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README for Win32 users
The Big Sister package is fully supported on
NT platforms too.
The 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.
Of 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.
NOTE: 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).
Out 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.
Many 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
1. 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
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