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 <title>The i-scream Project Problem Domain</title>
 <meta name="description" content="The i-scream Project is a central monitoring system for Unix, Linux and NT servers.">
 <meta name="keywords" content="i-scream, project, central monitoring system, unix, linux, nt, server, alert">
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       <font size="2" face="arial,sans-serif">
       
       <center><h3>Original Problem</h3></center>

       <p align="justify">
        This is the original specification given to us when we
        started the project. The i-scream central monitoring
        system meets this specification, and aims to extend it
        further. This is, however, where it all began.
       </p>
       
       <center><h3>Centralised Machine Monitoring</h3></center>

       <p align="justify">
        The Computer Science department has a number of different machines
        running a variety of different operating systems. One of the tasks
        of the systems administrators is to make sure that the machines
        don't run out of resources. This involves watching processor loads,
        available disk space, swap space, etc.
       </p>
       
       <p align="justify">
        It isn't practicle to monitor a large number of machines by logging
        on and running commands such as 'uptime' on the unix machines, or
        by using performance monitor for NT servers. Thus this project is
        to write monitoring software for each platform supported which
        reports resource usage back to one centralized location. System
        Administrators would then be able to monitor all machines from this
        centralised location.
       </p>

       <p align="justify">
        Once this basic functionality is implemented it could usefully be
        expanded to include logging of resource usage to identify longterm
        trends/problems, alerter services which can directly contact
        sysadmins (or even the general public) to bring attention to problem
        areas. Ideally it should be possible to run multiple instances of
        the reporting tool (with all instances being updated in realtime)
        and to to be able to run the reporting tool as both as stand alone
        application and embeded in a web page.
       </p>

       <p align="justify">
        This project will require you to write code for the unix and Win32
        APIs using C and knowledge of how the underlying operating systems
        manage resources. It will also require some network/distributed
        systems code and a GUI front end for the reporting tool. It is
        important for students undertaking this project to understand the
        importance of writing efficient and small code as the end product
        will really be most useful when machines start run out of processing
        power/memory/disk.
       </p>

       <p align="justify">
        John Cinnamond (email jc) whose idea this is, will provide technical
        support for the project.
       </p>
       
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Revision:	1.5
Committed:	Sun Mar 21 23:58:13 2004 UTC (20 years, 8 months ago) by tdb
Branch:	MAIN
CVS Tags:	HEAD
Changes since 1.4:	+2 -2 lines
State:	*FILE REMOVED*
Error occurred while calculating annotation data.
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.
#	Content
1	<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
2
3	<!--
4	$Author: tdb $
5	$Id: probdomain.shtml,v 1.4 2002/02/09 15:00:42 tdb Exp $
6	-->
7
8
9	<html>
10
11	<head>
12	<title>The i-scream Project Problem Domain</title>
13	<meta name="description" content="The i-scream Project is a central monitoring system for Unix, Linux and NT servers.">
14	<meta name="keywords" content="i-scream, project, central monitoring system, unix, linux, nt, server, alert">
15	<meta name="generator" content="notepad on acid, aye.">
16	</head>
17
18	<body bgcolor="#ffffff" link="#0000ff" alink="#3333cc" vlink="#3333cc" text="#000066">
19
20	<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
21	<tr>
22	<td valign="top">
23	<!--#include virtual="left.inc" -->
24	</td>
25	<td valign="top">
26	<!--#include virtual="title.inc" -->
27
28	<table border="0" width="500">
29	<tr>
30	<td>
31	<font size="2" face="arial,sans-serif">
32
33	<center><h3>Original Problem</h3></center>
34
35	<p align="justify">
36	This is the original specification given to us when we
37	started the project. The i-scream central monitoring
38	system meets this specification, and aims to extend it
39	further. This is, however, where it all began.
40	</p>
41
42	<center><h3>Centralised Machine Monitoring</h3></center>
43
44	<p align="justify">
45	The Computer Science department has a number of different machines
46	running a variety of different operating systems. One of the tasks
47	of the systems administrators is to make sure that the machines
48	don't run out of resources. This involves watching processor loads,
49	available disk space, swap space, etc.
50	</p>
51
52	<p align="justify">
53	It isn't practicle to monitor a large number of machines by logging
54	on and running commands such as 'uptime' on the unix machines, or
55	by using performance monitor for NT servers. Thus this project is
56	to write monitoring software for each platform supported which
57	reports resource usage back to one centralized location. System
58	Administrators would then be able to monitor all machines from this
59	centralised location.
60	</p>
61
62	<p align="justify">
63	Once this basic functionality is implemented it could usefully be
64	expanded to include logging of resource usage to identify longterm
65	trends/problems, alerter services which can directly contact
66	sysadmins (or even the general public) to bring attention to problem
67	areas. Ideally it should be possible to run multiple instances of
68	the reporting tool (with all instances being updated in realtime)
69	and to to be able to run the reporting tool as both as stand alone
70	application and embeded in a web page.
71	</p>
72
73	<p align="justify">
74	This project will require you to write code for the unix and Win32
75	APIs using C and knowledge of how the underlying operating systems
76	manage resources. It will also require some network/distributed
77	systems code and a GUI front end for the reporting tool. It is
78	important for students undertaking this project to understand the
79	importance of writing efficient and small code as the end product
80	will really be most useful when machines start run out of processing
81	power/memory/disk.
82	</p>
83
84	<p align="justify">
85	John Cinnamond (email jc) whose idea this is, will provide technical
86	support for the project.
87	</p>
88
89	</font>
90	</td>
91	</tr>
92	</table>
93
94	<!--#include virtual="bottom.inc" -->
95	</td>
96	</tr>
97	</table>
98
99	</body>
100
101	</html>