The "diskload" test does not work on my Windows system
======================================================

The "diskload" test is broken and will be removed in
future releases. If you can send me a complete documentation
of the Windows performance monitor API I will consider
fixing the test.


The "diskfree" test does not work on my Windows 2000 system
===========================================================

You have to switch on the disk performance monitor of your
Windows box by executing the command

	diskperf -Y

in a command window.

You might also have to start the "Performance Logs and Alerts"
service.


Trend graphs do not appear though I followed the instructions on setting them up
================================================================================

The most common problem with graphing is that Big Sister just
cannot find the "rrdtool" command. Please check your syslog
(/var/log/messages, /var/adm/messages, whatever) to see if
Big Sister logged something like

    Jun 19 18:30:02 susix bsmon: RRD creation failed for graph 

In this case either change Big Sister's path settings
(in the adm/resources) or copy rrdtool to some place Big
Sister finds it by default, e.g. /usr/bin.


Can I have some graphics showing disk/memory/cpu/... usage during the last few days?
====================================================================================

Big Sister 0.38 introduced agent side performance data 
and finally since 0.94 the server module supporting storing
this data in a database and creating nice trend graphics
is working. See the HOWTO section on performance data
collection for more details.


No links to my performance data trend graphics are appearing on the web pages
=============================================================================

Check if the directories var/graphs and www/graphs exist and
contain files. If not you have not successfully enabled
performance data collection (see above). If yes, then it
might just take some time for the links to appear on your
status web pages. Note that the status pages will not be
updated immediately if a graph is created - it will be
included when the status page is updated next time because
of status changes.


Links to trend graphics appear but when I click on it no graph is displayed
===========================================================================

Check if you really have RRDTool installed. Note that the 
'rrdtool' command must be in the path of both the Big Sister
server and your web server.


After installing Big Sister my display works but I do not see any status from my clients
========================================================================================

The Big Sister client "uxmon" will read its config file
adm/uxmon-net on startup. It expects the Big Sister
status collector (display server) listed there. After
a new installation you will find a line:

	bsdisplay	bsdisplay

there. Please change the left "bsdisplay" to the name
or IP address of your display server.


Some of my web pages look quite poor (no background, no lamps) while others look fine
=====================================================================================

Big Sister needs to know the URL of its web pages. If you
did not tell it during installation using e.g.

	make install WEBROOT=/monitors/bs ...

or you moved your web pages to a new location then you
should try altering the file

	www/skins/default/WEBROOT.inc

BTW: It is not necessary to list a full URL (http://...).
     The absolute path within your server is sufficient.



The History and Alarms menu entries do not work
===============================================

Some features of Big Sister rely on CGIs. Please
remember to do the following steps:

	- decide where to put your Big Sister's CGIs.
	  It might be a good idea to separate them
	  from your other CGIs.

	- Set up your web server so that it will
	  execute CGIs in the respective locations
	  and follow symbolic links.

	- Create the physical directory where you
	  want your Big Sister CGIs to be in and
	  place symbolic links pointing to the
	  Big Sister CGIs (bin/bshistory,
	  bin/bswebalarm, etc., see README)

	- During installation of Big Sister point
	  Big Sister to your CGI URL using e.g.

		make install CGIPATH=/cgi


CGIs are so slow
================

While sharing code and using the skin mechanism is
a fine thing for program developers it makes startup
of scripts a little bit slow. While there is no way
around this you can reduce the number of script
startup by using Fast CGI. You need to do two steps
to enable running Big Sister CGIs in Fast CGI mode:

	- enable your web server executing scripts
	  in Fast CGI mode (e.g. for apache users:
	  install the mod_fastcgi module available
	  from www.fastcgi.com and do a few 
	  configuration changes)

	- install the FCGI perl module (available
	  from CPAN sites)
	  



The .conn (ping) test does always report failure
=================================================

By default the ping test will use UDP protocol. On
most machines the ICMP echo service is built in the
network driver at a very low level and will just work
(I've even saw some SPARC boxes answering ICMP echo
requests after being brought down to PROM mode!). The
UDP and TCP echo services are only working if configured.
On a Unix system they will have to be enabled in
/etc/inetd.conf. On NT systems the "Simple TCP/IP"
service will have to run.

If you rather like to use ICMP pings than to tell your
boxes to answer UDP echo requests then you will have
to use the ping test as:

	mybox	proto=icmp ping

Since usually processes running with user priviledges
will not get access to the ICMP protocol layer uxmon
has to be run with root priviledges in this case. Do
a

	touch adm/uxmon-asroot

in your Big Sister directory and restart uxmon. This
will run uxmon with root priviledges.

Decide yourself which does suit your security policies
best: running uxmon as root or enabling Echo services
on all the machines you want to monitor.

Note: Older versions of uxmon did not implement the
"proto=icmp" option of ping correctly. This hase been
fixed in release 0.30.



My display.history file is growing larger and larger
====================================================

Since version 0.32 bbd implements a method for rotating
its log files. However you need to tell bbd manually to
execute it using

	bsadmin -d mybbdhost savelogs

(see the How To on log file rotation in HOWTO too)
