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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

# Content
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 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 </p>
42
43 <center><h3>Centralised Machine Monitoring</h3></center>
44
45 <p align="justify">
46 The Computer Science department has a number of different machines
47 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>