Keywords: Big Sister, Bigsister, Network Monitor, Network Monitoring, Perl, GPL, Big Brother, manual, SNMP

Sending server commands
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## Sending server commands

For accomplishing certain adminsdrative tasks, sending commands to the server through the agent- server- protocol can come in very helpful. Please read the Server Command Reference for a complete list of commands implemented in the Big Sister serverprotocol.

### Using the telnet client

Commands can be sent by establishing a telnet session to the tcp- server port and typing the desired command plus required arguments:

    [root@proxy /root]# telnet [bigsister-server] 1984
    Trying 192.168.170.13...
    Connected to bigsister.joerg.cc.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    [TYPE YOUR COMMANDS HERE]

Commands are text based. Each command starts with a keyword followed by the command arguments followed by a newline. Both "network" (CR/LF) and "unix" (LF) newlines are accepted. Newlines in a command argument must be replaced by the string "|>" before transmission. There is one exception to this: For compatibility reasons with Big Brother "status" and "page" commands may be multi-lined. The text beginning at a status command up to the next line looking like a valid command is treated as one single command. Do not use this feature!

Usually the client disconnects after successfully sending its commands. The Big Sister server does terminate a connection if one of the following conditions are met:

- an invalid command was sent

- a timeout ocurred (no data received for a limited time)

- the client is not allowed to send a command

Whenever hostnames are fully qualified (domain name included) "." characters must be replaced by "_" or "," before transmission.

By convention hostnames are written in lowercase letters while group names are written in uppercase letters.

Clients running in Big Brother compatibility mode should never send more than one command without closing/re-opening the TCP connection.

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