NAME
    README - readme for bcnu Version 1.22

    Last update: Updated: 1st March 2000

AVAILABILITY
    The bcnu home page is at http://bcnu.sourceforge.net/

    Mirrors are available at

         http://bcnu6666.tripod.com/
         http://members.tripod.co.uk/~ukbcnu6666/
         http://website.lineone.net/~john_a_phillips/

SYNOPSIS
    This document gives a brief outline of the functions and uses of
    bcnu, how to install it and get a basic system up and running.
    For more detailed information see the system admin document.

DESCRIPTION
    bcnu is a web based system management tool which delivers
    information on the status of networked systems in a simple and
    easy to use manner. Have a look at the sample screens to see how
    easy it is. It uses a web browser to display information about
    hosts in a tabular form. Coloured icons show the status of
    monitored conditions and clicking on these will bring up detail
    about the state of the system. Historical information can be
    held indefinitely and there is a powerful query tool available
    to interrogate it.

    bcnu can be managed from a central unix system, with all agents,
    scripts and config files distributed from one point using the
    supplied shell scripts. It will soon be possible to configure
    agents from a web browser.

    bcnu has a very open architecture. The agents are currently
    bourne shell scripts, but can be any program. There are a set of
    standard shell functions available to make interfacing with bcnu
    very easy. It is a simple matter to modify existing scripts to
    talk to bcnu. These will have all the benefits of bcnu agents,
    e.g. logging, resending, proxy etc. I would be happy to receive
    your agents to include with the distribution

    bcnu has been designed to be very simple to implement. By
    default it is configured to make very little impact on the
    managed system. Logging levels can be set for each agent
    separately. It is possible to set an agent only to log in the
    event of an error.

    Monitoring of network devices can be spread over multiple
    machines, all may have different checking and logging intervals.
    e.g. you may wish to check all web servers every 5 minutes,
    application servers every 10 minutes, but mail or print servers
    only every 30 minutes. This is easy with bcnu due to the
    flexible agent architecture.

    Retry levels and severity for hosts can be set on a per
    agent/service basis. e.g. you can retry hosts 10 times but print
    servers 3 times and only generate a warning for the print
    servers but an error for the hosts

    see the section on "INSTALLATION" in this document for a quick
    install guide.

FEATURES
    bcnu is a client-server monitoring system. It consists of a
    server daemon running on each system to be managed. The daemon
    schedules the running of agents on the system. The agents can be
    used to check the health of the system or to run periodic bcnu
    admin tasks.

    One central system is designated as the "master". This is where
    all data is logged to and where remote management can be carried
    out from.

    A web browser is used to display the status of the systems under
    its control.

    These are the main features:

    - easy to use
    - simple agent based monitoring with flexible thresholds
    - multiple views of the same information
    - includes agent scheduler for total flexibility
    - automatic logging and resend of messages
    - discover agent to build a picture of your system automatically
    - built in web server for static pages
    - powerful cgi access to data including multiple views and historical queries
    - free!! (Distributed under the terms of the Artistic licence)
    Standard agents include:

    - network monitor, ping, http, ftp etc
    - log file scanning for messages and warnings
    - checking for required processes to be running
    - filesystem mount status and space usage
    - processor usage and system up time
    - oracle database availibility
    Special agents include:

    - volume management checks for solaris,aix and hpux
    - config file gathering(experimental)
    - system availibility
    Admin agents include:

    - logging and resending of agent data
    - upgrade agent(experimental)
    - agent proxy
    - alerts sent by mail,web,pager or custom program
    - discovery of systems to be managed
    - static web page built to show status of all systems
    - report of all errors and warnings
    Contributed agents include:

    - check file for changes
    - oracle table space monitor
    - check oracle backup log agent
INSTALLATION
  What do I need to run it

    In addition to Unix systems, any IP connected device can be
    monitored by bcnu i.e routers, Netware/NT servers, gateways,
    appliances etc. It will use a ping to test whether the system is
    alive or not.

    It is also possible to check for IP services on any system, i.e.
    ftp, http etc

    To check other internal services on Unix systems requires a bcnu
    daemon and agents to be loaded.

    Currently the supported Unix platforms for the daemon are:

            Solaris 2
            HPUX 9,10
            AIX 4
            Linux Kernel 1 and 2
            FreeBSD 3
            ICL DRS NX (frozen due to instability)

    As these are the only systems I have access to, these are the
    only ones I can test on, but I am hoping that others will
    contribute ports to other systems.

    The software is distributed in source and with pre-built
    executables for the above platforms.

    A C compiler will be required (gcc is fine) to rebuild.

    For managed systems, that is all that is required as all the
    agents are bourne shell scripts and do not do anything very
    complicated.

    For the master system perl is required to build the web pages.
    Perl 4 is fine.

    Currently a web server is required for the cgi scripts where
    these are used. I use Apache.

    The web browser should preferably be Explorer 3+ or Navigator
    3+, but it will still work on older browsers. The use of
    background colours in tables makes these browsers better.

  Installing the bcnu master system

    change to the directory where you want the archive to be
    extracted to

    e.g. cd /usr/local

    untar the archive, it will create a directory called bcnu with
    all of the files under there

        gzip -dc bcnu-1.22.tgz  | tar xvf -

    Once bcnu is installed, configuration can begin. There are a few
    files which need to be edited to set things up initially, but
    once that's done the only file which needs any maintenance is
    the agents file. Most of this is now handled by the Setup
    script.

  Configuring bcnu on the master

    Decide on the final location of bcnu (/usr/local/bcnu is the
    default)

    If you choose the default, then there are less changes required
    to the standard scripts.

    Run the Setup script in the bcnu home directory to set up the
    environment.

        ./Setup

    It will try to guess as much as possible and prompt for other
    information. Unless you know better, accept the defaults.

    If there is already a version of bcnu installed, the server will
    be stopped and the new version will be configured. Any old
    config files will be retained.

    The script will ask if you want bcnu started at startup, if the
    answer is yes it will add an entry to the appropriate startup
    file/directory for your platform. (N.B. root access will be
    required for this).

    Once that's complete you should be able to start bcnu and it
    should work!

        /usr/local/bcnu/etc/bcnud_server start

    will start the daemon.

    Congratulations you have installed bcnu!

    You can now add whatever additional agents you require using the
    comments in the sample config file.

    You can get more detailed information from the documentation in
    the docs subdirectory. The System admin guide has full details
    on installing clients etc.

AUTHOR
    John Phillips

    Please send all bugs, comments, and changes to
    jap@users.sourceforge.net

DISCLAIMER
    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
    Artistic License for more details.

CAVEATS
    Security is weak at the moment. bcnu is designed to be easy to
    use, it has not been tested for all vulnerabilities.

SEE ALSO
    bcnud(1), bcnumsg(1), bcnu(1), agents(5), services(5),
    logpatterns(5), hostinfo(5), bcnunet(5)

    The bcnu home pages also have full documentation

    Updated: 1st March 2000

