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13 <title>The i-scream Project Problem Domain</title>
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34 <center><h3>Original Problem</h3></center>
37 This is the original specification we were given when we took
38 on the project, and it seems an ideal basis for the problem
42 <center><h3>Centralised Machine Monitoring</h3></center>
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.
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
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.
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
85 John Cinnamond (email jc) whose idea this is, will provide technical
86 support for the project.
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