Getting Started
Getting Started with the i-scream Central Monitoring System
1. Installing the corba services (pre-requisite for the server)
The server requires a CORBA Naming Service to run. It may be that you already have such a system running, in which case you can use that. Simply edit the jacorb.properties file to point to your Naming service. If you don't have a naming service running you could just set up your own manually, but if like us you want the easy approach, install our corba services program.
This program runs the naming service and provides a builtin webserver to serve requests to the server application. The documentation details how to get this running. It should simply be a case of extracting and running.
1. Installing the server
The first stage is to download and install the server
application. The latest version of the CMS application
can be found in the cms directory of our
download mirrors.
Once downloaded, the archive should be extracted to a directory of your choice. The server will run on most Java enabled platforms (including Windows, Linux and FreeBSD).
The archive consists of only a few files and directories. The main file is the iscream-server.jar archive which contains all the binary code for the server. The lib directory contains other JAR archives which the server requires to run. The etc directory contains (or will contain) configuration for most of the i-scream central monitoring system. The next step is to configure the server to suit your requirements.
2. Configuring the server
The configuration is split into two main files. The first, default.properties can be considered a bootstrap configuration. This means that it provides basic configuration to get the server started, after which point the main configuration system takes over. This file should be checked through, and is pretty well explained by comments.
The rest of the server configuration is based on system.conf. This can hold the entire system configuration, including hosts. It may also specify other configuration files to be included in the main configuration. This file is also commented extensively.
This step may well take some time to get right, and you can come back to it at any point. Lots of the configuration can be changed "on the fly" as well.
For fuller and complete details of the configuration system, and the server in general, please see the Server User Guide in the documentation section of the website.
2a. Setting up the database
The i-scream central monitoring system can make use of a database for generating historical reports. The documentation explains how you would configure the system to do this. You will need to create a single basic table yourself, this is also explained in the documentation.
3. Starting the server
Starting up the server is a trivial task. Usually you can just get away with running the run script provided. This will boot the server up displaying some basic information to the console. If something goes wrong, the error message should point to the cause.
4. Setting up hosts
Hosts can be run on either Unix (tested with Solaris, FreeBSD and some Linux distributions) or Windows. Both are equally easy to setup.
Firstly, the Unix host is called "ihost". This can be downloaded from the i-scream website. Once extracted it just needs to be started up. You need two pieces of information to do this: the filtermanager (part of the server) host and port number. If you haven't changed much in terms of configuration this will be the machine the server is running on, and port 4567. To start ihost you simply type:
ihost.pl server.domain.com port
ihost will then contact the server to obtain it's configuration and start sending information.
The windows host, winhost, is very similar. All you need to do is install it using the provided installer in the download, and then edit the ini file to provide the two bits of information above. Running the application starts up communication with the server and data sending commences.
Full details of both of these hosts can be found in the relevant documentation on the website.
5. Using Conient
Conient allows you to view, in real time, the data being sent by the hosts. This is a perfect way to test that all the above steps have successfully been completed.
At present Conient is simply another archive which can be extracted and run. However, in the near future we hope to have an installer to make life easier. Conient is a Java application and will run on most Java enabled platforms.
After extracting, the run script can be used to start Conient, or in some cases the JAR file can be executed manually. The GUI will then load. The configuration section requires you to enter a host and port for the server. By default this will be the machine on which the server is running and port 4510. Conient will then connect upon request and start displaying information.
Assuming data is displayed you have successfully setup the i-scream central monitoring system. Well done!
This is explained in much more detail in the Conient documentation.
6. Setting up DBReporter
If you are making use of a database you can setup the DBReporter to generate web-based reports of the information collected. This is just a case of extracting the archive to a suitable location, configuring it, and setting it to run on a regular basis (we suggest daily). DBReporter will also ensure the database is kept relatively clean.
Full instructions are available in the DBReporter documentation.
7. Setting up the Web Interface
The Web interface allows you to view various aspects of the i-scream central monitoring system's output. These include realtime viewing of data (much like Conient), links to the DBReporter above, and full displaying of the alerts that can be generated by the server.
The archive contains a series of PHP scripts which should be placed on your PHP enabled web server. The configuration files allow you to tailor the setup to suit your needs.
Full instructions are available in the relevant documentation.
8. Further
You may decide to expand your setup to cover a larger network. For example, a distributed filter arrangement could cut down on the amount of traffic being sent around the network. The server itself can be distributed to suit your needs. You may wish to run the database section of the server on the same machine as the database, while running the rest on another machine.
Some discussion about this is available in the server documentation.
If you have any questions about any of the above, please don't hesitate to contact us on our mailing lists. If you find we've missed something out, again, please let us know.
Finally, we'd like to thank you for trying this i-scream product. We realise that it's still at an early stage, and we therefore appreciate you taking the time to try it out.
The i-scream team.
