Hello All
I'm looking for a freeware/open source VCS/PCM style product which will
monitor consoles - alpha ( & therefore vax ), hsz & hsg style consoles.
Because I need it to monitor the disk controllers as well, it can't be
something which needs an agent installing on the monitored box. I know that
CA have the Unicentre product and XuiS have ConsoleWorks. However, this is
for a particularly limited application which will never warrant the big
bucks expenditure required by the major commercial vendors. Can anyone point
me in the right direction ?
many thanks,
Nick
-----Original Message-----
From: Iwan R Tamimi [mailto:tamimii_at_m1.com.sg]
Sent: 27 July 2001 07:22
To: 'TRU64 Mailing List'
Subject: Summary: Big Brother monitoring siftware
H i All,
Thank you vey much for the reply. I am really sorry I just can summarise
now. I have submitted to my boss and looks like he could accept it.
Irronically, we do have both CA TNG and BMC patrol on those system but I
think (they weren't configure by me) but I think BB is easier to configure
for this task since the client just a web browser.
Some of the commnt you can see it bellow, thanks agaian for you all.
my original mail
Hi Managers,
I have tried the Big Brother (
http://bb3.com <
http://bb3.com> ) to monitor
wether the servers alive or not (I just need to ping and the ability to
telnet) which the software does it very good. I install on non production NT
system to monitor 8 tru64s production servers (because i just want to us
basic services, I don't install anything on the servers).
The problem is, because it's a free software (for your own hardware.... see
http://bb4.com/license.html <
http://bb4.com/license.html> ) . My boss is
really affraid to use it because he suspects that it might be a trojan horse
or something. How to ensure its liability? Anyone has experience for using
the free software in production system? Should we just buy the support?
Thank you and regards
Iwan
Some of the reply
Blount, Adrian
...
I use Big Brother to monitor our Alpha 4100 and Alpha 1000A as well as about
20 NT servers and some routers/switches and it's fantastic. I've been using
Big Brother for about 2 years now on Alpha, Sun, Windows and comms equipment
and love it.
Can't recommened it highly enough, it's the equal of some much more
expensive systems.
Kind Regards,
Adrian Blount
Jim Fitzmaurice
...
Subscribe to the bb-mailing-list and ask this question. Your mailbox will
get flooded with responses, and you'll get a pretty vast list of satisfied
users as well. I've been using BigBrother for over two years now, and I'm
running it full blown server, clients, multiple display servers, automatic
failover of network server, larrd, etc.... I've written and uploaded
extensions, as well as downloaded and am using extensions written by others.
I look over anything I download, and even spent the better part of a weekend
examining BigBrother codes and scripts, I've never found anything, unusual.
And as most Open Source Applications, security is better because more people
have a chance to look over the code and find holes. In the 2 years I've been
using BigBrother, I've seen ONE small security hole that had a patch out
within hours of it's discovery, and everyone on the mailing list was
notified. That's a heck of a lot better than Micro$oft's record, and look
what you pay for their software!
I won't advise you not to purchase the support package, because I think the
guys who wrote and support BB deserve the business, and maybe you don't have
the time or inclination to review the code like I did. But help is available
on the bb-mailing-list for free. (It was a big help for me when I first
started.) I advise many people on the list to look at BB when the ask about
monitoring, or downtime reports, or load graphing, or anything else that BB
does, or had extensions that do it for you.
You can trust Big Brother, and put me on the list as a satisfied customer!
(And I really mean it, ask your question on the bb-mailing-list, you'll get
a good list of who uses it, lots of major companies. Send a note to
<mailto:info_at_bb4.com> info_at_bb4.com I'm sure Sean or Rob could give you a
list of major companies that use BigBrother)
P.S. That's <
http://bb4.com/>
http://bb4.com , bb3.com send your to a
singles site.
James Fitzmaurice
...
Tom Webster
...
Quick, immediately delete all of the free software on your UNIX servers!
Pay special attention to:
Perl/Python/Shells (KSH should be OK as AT&T wants money for it) Sendmail
Bind (DNS server)Apache/httpd elm/mutt/pine rcs/sccs/cvs vi/emacs
If you really want to be cautious, you had better delete anything that
is based on the free BSD and MIT licenses. In order to do this, you
will need to remove TCP/IP networking and socket support from the kernel
and X windows from the system.
All of these are free software. Not only have they been used in a
production environment, but the form the backbone of the modern Internet.
It's unclear if you intended to use 'liability' or 'reliability' in your
message. Unless contract law is very different in your country than
it is in the US, good luck trying to ensure that commercial software
will work. The license that comes with most software is very clear that
it may not do anything but take up disk space (and may not do that well) and
you have no legal recourse.
As far as trojans go, they can theoretically exist in both commercial
software and freeware. There have been a number of 'backdoor' access methods
revealed over the years in a number of commercial products.
There have also been accusation that the encryption of exported US
software is intentionally compromised by the NSA (unconfirmed of course).
The big difference is that with free software, if you are really that
concerned -- you can go through the code yourself.
I always groan when I hear that a company has selected a proprietary
system over an opensource solution, because they have a vendor they
can take their complaints to. As certain software companies have
shown, once you get your customers locked into your proprietary
file formats and they have spent a boat-load of money on training --
it takes a LOT of BS before they become willing to jump ship.
Tom
Goldberg, David
...
We have been using it here, without problems, for 2 years now. We use it to
monitor 9 alphaservers, and a large number of NT servers as well.
I have at one time or another been through all of the scripts that the
program uses (it is mostly shell scripts), and there are no illicit type
actions that occur that I have been able to detect, or find.
As to whether or not to pay for support, I will leave that up to you. We do
not pay for support in our organization, and do not know if anyone else in
Compaq is using it.
To date I have not had any problems that either I was able to fix on my own,
or through the Big Brother mail list have not been able to get fixed.
For a free product you cannot beat it.
David Goldberg
...
Whiting, Bryan
...
I used to work for MCI Worldcom, and we used a modified version of Big
Brother (we changed some things we were monitoring for our custom
applications, etc) and it worked extremely well -- the paging features were
invaluable. Most of the time, the system would page us about a problem
before the folks at the monitoring center ever realized there was a issue.
In most cases, we were already working on fixing it, or had fixed it by the
time they called us. If it was a trojan, you'd have heard bad things on the
newsgroups -- if your boss is really paranoid, you can always hook up a
packet sniffer and let him watch what data is being gathered/sent... It's
certainly a good alternative to commercial offerings such as BMC Patrol,
Candle or CA Unicenter if those products aren't within your budget!
Bryan
Wheelock, Michael D
Hi,
I have used big brother to monitor Sun systems at the University of
Oklahoma. We had no issues related to security regarding big brother, but if
you want to be sure, use a packet sniffer when you bring up the application.
A lot of work to be sure, but it is really the only way to be sure.
As to free software, 9/10 of the world uses apache for web service. I don't
think that anyone can argue with apache's dominance in this arena. Perl is
also free and one of the best scripting languages in existence.
Greg Skouby
I would say unless you need the support don't buy it.
Big Brother is not that complex of a program/software package.
If you/he is worried that it is a trojan then just look
at the code and see what it does. I can assure you it is
a perfectly legitimate program as we have been using it since
the mid 1990's. I like it and depend on it every day. We use
it on around 10 production servers hooked up to a paging server
that just runs qpage and is attached to an old 28.8 USR modem.
Works like a champ.
Hope this helps.
Stan Horwitz
You could simply do a little research to verify the integrity of Big
Brother. If its a trojan horse, that fact would probably be noted by the
various security related organizations.
Big Brother is great software. We use it to monitor several dozen systems,
including Tru64, Windows, Solaris, and Macs. It was recommended at a SAN
conference a while ago if I am not mistaken. We have been using BB for at
least one year. We have BB set up to display system status via a web site
and also to page us during the day if there are any critical problems. BB
is not perfect, it does give some false alarms, but its quite impressive.
Elizabeth Harvey-Forsythe [ehf_at_media.mit.edu]
Here at MIT's Media Lab we use Big Brother and have used it for a long time.
We added some features, e.g. replacing telnet with ssh, monitoring
temperature. It's been a valuable tool for us. We also use another piece of
open-source freeware, the Multi-Router Traffic Grapher (mrtg) to monitor
traffic on the many subnets we have throughout our building.
Elizabeth Harvey-Forsythe
Joe Fletcher
The people who write Big Brother make no secret of where they live. If they
were pushing bad software they can be sued without difficulty so I guess
it's in their interest not to misbehave.
If you have doubts, install it on a non-essential system and monitor all
incoming/outgoing data to see whether it's trying to pull a fast one.
I've been using the product for months now and so far I've not come across
anything bad.
Cheers
Joe
Daniel Rugotzke
...........
Yes, we run apache, xemacs, bind, sendmail, gdb, perl, and
many others. In fact, Tru64 ships with bind, sendmail, emacs,
and tk/tcl. all of these are free software. We do not,
however, run free software on Windows boxes. Any free
software that we install (stuff that is not shipped with the
OS) on our machines we get as source and compile it ourselves.
.............
- Dan
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Received on Fri Jul 27 2001 - 08:12:42 NZST