
86     sending information.</p>
87     <p>The windows host, winhost, is very similar. All you need to do is install it
88     using the provided installer in the download, and then edit the ini file to
89     provide the two bits of information above. Running the application starts up
90     communication with the server and data sending commences.</p>
91     <p>Full details of both of these hosts can be found in the relevant
92     documentation on the website.</p>
93     <h3>5. Using Conient</h3>
94     <p>Conient allows you to view, in real time, the data being sent by the
95     hosts. This is a perfect way to test that all the above steps have
96     successfully been completed.</p>
97     <p>At present Conient is simply another archive which can be extracted and
98     run. However, in the near future we hope to have an installer to make life
99     easier. Conient is a Java application and will run on most Java enabled
100     platforms.</p>
101 pjm2 1.3 <p>After extracting, the run script can be used to start Conient, or in some
102 tdb 1.1 cases the JAR file can be executed manually. The GUI will then load. The
103     configuration section requires you to enter a host and port for the
104     server. By default this will be the machine on which the server is running
105 pjm2 1.3 and port 4510. Conient will then connect upon request and start displaying
106 tdb 1.1 information.</p>
107     <p>Assuming data is displayed you have successfully setup the i-scream
108     central monitoring system. Well done!</p>
109     <p>This is explained in much more detail in the Conient documentation.</p>
110     <h3>6. Setting up DBReporter</h3>
111     <p>If you are making use of a database you can setup the DBReporter to
112     generate web-based reports of the information collected. This is just a
113     case of extracting the archive to a suitable location, configuring it, and
114     setting it to run on a regular basis (we suggest daily). DBReporter will
115     also ensure the database is kept relatively clean.</p>
116     <p>Full instructions are available in the DBReporter documentation.</p>
117     <h3>7. Setting up the Web Interface</h3>
118     <p>The Web interface allows you to view various aspects of the i-scream
119 pjm2 1.3 central monitoring system's output. These include realtime viewing of data
120 tdb 1.1 (much like Conient), links to the DBReporter above, and full displaying of
121     the alerts that can be generated by the server.</p>
122     <p>The archive contains a series of PHP scripts which should be placed on
123 pjm2 1.3 your PHP enabled web server. The configuration files allow you to tailor
124 tdb 1.1 the setup to suit your needs.</p>
125     <p>Full instructions are available in the relevant documentation.</p>
126     <h3>8. Further</h3>
127     <p>You may decide to expand your setup to cover a larger network. For example, a
128 pjm2 1.3 distributed filter arrangement could cut down on the amount of traffic
129 tdb 1.1 being sent around the network. The server itself can be distributed to suit your
130     needs. You may wish to run the database section of the server on the same
131     machine as the database, while running the rest on another machine.</p>
132     <p>Some discussion about this is available in the server documentation.</p>
133     <p>If you have any questions about any of the above, please don't hesitate to
134 tdb 1.6 contact us at <a href="mailto:dev@i-scream.org">dev@i-scream.org</a>. If you find we've missed something out,
135 tdb 1.1 again, please let us know.</p>
136 pjm2 1.3 <p>Finally, we'd like to thank you for trying this i-scream product. We realise
137 tdb 1.1 that it's still at an early stage, and we therefore appreciate you taking
138     the time to try it out.</p>
139 tdb 1.7 <p>The i-scream team.</p>
140     </div>
141 tdb 1.4
142 tdb 1.7 <!--#include virtual="/footer.inc" -->
143    
144     </div>
145    
146     <!--#include virtual="/menu.inc" -->
147 tdb 1.1
148 tdb 1.7 </div>
149 tdb 1.1
150     </body>
151 pjm2 1.3 </html>