web/www/contents.inc


<!--
    $Author: tdb $
    $Id: contents.inc,v 1.39 2003/05/25 13:36:52 tdb Exp $
-->

    <table border="0" width="500">
     <tr>
      <td>
       <font size="2" face="arial,sans-serif">
       
       <center><h3>Project News</h3></center>

       <p align="justify">
        <b>Wednesday 7 May 2003</b><br><br>
        We've <a href="http://www.freshmeat.net/projects/libstatgrab">
        released</a> libstatgrab 0.4 as an individual product. You can
        download it <a href="http://snapshots.i-scream.org/libstatgrab">
        here</a>. This release is functionally complete, but lacks
        documentation. We hope to rectify this in the next release.
       </p>
       
       <p align="justify">
        <b>Tuesday 4 February 2003</b><br><br>
        Over the coming week we will be making snapshot builds of the
        i-scream central monitoring system from the CVS repository.
        These builds will have quite a few changes from the downloads
        currently available (a document detailing them will be
        released later on), so please give them a whirl. We would be
        grateful if you <a href="mailto:dev@i-scream.org">contacted</a>
        us with any questions or bugs.<br><br>
        The downloads will be available on our snapshot server :-<br>
        <a href="http://snapshots.i-scream.org/">
        http://snapshots.i-scream.org/</a>.
       </p>

       <p align="justify">
        <b>Saturday 1 June 2002</b><br><br>
        Work has now been finished on a new ihost written in C. This has
        been in the pipeline for a long time, and we're glad to finally
        see an efficient native host! Credit goes to our new developer
        <a href="/who.shtml">Pete</a>. Until we update the downloads
        pages you can download the new ihost 
        <a href="http://snapshots.i-scream.org/ihost/">
        here</a>.
       </p>

       <p align="justify">
        <b>Tuesday 21 May 2002</b><br><br>
        We've finally put the finishing touches to the new
        <a href="http://rrdtool.eu.org">RRDtool</a> based graphing system.
        It's working well, and has done away with the MySQL database
        backend which took up far too many resources. This new system
        generates the graphs in a more realtime nature, allowing more
        flexible graphs to be generated. This is currently only available
        through <a href="http://cvs.i-scream.org/cms/source/reports/rrdgraphing/">
        CVS</a>.
       </p>

       <p align="justify">
        <b>Saturday 18 May 2002</b><br><br>
        The i-scream central monitoring system is now <a href="/license.shtml">
        licensed</a> under the GNU Public License. We are currently working
        to make full downloads, including source, available on this site.
       </p>

       <p align="justify">
        <b>Thursday 7 Feb 2002</b><br><br>
        The alerting section of the i-scream central monitoring system
        now makes full use of an externally developed IRC bot for it's IRC
        connectivity. To find out more about this IRC bot, please visit
        the author's website at <a href="http://www.jibble.org">
        http://www.jibble.org</a>.
       </p>
       
       <p align="justify">
        <b>Tuesday 8 Jan 2002</b><br><br>
        Java ACL (Access Control List) code has been added to the util
        package of the i-scream server. This code will ultimately allow
        the server to be more secure when exposed to the Internet. More
        details can be found <a href="http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/tdb/#acl">
        here</a> on the author's website.
       </p>
       
       <p>&nbsp;</p>
       <center><h3>About i-scream</h3></center>
       
       <p align="justify">
        <a href="screenshots/"><img border="0" src="screenshots/thumbnail-alerter-email.gif" width="100" height="107" align="left"></a>
        Details of the i-scream central monitoring system can be found
        on the <b><a href="features.shtml">features and overview</a></b> page.
        A variety of <b><a href="screenshots">screen shots</a></b> from the
        system show some of the key features in use. The <b><a href="reports">reports demo</a></b>
        page provides a static example of what the i-scream reports (alerts,
        historical graphs, and live data) could look like on a production system.
       </p>
       
       <p align="justify">
        <a href="screenshots/"><img border="0" src="screenshots/thumbnail-conient-main.gif" width="100" height="107" align="right"></a>
        The latest source code is available in the <b><a href="cvs.shtml">CVS</a></b>
        repository, with binary downloads on the downloads page. The
        <b><a href="documentation">documentation</a></b> page has details of
        installation, use and maintenance for the end user and developer.
        We value feedback and comments from you, so please drop us an e-mail
        to <a href="mailto:dev@i-scream.org">dev@i-scream.org</a>.
       </p>
       
       <p>&nbsp;</p>
       <center><h3>Current Work</h3></center>
       
       <p align="justify">
        <b>Extending monitoring facilites</b><br><br>
        <a href="screenshots/"><img border="0" src="screenshots/thumbnail-reports-raptor-load15.gif" width="100" height="107" align="left"></a>
        Work is continuing, in conjunction with the new ihost, to extend
        the range of i-scream's monitoring. Currently we are adding new
        features to more accurately monitoring memory and swap usage,
        along with more disk statistics. We are also planning to improve
        the rather basic service monitors which are currently in place.
        There are also many more subtle changes that need to be made to
        improve the reliability and usefulness of i-scream's monitoring.
       </p>

       <p align="justify">
        <b>Server security</b><br><br>
        Security was something mostly overlooked in the original stage
        of this project (due to the academic nature of the work). However,
        once in production use this has become an issue, and is being
        addressed. Initially the plan is to lock down the external points
        of access (TCP & UDP) in the server to specific hosts. In the
        longer term, encryption of data would be nice, but would take a
        lot more time and work.
       </p>
       
       <p align="justify">
        <b>Testing and Development</b><br><br>
        <a href="screenshots/"><img border="0" src="screenshots/thumbnail-winhost-main.gif" width="100" height="62" align="right"></a>
        The i-scream system is being tested and developed within the
        Univeristy of Kent Computer Science department by the Systems
        Group. This has led to many bug fixes and minor feature
        enhancements, and will hopefully help to aid the long term
        development of the system.
       </p>
       
       <p>&nbsp;</p>
       <center><h3>Project History</h3></center>

       <p align="justify">
        <a href="screenshots/"><img border="0" src="screenshots/thumbnail-reports-raptor-latest-misc.gif" width="100" height="104" align="left"></a>
        The i-scream Distributed Central Monitoring System started off as
        a final year project for a group of <a href="http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk">
        Computer Science</a> students at the <a href="http://www.kent.ac.uk">
        University of Kent at Canterbury</a>, UK. The project was completed at
        4pm on 29 March 2001. It consisted of five lever-arch folders containing
        mostly source code and documentation. The CVS repository was tagged to
        signify this even, however, the project is still being developed by the
        <a href="acknowledgements.shtml">core development team</a>.
       </p>
       
       <p align="justify">
        <a href="screenshots/"><img border="0" src="screenshots/thumbnail-ihost-main.gif" width="100" height="51" align="right"></a>
        As can be seen in our &quot;<a href="/probdomain.shtml">problem domain</a>&quot; document, the project
        was aimed at the UKC Computer Science department, and as such
        we believed that a demonstration to the &quot;customer&quot; was important. The
        feedback from our demonstation was more positive than we had
        anticipated. We believe that the system may now be of interest
        to anybody who wishes to monitor a number of machines on their
        network using a central configuration. The i-scream central
        monitoring system is now being used by the UKC Computer Science
        department, and their feedback is being used to further improve
        the product.
       </p>

       <p align="justify">
        <a href="screenshots/"><img border="0" src="screenshots/thumbnail-conient-config.gif" width="100" height="48" align="left"></a>
        The name <i>i-scream</i> arose from a meeting whereupon one member
        of the <a href="acknowledgements.shtml">development team</a> felt a strange urge to draw an ice cream on the discussion board.
        It later became apparent that we had no name for our project (other
        than 'The Project'). It seemed only natural to name our project after
        the ice cream that had been oh-so-randomly drawn on the white board.
        Copyright issues immediately ruled out anything involving Mr Whippy,
        so we had to settle for <i>i-scream</i>. And thus, we were left with a cunning
        play on words - it still sounded like <i>ice cream</i>, yet also
        served as a functional description of our system - namely, one which
        screams at somebody if something has gone wrong...
       </p>
       <p align="justify">
       
       <p>&nbsp;</p>
       <center><h3>Searching i-scream</h3></center>
       
       <!-- Search Google -->
       <center>
        <FORM method=GET action=http://www.google.com/custom>
         <TABLE bgcolor=#FFFFFF cellspacing=0 border=0>
          <tr>
           <td valign="middle">
            <A HREF=http://www.google.com/search>
            <IMG SRC=http://www.google.com/logos/Logo_40wht.gif border=0 ALT=Google align=middle width="128" height="53"></A>
           </td>
           <td valign="middle">
            <input type=hidden name=domains value="i-scream.org">
            <input type=hidden name=sitesearch value="i-scream.org">
            <INPUT TYPE=text name=q size=35 maxlength=255 value="">
            <INPUT type=submit name=sa VALUE="Search">
            <INPUT type=hidden name=cof VALUE="T:#000066;LW:502;ALC:#3333cc;L:http://www.i-scream.org/i-scream.gif;LC:#0000ff;LH:37;BGC:#ffffff;AH:left;VLC:#3333cc;AWFID:d646a9fd69e7d9cb;">
           </td>
          </tr>
         </TABLE>
        </FORM>
       </center>
       <!-- Search Google --> 
       
       </p>
       </font>
      </td>
     </tr>   
    </table>
Revision:	1.40
Committed:	Sun May 25 13:42:16 2003 UTC (21 years, 7 months ago) by tdb
Branch:	MAIN
Changes since 1.39:	+2 -2 lines
Log Message:	Bleurgh, typo ;)
#	User	Rev	Content
1	tdb	1.1
2			<!--
3	tdb	1.29	$Author: tdb $
4	tdb	1.40	$Id: contents.inc,v 1.39 2003/05/25 13:36:52 tdb Exp $
5	tdb	1.1	-->
6
7			<table border="0" width="500">
8			<tr>
9			<td>
10			<font size="2" face="arial,sans-serif">
11
12	tdb	1.28	<center><h3>Project News</h3></center>
13	tdb	1.39
14			<p align="justify">
15			<b>Wednesday 7 May 2003</b><br><br>
16	tdb	1.40	We've <a href="http://www.freshmeat.net/projects/libstatgrab">
17	tdb	1.39	released</a> libstatgrab 0.4 as an individual product. You can
18			download it <a href="http://snapshots.i-scream.org/libstatgrab">
19			here</a>. This release is functionally complete, but lacks
20			documentation. We hope to rectify this in the next release.
21			</p>
22	tdb	1.28
23	tdb	1.36	<p align="justify">
24			<b>Tuesday 4 February 2003</b><br><br>
25			Over the coming week we will be making snapshot builds of the
26			i-scream central monitoring system from the CVS repository.
27			These builds will have quite a few changes from the downloads
28			currently available (a document detailing them will be
29			released later on), so please give them a whirl. We would be
30	tdb	1.38	grateful if you <a href="mailto:dev@i-scream.org">contacted</a>
31	tdb	1.36	us with any questions or bugs.<br><br>
32			The downloads will be available on our snapshot server :-<br>
33	tdb	1.38	<a href="http://snapshots.i-scream.org/">
34			http://snapshots.i-scream.org/</a>.
35	tdb	1.36	</p>
36
37	tdb	1.28	<p align="justify">
38	tdb	1.31	<b>Saturday 1 June 2002</b><br><br>
39			Work has now been finished on a new ihost written in C. This has
40	tdb	1.32	been in the pipeline for a long time, and we're glad to finally
41			see an efficient native host! Credit goes to our new developer
42	tdb	1.31	<a href="/who.shtml">Pete</a>. Until we update the downloads
43			pages you can download the new ihost
44	tdb	1.38	<a href="http://snapshots.i-scream.org/ihost/">
45	tdb	1.31	here</a>.
46			</p>
47
48			<p align="justify">
49			<b>Tuesday 21 May 2002</b><br><br>
50			We've finally put the finishing touches to the new
51			<a href="http://rrdtool.eu.org">RRDtool</a> based graphing system.
52			It's working well, and has done away with the MySQL database
53			backend which took up far too many resources. This new system
54			generates the graphs in a more realtime nature, allowing more
55			flexible graphs to be generated. This is currently only available
56	tdb	1.38	through <a href="http://cvs.i-scream.org/cms/source/reports/rrdgraphing/">
57	tdb	1.31	CVS</a>.
58			</p>
59
60			<p align="justify">
61			<b>Saturday 18 May 2002</b><br><br>
62			The i-scream central monitoring system is now <a href="/license.shtml">
63	tdb	1.33	licensed</a> under the GNU Public License. We are currently working
64	tdb	1.31	to make full downloads, including source, available on this site.
65			</p>
66
67			<p align="justify">
68	tdb	1.28	<b>Thursday 7 Feb 2002</b><br><br>
69	tdb	1.30	The alerting section of the i-scream central monitoring system
70			now makes full use of an externally developed IRC bot for it's IRC
71	tdb	1.28	connectivity. To find out more about this IRC bot, please visit
72	tdb	1.29	the author's website at <a href="http://www.jibble.org">
73	tdb	1.28	http://www.jibble.org</a>.
74			</p>
75
76			<p align="justify">
77			<b>Tuesday 8 Jan 2002</b><br><br>
78			Java ACL (Access Control List) code has been added to the util
79			package of the i-scream server. This code will ultimately allow
80			the server to be more secure when exposed to the Internet. More
81	tdb	1.38	details can be found <a href="http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/tdb/#acl">
82	tdb	1.29	here</a> on the author's website.
83	tdb	1.28	</p>
84
85			<p> </p>
86			<center><h3>About i-scream</h3></center>
87
88			<p align="justify">
89			<a href="screenshots/"><img border="0" src="screenshots/thumbnail-alerter-email.gif" width="100" height="107" align="left"></a>
90			Details of the i-scream central monitoring system can be found
91			on the <b><a href="features.shtml">features and overview</a></b> page.
92			A variety of <b><a href="screenshots">screen shots</a></b> from the
93			system show some of the key features in use. The <b><a href="reports">reports demo</a></b>
94			page provides a static example of what the i-scream reports (alerts,
95			historical graphs, and live data) could look like on a production system.
96			</p>
97
98	tdb	1.1	<p align="justify">
99	tdb	1.28	<a href="screenshots/"><img border="0" src="screenshots/thumbnail-conient-main.gif" width="100" height="107" align="right"></a>
100			The latest source code is available in the <b><a href="cvs.shtml">CVS</a></b>
101			repository, with binary downloads on the downloads page. The
102			<b><a href="documentation">documentation</a></b> page has details of
103			installation, use and maintenance for the end user and developer.
104			We value feedback and comments from you, so please drop us an e-mail
105	tdb	1.38	to <a href="mailto:dev@i-scream.org">dev@i-scream.org</a>.
106	pjm2	1.5	</p>
107	tdb	1.28
108			<p> </p>
109			<center><h3>Current Work</h3></center>
110
111	pjm2	1.5	<p align="justify">
112	tdb	1.31	<b>Extending monitoring facilites</b><br><br>
113	tdb	1.28	<a href="screenshots/"><img border="0" src="screenshots/thumbnail-reports-raptor-load15.gif" width="100" height="107" align="left"></a>
114	tdb	1.31	Work is continuing, in conjunction with the new ihost, to extend
115			the range of i-scream's monitoring. Currently we are adding new
116			features to more accurately monitoring memory and swap usage,
117			along with more disk statistics. We are also planning to improve
118			the rather basic service monitors which are currently in place.
119	tdb	1.32	There are also many more subtle changes that need to be made to
120			improve the reliability and usefulness of i-scream's monitoring.
121	pjm2	1.11	</p>
122	tdb	1.31
123	pjm2	1.7	<p align="justify">
124	tdb	1.28	<b>Server security</b><br><br>
125			Security was something mostly overlooked in the original stage
126			of this project (due to the academic nature of the work). However,
127			once in production use this has become an issue, and is being
128			addressed. Initially the plan is to lock down the external points
129			of access (TCP & UDP) in the server to specific hosts. In the
130			longer term, encryption of data would be nice, but would take a
131			lot more time and work.
132	tdb	1.1	</p>
133	tdb	1.9
134			<p align="justify">
135	tdb	1.28	<b>Testing and Development</b><br><br>
136			<a href="screenshots/"><img border="0" src="screenshots/thumbnail-winhost-main.gif" width="100" height="62" align="right"></a>
137			The i-scream system is being tested and developed within the
138			Univeristy of Kent Computer Science department by the Systems
139			Group. This has led to many bug fixes and minor feature
140			enhancements, and will hopefully help to aid the long term
141			development of the system.
142	tdb	1.9	</p>
143	tdb	1.28
144	tdb	1.1	<p> </p>
145	tdb	1.28	<center><h3>Project History</h3></center>
146	tdb	1.1
147			<p align="justify">
148	pjm2	1.15	<a href="screenshots/"><img border="0" src="screenshots/thumbnail-reports-raptor-latest-misc.gif" width="100" height="104" align="left"></a>
149	pjm2	1.14	The i-scream Distributed Central Monitoring System started off as
150	tdb	1.38	a final year project for a group of <a href="http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk">
151			Computer Science</a> students at the <a href="http://www.kent.ac.uk">
152	tdb	1.28	University of Kent at Canterbury</a>, UK. The project was completed at
153			4pm on 29 March 2001. It consisted of five lever-arch folders containing
154			mostly source code and documentation. The CVS repository was tagged to
155			signify this even, however, the project is still being developed by the
156			<a href="acknowledgements.shtml">core development team</a>.
157	tdb	1.6	</p>
158
159			<p align="justify">
160	pjm2	1.15	<a href="screenshots/"><img border="0" src="screenshots/thumbnail-ihost-main.gif" width="100" height="51" align="right"></a>
161	tdb	1.18	As can be seen in our "<a href="/probdomain.shtml">problem domain</a>" document, the project
162	tdb	1.6	was aimed at the UKC Computer Science department, and as such
163	pjm2	1.22	we believed that a demonstration to the "customer" was important. The
164	pjm2	1.12	feedback from our demonstation was more positive than we had
165	tdb	1.27	anticipated. We believe that the system may now be of interest
166			to anybody who wishes to monitor a number of machines on their
167			network using a central configuration. The i-scream central
168			monitoring system is now being used by the UKC Computer Science
169			department, and their feedback is being used to further improve
170			the product.
171	tdb	1.1	</p>
172
173			<p align="justify">
174	pjm2	1.15	<a href="screenshots/"><img border="0" src="screenshots/thumbnail-conient-config.gif" width="100" height="48" align="left"></a>
175	pjm2	1.14	The name <i>i-scream</i> arose from a meeting whereupon one member
176			of the <a href="acknowledgements.shtml">development team</a> felt a strange urge to draw an ice cream on the discussion board.
177	tdb	1.1	It later became apparent that we had no name for our project (other
178			than 'The Project'). It seemed only natural to name our project after
179			the ice cream that had been oh-so-randomly drawn on the white board.
180			Copyright issues immediately ruled out anything involving Mr Whippy,
181	pjm2	1.14	so we had to settle for <i>i-scream</i>. And thus, we were left with a cunning
182	tdb	1.1	play on words - it still sounded like <i>ice cream</i>, yet also
183	tdb	1.26	served as a functional description of our system - namely, one which
184	tdb	1.1	screams at somebody if something has gone wrong...
185			</p>
186			<p align="justify">
187	tdb	1.23
188	tdb	1.24	<p> </p>
189	tdb	1.28	<center><h3>Searching i-scream</h3></center>
190	tdb	1.24
191	tdb	1.23	<!-- Search Google -->
192			<center>
193	tdb	1.28	<FORM method=GET action=http://www.google.com/custom>
194			<TABLE bgcolor=#FFFFFF cellspacing=0 border=0>
195			<tr>
196			<td valign="middle">
197			<A HREF=http://www.google.com/search>
198			<IMG SRC=http://www.google.com/logos/Logo_40wht.gif border=0 ALT=Google align=middle width="128" height="53"></A>
199			</td>
200			<td valign="middle">
201	tdb	1.38	<input type=hidden name=domains value="i-scream.org">
202			<input type=hidden name=sitesearch value="i-scream.org">
203	tdb	1.28	<INPUT TYPE=text name=q size=35 maxlength=255 value="">
204			<INPUT type=submit name=sa VALUE="Search">
205	tdb	1.38	<INPUT type=hidden name=cof VALUE="T:#000066;LW:502;ALC:#3333cc;L:http://www.i-scream.org/i-scream.gif;LC:#0000ff;LH:37;BGC:#ffffff;AH:left;VLC:#3333cc;AWFID:d646a9fd69e7d9cb;">
206	tdb	1.28	</td>
207			</tr>
208			</TABLE>
209			</FORM>
210	tdb	1.23	</center>
211			<!-- Search Google -->
212
213	tdb	1.1	</p>
214			</font>
215			</td>
216			</tr>
217			</table>