Big Sister 0.93p1 Release Notes
===============================

This is mainly a bug fix release of 0.93.
At last the documentation slowly catches up too ...


Big Sister 0.93 Release Notes
=============================

Big Sister 0.93 is an alpha release. This means that there might be a large
number of unfixed bugs. Unfortunately this means also that the documentation
is not yet up to date.

Release 0.93 introduces quite some new functionality. At the same time
large parts of Big Sister have been rewritten. The aim of this alpha
release is to fix newly introduced bugs in Big Sister code that formerly
worked and - with lower priority only - testing the new functions.

Now what is worth noticing when upgrading from a former release:

 - The Big Sister architecture has changed. Big Sister is now composed
   of three main daemons:

   	- The Agent (uxmon) - same as before

	- The Status Collector (bbd) - is now only responsible for
	  receiving status and performance information from the 
	  agents, do authentication and forward the information 
	  to the Monitor

	- The Monitor - replaces the (old) event generator, logging
	  engine, HTML page generator. The Monitor is a modular
	  and extensible program processing any incoming status and
	  performance data information.

        and additionally:

	- the already known CGI scripts (alarming, history)

	- the SNMP trap monitor (bstrapd) (subject to redesign?!)

    The new architecture should both being easier to port to foreign
    platforms (like Windows) and more flexible

  - The configuration files mainly stayed the same. Anyway you should
    note a few changes:

    	- most of the files may now reside in the etc or adm
	  subdirectory. Files in adm directory are preferred.

	- the configuration files are now read via the same
	  engine, making basic functionality (comments via
	  '#', includes via 'include' directive) available
	  throughout Big Sister

	- a few configuration options in bb-display.cfg are
	  currently unavailable (resp. configuration is done
	  via etc/bsmon.cfg) - this is subject to change

  - Performance monitoring/performance history data collecting
    has been implemented on both agent and server side - but
    the statistics engine (probably using the RRD Tool) is
    not ready yet. Developers: Please do have a look at the
    new interfaces or ask before trying to parse uxmon status
    messages or implement other less optimal approaches.

  - Code maturity: Some parts of Big Sister, namely the Agent
    the CGI code did not extensively change. Therefore they
    are considered rather stable and mature. Other parts,
    namely the new Monitor and with it the alarming and HTML
    page creation, were nearly rewritten from scratch. One
    might expect that most of the bugs will be found there ...

Note that the latest developer version is now available via
CVS from bigsister.graeff.com. 

Thanks a lot for your interest in Big Sister. Any feedback -
bug reports as well as suggestions - are always appreciated
and will help further improve the tool.

Best regards,
Tom Aeby
