Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 18:28:21 -0700 (PDT) From: Hugh LaMaster <lamaster@george.arc.nasa.gov> To: "FreeBSD-Net (FreeBSD.Org) List" <freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Network Visualisation/Management Software Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.96.980723180957.7518F-100000@george.arc.nasa.gov> In-Reply-To: <19980710232735.512.qmail@terror.hungry.com>
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On Fri, 10 Jul 1998, Tim Spencer wrote:
> There used to be something called "scotty" and "tkined" in
> /usr/ports/net, which did a lot of network mapping and SNMP query
> stuff. It was a strange Tk based app that utilized IRR and a bunch of
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I see nothing strange about it. I use it all the time.
[Well, it won't seem strange to anyone who thinks network
mapping and monitoring is "fun", anyway. I suppose most
people would rather watch corn grow, but ... ]
> other routing and snmp tools to scan subnets and routers and try to
> develop a reasonable network map. It didn't do monitoring, but it did
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The network map/database part is a bit of a weak area for both
tkined/scotty, and mview, which one of the previous posters
mentioned for multicast. This package has a bit of trouble
collapsing different router interfaces and names into the same
node sometimes. But, its effect on local resources is quite
benign compared to certain other packages, which can really
clobber routers sometimes.
> do mapping and allow you to play around with the map much like
> OpenView does. Unfortunately, the last time I looked at the port, it
> was no longer working, so you may have to do some hacking to get it
The port was working just fine a couple of months ago, and,
I just built it on Solaris and it works fine there, too.
If there is a problem, it is probably with the underlying
Tcl/Tk installation.
> working again. When I had it working, it was really quite cool,
> though obviously not finished.
> You might want to check out:
> http://wwwhome.cs.utwente.nl/~schoenw/scotty/
> for more info. Have fun!
One of the very nice things about both Mview and Tkined/Scotty
is that they are not monolithic. Mview is even nicer that way
in that you can watch exactly what unix-user-level commands
it is running for you, because it scrolls them by in a small
window for you. This turns out to be very helpful if some things
is not working quite right and you need to tweak them yourself.
Since you could see commands scroll by, you know which tools to tweak.
Every GUI tool should be built this way.
BTW, Tkined/Scotty *can* do some simple monitoring, i.e.
node reachability (someone said it couldn't, but it can),
interface loads, system loads (via Sun RPC) on certain
systems, etc.
The weak point in both tools is that the network databases are not
relational, don't scale to very large networks, and don't have any
easy way to manage individual nodes and networks when you know
something the tool doesn't (such as when two nodes really are
just one node). Probably Tcl/Tk should have a standard way to access
a simple but robust relational database which these tools could use.
--
Hugh LaMaster, M/S 233-21, ASCII Email: lamaster@george.arc.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center Or: hlamaster@arc.nasa.gov
Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000 No Junkmail: USC 18 section 2701
Phone: 650/604-1056 Disclaimer: Unofficial, personal *opinion*.
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