ANNOUNCE: moodss-20.1 and moomps 5.1

 ### CHANGES ###

 --- moodss 20.1 and moomps 5.1 ---
 - in moodss GUI:
   - when only peer tables and other viewers, but no modules, were
     saved in a dashboard, application would crash due to the lack of
     an internal poll time
   - slightly reduced code size by completely removing daemon related
     code
   - in rpm for Red Hat Fedora, now require sqlite2-tcl as it is
     available in both Fedora Core 3 and 4 extra packages repository
 - in moomps daemon:
   - changed default dashboard (data) directory from /etc/moomps to
     /srv/moomps in order to comply with the Filesystem Hierarchy
     Standard
   - just warn, do not report error when there is nothing to do to
     avoid making the user think that the daemon has aborted
   - do not create a SQLite database file by default in home directory
     unless specified via moodss preferences interface
   - ignore failures on exit when deleting process ID file
   - reduced code size and therefore memory footprint by completely
     removing unused GUI related code
   - in HTML documentation, fixed links to sections in moodss HTML
     documentation
 - in system module, when remotely monitoring, module identifier (table
   title) did not include host name
 - continued to remove pre 8.4 Tcl/Tk code and optimize using latest
   Tcl/Tk commands

 ### README ###

 This is moodss (Modular Object Oriented Dynamic SpreadSheet) version
 20.1 and moomps (Modular Object Oriented Multi-Purpose Service)
 version 5.1.

 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". For Joe Barr, at
 NewsForge: "I downloaded the moodss tarball from the website,
 decompressed it, and started it up. It"s that easy. The main window is
 deceptively simple. Great power lurks just below the surface of that
 mild exterior".

 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), tables of mathematical formulas
 and free text viewers can be created from any number of table cells,
 originating from any of the displayed tables or viewers. The display
 area can be extended by adding pages with notebook tabs. Thresholds
 can be set on any number of cells. Furthermore, distributed monitoring
 can be implemented using export and import peer data tables.

 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 recorder and later made
 available, for example, in presentations and graphs, via commonly
 available spreadsheet 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, Nagios compatibility, 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...
 There are currently about 100 usable modules for moodss (counting the
 Nagios plugins)

 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 the following locations:

 http://download.sourceforge.net/moodss/moodss-20.1.tar.bz2
 http://jfontain.free.fr/moodss-20.1.zip
 http://jfontain.free.fr/moodss-20.1.i386.tar.bz2
 http://jfontain.free.fr/moodss-20.1-1.i386.rpm
 http://jfontain.free.fr/moodss-20.1-1.spec
 http://download.sourceforge.net/moodss/moomps-5.1.tar.bz2
 http://jfontain.free.fr/moomps-5.1-1.noarch.rpm
 http://jfontain.free.fr/moomps-5.1-1.spec
 
 --
 Jean-Luc Fontaine http://jfontain.free.fr/
Received on Thu Sep 29 14:19:38 2005