Merge in changes from branch created for new server. The old server is now

[www.i-scream.org.git] / www / contents.inc

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       <center><h3>Project News</h3></center>
       
       <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>
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       <p>&nbsp;</p>
       <center><h3>Searching i-scream</h3></center>
       
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