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Revision: 1.3
Committed: Fri May 25 18:11:55 2001 UTC (23 years, 5 months ago) by tdb
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.2: +4 -3 lines
Log Message:
Updated slightly.

File Contents

# User Rev Content
1 tdb 1.1 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
2    
3     <!--
4     probdomain.shtml
5     Created by tdb1 30/10/2000
6     Last edited 30/10/2000
7     -->
8    
9    
10     <html>
11    
12     <head>
13     <title>The i-scream Project Problem Domain</title>
14     <meta name="description" content="The i-scream Project is a central monitoring system for Unix, Linux and NT servers.">
15     <meta name="keywords" content="i-scream, project, central monitoring system, unix, linux, nt, server, alert">
16     <meta name="generator" content="notepad on acid, aye.">
17     </head>
18    
19     <body bgcolor="#ffffff" link="#0000ff" alink="#3333cc" vlink="#3333cc" text="#000066">
20    
21     <table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
22     <tr>
23     <td valign="top">
24     <!--#include virtual="left.inc" -->
25     </td>
26     <td valign="top">
27     <!--#include virtual="title.inc" -->
28    
29     <table border="0" width="500">
30     <tr>
31     <td>
32     <font size="2" face="arial,sans-serif">
33    
34     <center><h3>Original Problem</h3></center>
35    
36     <p align="justify">
37 tdb 1.3 This is the original specification given to us when we
38     started the project. The i-scream central monitoring
39     system meets this specification, and aims to extend it
40     further. This is, however, where it all began.
41 tdb 1.1 </p>
42    
43     <center><h3>Centralised Machine Monitoring</h3></center>
44    
45     <p align="justify">
46 tdb 1.2 The Computer Science department has a number of different machines
47 tdb 1.1 running a variety of different operating systems. One of the tasks
48     of the systems administrators is to make sure that the machines
49     don't run out of resources. This involves watching processor loads,
50     available disk space, swap space, etc.
51     </p>
52    
53     <p align="justify">
54     It isn't practicle to monitor a large number of machines by logging
55     on and running commands such as 'uptime' on the unix machines, or
56     by using performance monitor for NT servers. Thus this project is
57     to write monitoring software for each platform supported which
58     reports resource usage back to one centralized location. System
59     Administrators would then be able to monitor all machines from this
60     centralised location.
61     </p>
62    
63     <p align="justify">
64     Once this basic functionality is implemented it could usefully be
65     expanded to include logging of resource usage to identify longterm
66     trends/problems, alerter services which can directly contact
67     sysadmins (or even the general public) to bring attention to problem
68     areas. Ideally it should be possible to run multiple instances of
69     the reporting tool (with all instances being updated in realtime)
70     and to to be able to run the reporting tool as both as stand alone
71     application and embeded in a web page.
72     </p>
73    
74     <p align="justify">
75     This project will require you to write code for the unix and Win32
76     APIs using C and knowledge of how the underlying operating systems
77     manage resources. It will also require some network/distributed
78     systems code and a GUI front end for the reporting tool. It is
79     important for students undertaking this project to understand the
80     importance of writing efficient and small code as the end product
81     will really be most useful when machines start run out of processing
82     power/memory/disk.
83     </p>
84    
85     <p align="justify">
86     John Cinnamond (email jc) whose idea this is, will provide technical
87     support for the project.
88     </p>
89    
90     </font>
91     </td>
92     </tr>
93     </table>
94    
95     <!--#include virtual="bottom.inc" -->
96     </td>
97     </tr>
98     </table>
99    
100     </body>
101    
102     </html>