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root/i-scream/web/www/probdomain.shtml
Revision: 1.4
Committed: Sat Feb 9 15:00:42 2002 UTC (22 years, 1 month ago) by tdb
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: PRE_WWW_REDESIGN
Branch point for: I-SCREAM_ORG
Changes since 1.3: +2 -3 lines
Log Message:
Some updates to the i-scream website. Particularly the entry page has had an
overhaul. It now has a News section and a Current Work section. This should
slightly help in making i-scream not look quite so dead. Once again, my web
design skills aren't great, so changes are welcome :-)

File Contents

# Content
1 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
2
3 <!--
4 $Author$
5 $Id$
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>