cms/documentation/gettingstarted.xhtml

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      Getting Started with the i-scream Central Monitoring System
    </title>
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          <h1 class="top">
            Getting Started
          </h1>
          <h2>
            Getting Started with the i-scream Central Monitoring System
          </h2>
          <h3>
            1. Installing the corba services (pre-requisite for the
            server)
          </h3>
          <p>
            The server requires a CORBA Naming Service to run. It may
            be that you already have such a system running, in which
            case you can use that. Simply edit the jacorb.properties
            file to point to your Naming service. If you don't have a
            naming service running you could just set up your own
            manually, but if like us you want the easy approach,
            install our corba services program.
          </p>
          <p>
            This program runs the naming service and provides a builtin
            webserver to serve requests to the server application. The
            documentation details how to get this running. It should
            simply be a case of extracting and running.
          </p>
          <h3>
            1. Installing the server
          </h3>
          <p>
            The first stage is to download and install the server
            application. The latest versions of all i-scream
            applications can be found at the following URL:
          </p>
          <p>
            <a href="http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.i-scream.org/pub/i-scream/cms/">
            http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.i-scream.org/pub/i-scream/cms/</a>
          </p>
          <p>
            Once downloaded, the archive should be extracted to a
            directory of your choice. The server will run on most Java
            enabled platforms (including Windows, Linux and FreeBSD).
          </p>
          <p>
            The archive consists of only a few files and directories.
            The main file is the iscream-server.jar archive which
            contains all the binary code for the server. The lib
            directory contains other JAR archives which the server
            requires to run. The etc directory contains (or will
            contain) configuration for most of the i-scream central
            monitoring system. The next step is to configure the server
            to suit your requirements.
          </p>
          <h3>
            2. Configuring the server
          </h3>
          <p>
            The configuration is split into two main files. The first,
            default.properties can be considered a bootstrap
            configuration. This means that it provides basic
            configuration to get the server started, after which point
            the main configuration system takes over. This file should
            be checked through, and is pretty well explained by
            comments.
          </p>
          <p>
            The rest of the server configuration is based on
            system.conf. This can hold the entire system configuration,
            including hosts. It may also specify other configuration
            files to be included in the main configuration. This file
            is also commented extensively.
          </p>
          <p>
            This step may well take some time to get right, and you can
            come back to it at any point. Lots of the configuration can
            be changed "on the fly" as well.
          </p>
          <p>
            For fuller and complete details of the configuration
            system, and the server in general, please see the Server
            User Guide in the documentation section of the website.
          </p>
          <h3>
            2a. Setting up the database
          </h3>
          <p>
            The i-scream central monitoring system can make use of a
            database for generating historical reports. The
            documentation explains how you would configure the system
            to do this. You will need to create a single basic table
            yourself, this is also explained in the documentation.
          </p>
          <h3>
            3. Starting the server
          </h3>
          <p>
            Starting up the server is a trivial task. Usually you can
            just get away with running the run script provided. This
            will boot the server up displaying some basic information
            to the console. If something goes wrong, the error message
            should point to the cause.
          </p>
          <h3>
            4. Setting up hosts
          </h3>
          <p>
            Hosts can be run on either Unix (tested with Solaris,
            FreeBSD and some Linux distributions) or Windows. Both are
            equally easy to setup.
          </p>
          <p>
            Firstly, the Unix host is called "ihost". This can be
            downloaded from the i-scream website. Once extracted it
            just needs to be started up. You need two pieces of
            information to do this: the filtermanager (part of the
            server) host and port number. If you haven't changed much
            in terms of configuration this will be the machine the
            server is running on, and port 4567. To start ihost you
            simply type:
          </p>
          <pre>
ihost.pl server.domain.com port
</pre>
          <p>
            ihost will then contact the server to obtain it's
            configuration and start sending information.
          </p>
          <p>
            The windows host, winhost, is very similar. All you need to
            do is install it using the provided installer in the
            download, and then edit the ini file to provide the two
            bits of information above. Running the application starts
            up communication with the server and data sending
            commences.
          </p>
          <p>
            Full details of both of these hosts can be found in the
            relevant documentation on the website.
          </p>
          <h3>
            5. Using Conient
          </h3>
          <p>
            Conient allows you to view, in real time, the data being
            sent by the hosts. This is a perfect way to test that all
            the above steps have successfully been completed.
          </p>
          <p>
            At present Conient is simply another archive which can be
            extracted and run. However, in the near future we hope to
            have an installer to make life easier. Conient is a Java
            application and will run on most Java enabled platforms.
          </p>
          <p>
            After extracting, the run script can be used to start
            Conient, or in some cases the JAR file can be executed
            manually. The GUI will then load. The configuration section
            requires you to enter a host and port for the server. By
            default this will be the machine on which the server is
            running and port 4510. Conient will then connect upon
            request and start displaying information.
          </p>
          <p>
            Assuming data is displayed you have successfully setup the
            i-scream central monitoring system. Well done!
          </p>
          <p>
            This is explained in much more detail in the Conient
            documentation.
          </p>
          <h3>
            6. Setting up DBReporter
          </h3>
          <p>
            If you are making use of a database you can setup the
            DBReporter to generate web-based reports of the information
            collected. This is just a case of extracting the archive to
            a suitable location, configuring it, and setting it to run
            on a regular basis (we suggest daily). DBReporter will also
            ensure the database is kept relatively clean.
          </p>
          <p>
            Full instructions are available in the DBReporter
            documentation.
          </p>
          <h3>
            7. Setting up the Web Interface
          </h3>
          <p>
            The Web interface allows you to view various aspects of the
            i-scream central monitoring system's output. These include
            realtime viewing of data (much like Conient), links to the
            DBReporter above, and full displaying of the alerts that
            can be generated by the server.
          </p>
          <p>
            The archive contains a series of PHP scripts which should
            be placed on your PHP enabled web server. The configuration
            files allow you to tailor the setup to suit your needs.
          </p>
          <p>
            Full instructions are available in the relevant
            documentation.
          </p>
          <h3>
            8. Further
          </h3>
          <p>
            You may decide to expand your setup to cover a larger
            network. For example, a distributed filter arrangement
            could cut down on the amount of traffic being sent around
            the network. The server itself can be distributed to suit
            your needs. You may wish to run the database section of the
            server on the same machine as the database, while running
            the rest on another machine.
          </p>
          <p>
            Some discussion about this is available in the server
            documentation.
          </p>
          <p>
            If you have any questions about any of the above, please
            don't hesitate to contact us at
            <a href="mailto:dev@i-scream.org">dev@i-scream.org</a>.
            If you find we've missed something out, again, please let
            us know.
          </p>
          <p>
            Finally, we'd like to thank you for trying this i-scream
            product. We realise that it's still at an early stage, and
            we therefore appreciate you taking the time to try it out.
          </p>
          <p>
            The i-scream team.
          </p>
        </div>
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Revision:	1.9
Committed:	Tue Mar 23 23:43:28 2004 UTC (20 years, 8 months ago) by tdb
Branch:	MAIN
Changes since 1.8:	+247 -142 lines
Log Message:	Another biggish commit. All pages are now XHTML 1.1 compliant. I've also tided (with the help of the tidy tool) all the pages, so they're neater. There are still parts of the site that won't validate - such as the CGI scripts, and the CVS stuff - but I'll get to them tomorrow.
#	User	Rev	Content
1	tdb	1.8	<!--#include virtual="/doctype.inc" -->
2	tdb	1.9	<head>
3			<title>
4			Getting Started with the i-scream Central Monitoring System
5			</title>
6	tdb	1.7	<!--#include virtual="/style.inc" -->
7	tdb	1.9	</head>
8			<body>
9			<div id="container">
10			<div id="main">
11	tdb	1.7	<!--#include virtual="/header.inc" -->
12	tdb	1.9	<div id="contents">
13			<h1 class="top">
14			Getting Started
15			</h1>
16			<h2>
17			Getting Started with the i-scream Central Monitoring System
18			</h2>
19			<h3>
20			1. Installing the corba services (pre-requisite for the
21			server)
22			</h3>
23			<p>
24			The server requires a CORBA Naming Service to run. It may
25			be that you already have such a system running, in which
26			case you can use that. Simply edit the jacorb.properties
27			file to point to your Naming service. If you don't have a
28			naming service running you could just set up your own
29			manually, but if like us you want the easy approach,
30			install our corba services program.
31			</p>
32			<p>
33			This program runs the naming service and provides a builtin
34			webserver to serve requests to the server application. The
35			documentation details how to get this running. It should
36			simply be a case of extracting and running.
37			</p>
38			<h3>
39			1. Installing the server
40			</h3>
41			<p>
42			The first stage is to download and install the server
43			application. The latest versions of all i-scream
44			applications can be found at the following URL:
45			</p>
46			<p>
47			<a href="http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.i-scream.org/pub/i-scream/cms/">
48			http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.i-scream.org/pub/i-scream/cms/</a>
49			</p>
50			<p>
51			Once downloaded, the archive should be extracted to a
52			directory of your choice. The server will run on most Java
53			enabled platforms (including Windows, Linux and FreeBSD).
54			</p>
55			<p>
56			The archive consists of only a few files and directories.
57			The main file is the iscream-server.jar archive which
58			contains all the binary code for the server. The lib
59			directory contains other JAR archives which the server
60			requires to run. The etc directory contains (or will
61			contain) configuration for most of the i-scream central
62			monitoring system. The next step is to configure the server
63			to suit your requirements.
64			</p>
65			<h3>
66			2. Configuring the server
67			</h3>
68			<p>
69			The configuration is split into two main files. The first,
70			default.properties can be considered a bootstrap
71			configuration. This means that it provides basic
72			configuration to get the server started, after which point
73			the main configuration system takes over. This file should
74			be checked through, and is pretty well explained by
75			comments.
76			</p>
77			<p>
78			The rest of the server configuration is based on
79			system.conf. This can hold the entire system configuration,
80			including hosts. It may also specify other configuration
81			files to be included in the main configuration. This file
82			is also commented extensively.
83			</p>
84			<p>
85			This step may well take some time to get right, and you can
86			come back to it at any point. Lots of the configuration can
87			be changed "on the fly" as well.
88			</p>
89			<p>
90			For fuller and complete details of the configuration
91			system, and the server in general, please see the Server
92			User Guide in the documentation section of the website.
93			</p>
94			<h3>
95			2a. Setting up the database
96			</h3>
97			<p>
98			The i-scream central monitoring system can make use of a
99			database for generating historical reports. The
100			documentation explains how you would configure the system
101			to do this. You will need to create a single basic table
102			yourself, this is also explained in the documentation.
103			</p>
104			<h3>
105			3. Starting the server
106			</h3>
107			<p>
108			Starting up the server is a trivial task. Usually you can
109			just get away with running the run script provided. This
110			will boot the server up displaying some basic information
111			to the console. If something goes wrong, the error message
112			should point to the cause.
113			</p>
114			<h3>
115			4. Setting up hosts
116			</h3>
117			<p>
118			Hosts can be run on either Unix (tested with Solaris,
119			FreeBSD and some Linux distributions) or Windows. Both are
120			equally easy to setup.
121			</p>
122			<p>
123			Firstly, the Unix host is called "ihost". This can be
124			downloaded from the i-scream website. Once extracted it
125			just needs to be started up. You need two pieces of
126			information to do this: the filtermanager (part of the
127			server) host and port number. If you haven't changed much
128			in terms of configuration this will be the machine the
129			server is running on, and port 4567. To start ihost you
130			simply type:
131			</p>
132			<pre>
133			ihost.pl server.domain.com port
134			</pre>
135			<p>
136			ihost will then contact the server to obtain it's
137			configuration and start sending information.
138			</p>
139			<p>
140			The windows host, winhost, is very similar. All you need to
141			do is install it using the provided installer in the
142			download, and then edit the ini file to provide the two
143			bits of information above. Running the application starts
144			up communication with the server and data sending
145			commences.
146			</p>
147			<p>
148			Full details of both of these hosts can be found in the
149			relevant documentation on the website.
150			</p>
151			<h3>
152			5. Using Conient
153			</h3>
154			<p>
155			Conient allows you to view, in real time, the data being
156			sent by the hosts. This is a perfect way to test that all
157			the above steps have successfully been completed.
158			</p>
159			<p>
160			At present Conient is simply another archive which can be
161			extracted and run. However, in the near future we hope to
162			have an installer to make life easier. Conient is a Java
163			application and will run on most Java enabled platforms.
164			</p>
165			<p>
166			After extracting, the run script can be used to start
167			Conient, or in some cases the JAR file can be executed
168			manually. The GUI will then load. The configuration section
169			requires you to enter a host and port for the server. By
170			default this will be the machine on which the server is
171			running and port 4510. Conient will then connect upon
172			request and start displaying information.
173			</p>
174			<p>
175			Assuming data is displayed you have successfully setup the
176			i-scream central monitoring system. Well done!
177			</p>
178			<p>
179			This is explained in much more detail in the Conient
180			documentation.
181			</p>
182			<h3>
183			6. Setting up DBReporter
184			</h3>
185			<p>
186			If you are making use of a database you can setup the
187			DBReporter to generate web-based reports of the information
188			collected. This is just a case of extracting the archive to
189			a suitable location, configuring it, and setting it to run
190			on a regular basis (we suggest daily). DBReporter will also
191			ensure the database is kept relatively clean.
192			</p>
193			<p>
194			Full instructions are available in the DBReporter
195			documentation.
196			</p>
197			<h3>
198			7. Setting up the Web Interface
199			</h3>
200			<p>
201			The Web interface allows you to view various aspects of the
202			i-scream central monitoring system's output. These include
203			realtime viewing of data (much like Conient), links to the
204			DBReporter above, and full displaying of the alerts that
205			can be generated by the server.
206			</p>
207			<p>
208			The archive contains a series of PHP scripts which should
209			be placed on your PHP enabled web server. The configuration
210			files allow you to tailor the setup to suit your needs.
211			</p>
212			<p>
213			Full instructions are available in the relevant
214			documentation.
215			</p>
216			<h3>
217			8. Further
218			</h3>
219			<p>
220			You may decide to expand your setup to cover a larger
221			network. For example, a distributed filter arrangement
222			could cut down on the amount of traffic being sent around
223			the network. The server itself can be distributed to suit
224			your needs. You may wish to run the database section of the
225			server on the same machine as the database, while running
226			the rest on another machine.
227			</p>
228			<p>
229			Some discussion about this is available in the server
230			documentation.
231			</p>
232			<p>
233			If you have any questions about any of the above, please
234			don't hesitate to contact us at
235			<a href="mailto:dev@i-scream.org">dev@i-scream.org</a>.
236			If you find we've missed something out, again, please let
237			us know.
238			</p>
239			<p>
240			Finally, we'd like to thank you for trying this i-scream
241			product. We realise that it's still at an early stage, and
242			we therefore appreciate you taking the time to try it out.
243			</p>
244			<p>
245			The i-scream team.
246			</p>
247			</div>
248	tdb	1.7	<!--#include virtual="/footer.inc" -->
249	tdb	1.9	</div>
250	tdb	1.7	<!--#include virtual="/menu.inc" -->
251	tdb	1.9	</div>
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253	pjm2	1.3	</html>