README for Win32 usersThe Big Sister package is fully supported on NT platforms too. InstallationThe easiest way for installing is to get one of the pre-installed packages from http://bigsister.graeff.com. An alternative way to install Big Sister on a Win32 box is to first install it on a Unix box, then to copy the whole Big Sister directories over to the Win32 box. An InstallShield setup is planned but not done yet ... NOTE: do not forget you (probably) still need the SNMP perl libraries (see README) and the Net::SMTP package provided that you have not got the binary release installed. Installation as an NT serviceOf course you will want to run Big Sister in background on NT boxes too. Unfortunately this is not as simple as on Unix boxes ... You will need InstSrv/SrvAny (NT Resource Kit), AutoexNT (freeware) or Invoker. The prefered package is Microsoft's InstSrv/SrvAny. Place the two binaries - you can find them in the NT Resource Kit either on CD or directly from http://www.microsoft.com - somewhere in a directory in your path. Then run bin/install32 and Big Sister will install as a service. After running install32 you will have to reboot (well, if you do not mind your services names looking strange in the Control Panel then you do not need a reboot), go to the Control Panel, choose "Services", find your Big Sister services and set appropriate start options. That's all I hope ... If you would like to use another tool than SrvAny you will have to setup your services yourself. Note that Big Sister will not work with Idetix Invoker. Provided you have installed the binary distribution >0.34 the path is not (too) hard coded in the binaries any more: Double clicking install32.exe will make Big Sister work even if not installed in the default directory. Running Big SisterNOTE: you do not need to install Perl if you have got the binary Big Sister release NOTE: Please get the latest ActivePerl release for Win32. Some other versions did not implement the socketioctl() call Big Sister absolutely needs ... NOTE: The perl command must be in your path or bbd won't be able to update your Web-Pages. Provided that Big Sister is installed in C:\bigsis you can run Big Sister by invoking (in a command window): c: cd \bigsis perl bin/bb_start32 You are strongly encouraged to register Big Sister as NT services. NOTE: On win32 platforms bb_event_generator will need the Net::SMTP package to send alarm mails. Implicitly this means you need an SMTP server somewhere (use mailhost=hostname in bb_event_generator.cfg). MAPI is not supported yet (but will be). Stopping Big SisterOut of the task manager kill off the running 'Perl' tasks (okay, I will implement a "bb_start32 stop" command soon) or - if installed as services - go to the Control Panel / Services, find the appropriate service and click on the 'Stop' button. Checking NT systemsMany checks are now reported to work on NT systems too. They include: EventLog: eventlog Performance Monitor: load diskfree memory diskload Network: about all of them Limitations and pitfalls1. Due to a poor implementation of both signal handling and socket library timeouts often do not work correctly on NT. Therefore some things (e.g. the TCP monitor) will have longer timeouts than on Unix systems or in a few cases no timeouts at all. 2. The Status collector will not answer any requests during history log file transfers as done by e.g. "bsadmin archivelogs". This is not considered a serious problem since you only archive logs every few days or do not archive them at all. 3. When sending alarms the Alarm Generator will need an SMTP mailhost somewhere. Use mailhost=mymailhost in bb_event_generator.cfg |