ANNOUNCE: moodss-18.1 and moomps 3.1

From: Jean-Luc Fontaine (jfontain_at_free.fr)
Date: 04/26/04 

Date: 26 Apr 2004 08:32:31 -0700

### CHANGES ###

--- moodss 18.1 and moomps 3.1 ---

- in moodss GUI:
  - completely internationalized text in user interface (menus, dialog
    boxes, help tips, ...) (developed and tested on UNIX only, with
    Tcl/Tk 8.4.6 and 8.5, may work on Windows)
  - added complete Japanese translations (use LANG or LC_ALL = ja
    environment variables), including HTML help, thanks to SENRI
    Hiroshi (note: input has not been fully tested, although it works
    with canna, kinput2 and X Input Method Protocol: please report any
    problems)
  - added complete french translations (use LANG or LC_ALL = fr), but
    excluding HTML help which remains in English
  - when initializing from a dashboard file, some viewers would fail
    to properly display data cell labels if data cells came from a
    statistics table
  - in thresholds dialog box, email addresses are now checked and
    errors reported when the test button is pressed
  - free text viewers could wrongly be edited in read-only mode
  - message widget string ("Message:" by default) no longer saved in
    dashboard files
  - binary distribution includes patched version of Tcl/Tk 8.4.6 so
    that maximize button is available in a KDE 3.2 environment
- included Japanese HTML documentation in distribution
- in random module, added HTML help in Japanese.
- successfully tested Japanese support in SQLite and MySQL (native and
  ODBC) databases (using Japanese comments in data cell entries)
- in internal database code, in ODBC mode, 64 bits compatibility check
  between data and history tables was incorrect
- in global HTML help, added internationalization section and FAQ
  entry for Japanese support with input
- in thresholds code, detect and report empty SMTP servers list when
  trying to send emails

- in dashboard and preferences files, included encoding field in XML
  header, as generated by Tcl
  (default -> utf-8, fr -> iso8859-1, ja -> euc-jp)
- in development HTML documentation, added internationalization
  section
- in kernmods, mounts, ping, sensors, snmp and smithy modules,
  slightly improved code efficiency using Tcl 8.4 features
- documented Tcl/Tk 8.4 or above requirement in the HTML help of
  modules that internally use 64 bit row numbers

### README ###

This is moodss (Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Spread***) version
18.1 and moomps (Modular Object Oriented Multi-Purpose Service)
version 3.1.

For Unix Review, moodss is "a must-have application for today's
network and systems administrators", and for Eric S. Raymond, in "The
Art of UNIX Programming" book: "the code is polished, mature, and
considered an exemplar in the Tcl community."
Linux Magazine calls it a "lifesaver".
Tucows gives it 5 stars (cows or penguins :-).

Moodss is a modular application. It displays data described and
updated in one or more modules, which can be specified in the command
line or dynamically loaded or unloaded while the application is
running. Data is originally displayed in tables. Graphical viewers
(graph, bar, 3D pie charts, ...), summary tables (with current,
average, minimum and maximum values) and free text viewers can be
created from any number of table cells, originating from any of the
displayed viewers. The display area can be extended by adding pages
with notebook tabs. Thresholds can be set on any number of cells.

Moomps (shipped with moodss) is a monitoring daemon which works using
configuration files created by moodss. Thresholds, when crossed,
create messages in the system log, and eventually trigger the sending
of email alert messages and the execution of user defined scripts.

For both moodss and moomps, it is also possible to use a database as a
storage mean, so that data history is for example available for
presentations and graphs, via commonly available spread*** software.

Specific modules can easily be developed in the Tcl, Perl and Python
scripting languages or in C.

A thorough and intuitive drag'n'drop scheme is used for most viewer
editing tasks: creation, modification, type mutation, destruction,
... and thresholds creation. Table rows can be sorted in increasing or
decreasing order by clicking on column titles. The current
configuration (modules, tables and viewers geometry, ...) can be saved
in a file at any time, and later loaded at the user's convenience,
thus achieving a dashboard functionality.

The module code is the link between the moodss core and the data to be
displayed. All the specific code is kept in the module package. Since
module data access is entirely customizable (through C code, Tcl,
Perl, Python, HTTP, ...) and since several modules can be loaded at
once, applications for moodss become limitless.

Many modules are provided, such as a comprehensive set for Linux
system monitoring, MySQL, network, SNMP, Python and Perl modules
examples. For example, thoroughly monitor a dynamic web server on a
single dashboard with graphs, using the Apache, MySQL, ODBC, cpustats,
memstats, ... modules. If you have replicated servers, dynamically add
them to your view, even load the snmp module on the fly and let your
imagination take over...

Thorough help is provided through menus, widget tips, a message area,
a module help window and a global help window with a complete HTML
documentation.

Moodss is multi-lingual thanks to Tcl internationalization
capabilities. English, Japanese and French are supported. Help with
other languages will be very warmly welcomed.

Development of moodss is continuing and as more features are added in
future versions, backward module code compatibility will be maintained.

###

you may find it now at my homepage:

http://jfontain.free.fr/moodss-18.1.tar.bz2
http://jfontain.free.fr/moodss-18.1.zip
http://jfontain.free.fr/moodss-18.1.i386.tar.bz2
http://jfontain.free.fr/moodss-18.1-1.i386.rpm
http://jfontain.free.fr/moodss-18.1-1.spec
http://jfontain.free.fr/moomps-3.1.tar.bz2
http://jfontain.free.fr/moomps-3.1-1.noarch.rpm
http://jfontain.free.fr/moomps-3.1-1.spec

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