-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.3 December 14, 2011
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Added a new monitored object, TEMPer Sensor, which supports monitoring
the TEMPer series temperature & humidity
sensor devices from PCsensor.
These devices can be connected to PCs on your network or to the network
itself to
place temperature and humidity sensors at multiple locations
in your organization and these sensors can be centrally
monitored by
PageR. See the online help for more information.
Added support for dialing telephones
directly and speaking notification
messages over the phone connection without the use of Skype. Requires a
TAPI
compliant voice capable modem. See the online help for more infor-
mation.
Added support
for Voice Over IP (VOIP) notifications. This employs the
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) to connect over your network
or the
internet to voip clients or to regular telephones (through a gateway).
See the online help for more information.
Added the Run Statistics display from the Status Screen as an option on
Main screen (tree view). You can toggle
the display of run statistics
on the Main screen Settings pull down menu.
Dropped support
for Windows NT and 2000.
Extensive bug fixes and improvements made after 5.2.12 was closed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.2.12 September 26, 2011
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed a design issue in SNMP Trap MO. When
a trap arrived during the
scan of an SNMP Query MO, the trap processing failed to retrieve the
name of the agent
that sent the trap. Without the name, matching the
trap to a Trap MO by agent name would fail. Now the trap and query
MOs
snmp requests are separated and can occur at the same time.
Fixed a bug in the Email
Ping MO when using MAPI as the transport. The
deletion of ping messages after processing could fail.
Fixed a design issue in using Skype, SIP and TAPI voice notifications.
These methods use text-to-speech to create
.wav files which are then
'played' over thier connections. The text-to-speech code had an edit
for the presence
of a sound card and would not do these notification
methods if the system had no sound card. Sound card is only required
if
the alarm message will be 'spoken' on the hosting system and is not
required to create the .wav files
for the other notification methods.
The edit for sound card is removed when speaking to .wav file.
A number of issues have surfaced regarding voice notifications sent via
SKYPE. Skype version 5.1 works as documented
and no significant issues
are known. However, Skype versions 5.3 and 5.5 present a number of new
problems:
1) Skype 5.3 and 5.5 work when used by PageR running on desktop. They
do not work when used by PageR running
as a service. There is no fix
at this time.
2) If you choose to use Skype 5.3 or 5.5 on
the desktop, after you in-
stall Skype, you must reinstall PageR 5.2.12 or later.
3) If you
use Skype 5.3 or 5.5 on Vista or later, PageR can start and
attach to the Skype client. PageR cannot attach to an existing
instan-
ce of the Skype client unless the client is run as an administrator.
You can set this on the Skype.exe
executable.
4) All versions of Skype may not auto login when started by PageR. If
this occurs,
contact tech support for a registry fix.
We highly reccomend staying with Skype 5.1 as it presents
the least
issues and works reliably (and displays fewer windows). Skype 5.1 can
be downloaded here: http://www.oldapps.com/skype.php?old_skype=97
Fixed a bug in the SNMP Mib Explorer screen that could result in an RTE
when the mib file
corresponding to an SNMP agent was missing an object
definition or completely missing.
Inlcuded
ConfigReport.exe v1.0.1 which fixes a bug where ConfigReport
would fail if the configuration contained an empty MO Group.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.2.11 August 08, 2011
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Modified the licensing scheme to change the Paging Edition license into
the new Free License. The Free License allows
10 Ping MOs only.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.2.10
July 11, 2011
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Corrected a bug that caused
an RTE when a single quote was used in a
Contacts name, as in: Bill's Email. The RTE would occur when creating
the tree view used in the Alternate interface screen.
Corrected a bug in the Bandwidth MO. Some
devices do not define the
QLEN interface mib value and that would cause the entire Bandwidth MO
to fail for that
device. Fixed to ignore the missing mib value and con-
tinue processing the other mib values retrieved from the agent.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.2.9 May 25, 2011
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Corrected a bug in the FTP GET monitored object. When retrieving multiple files from the remote directory, the purge source
file option did not purge the retrieved files.
If retrieving a specific file name the purge worked correctly.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.2.8 May 20, 2011
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Corrected a bug in the product licensing code that has caused problems on some host systems.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.2.7 March 14, 2010
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Skype 5.1 client
has several bugs that caused our Skype based alarm notification features to fail. Work arounds have been added to our code
and the Skype based notifications will work correctly with this client.
Added buttons to
Skype Tab on More Options screen to request immediate test of Skype configuration.
Corrected
a bug in SNMP v2 trap handling.
Corrected a bug in the Main screen node counts in the left
pane tree
view. If alarms were cleared, the node counts were not updated for the cleared alarms.
Corrected a bug in Event Log MO that could result in a loop when trying format event records with multi-level event messages
and certain errors occurred during the multi-level message retrieval process.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.2.6 October 28, 2010
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Added a new feature
to the Main screen (new format). You can select a
new option on the Settings pull down menu which will display the count
of items on each node of the tree view in the left pane.
Updated the Web Status pages for improved
formatting. Added new feature
to reduce the size of the boxes on the System View page. The smaller
boxes allow more
systems to be displayed without scrolling. This can be
selected on the System View page. If you would like small system
boxes
to be the default, set Globals registry value WebStatusSmallSystem to
"True".
Users have asked for resizable object add/change screens for years. To
retrofit resizing to the existing screens
was a very complex job and
was never scheduled. Now, new technology is available that streamlines
adding resizing
to existing screens. That technology has been added to
a number of screens in this release.
The
Windows Performance Counter Query MO has long had problems with
reporting error C0000CB6 (Invalid Data) on the first
attempt to read
data from the counter query. Subsequent data reads worked correctly.
This MO has been modified to
ignore this specific error on the first
read of a new counter query.
Fixed bugs in both the
MBSA and Windows Update MOs related to new ver-
sions of these products released by Microsoft.
Fixed
various minor user interface bugs on a number of screens.
Fixed various bugs in the new license
control scheme introduced in the
5.2.5 release.
Fixed bug in Web Status that caused a run
time error when refreshing
the web page for MOs with long lists of sub-objects (like SNMP Query).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.2.5 September 8, 2010
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
As of August 1st 2010, CPL Systems Ltd. has aquired the rights to PageR
Enterprise from Avtech Software Inc.
CPL will provide ongoing support for PageR and will be developing new
enhancements. All licensed
users as of August 1st 2010 will be entitled
to a free-of-charge upgrade to 5.2.5 for a limited period and all valid
support agreements with Avtech Software Inc. will be transfered to CPL
Systems Ltd.
Fixed several minor bugs in the user interface.
The EventLog MO has a new alarm text
substitution parameter. The para-
meter [EVENTDESCNQ] which will return the current event record's desc-
ription
text with all quote characters removed.
On SNMP TRAP MOs, when a trap was received, the alarm
message as shown
in the Alarm Text field was issued. However, the list of SNMP variables
included in the trap was
automatically dumped on a second line of the
alarm message. This dump of trap variables could not be turned off.
This
behavior was a design error. You should be able to control display
of the trap variables. This has been fixed to NOT
dump the variables.
If you wish to include the dump, add the new substitution [TRAPVARS] to
the alarm message. To
see the alarm message as it was before, the alarm
text would be: [TYPE] \p[TRAPNAME] received from [SOURCE]\x[TRAPVARS].
Fixed a bug in the Event Log MO add/change screen introduced recently.
The search strings field would only accept
a file name when it should
accept search strings, search script or a file name.
When logging
to disk and rolling the log file over to a new file when
the current log reached max size and the log file extension
was set to
automatically use an increasing number for the new log file, when the
extension number went from 999
to 1000, a run time error would occur.
This bug is fixed and roll over of numeric extensions now occurs at
99999
and will roll over to 1.
If you have problems with alerts repeating unexpectedly, please read
about the change to Alarm processing and repeating schedules below.
Many customers are having problems with this after
installing 5.2.5
because they have thier Alarm objects set to repeat the alerting sched-
ule. The schedule repeat
function has changed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.2.5 May 26, 2010
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed several minor bugs in the user interface.
The EventLog MO has a new alarm
text substitution parameter. The para-
meter [EVENTDESCNQ] which will return the current event record's desc-
ription text with all quote characters removed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.2.4 May 10, 2010
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed a bug in OPSLib
that could result in run time error 91 when you
shutdown too soon after startup.
Increased
the default size of the Main screen (alternate format).
Increased the size of the new
Monitored Object Selection screen. Also
modified the selection screen to show the MO names in blue if there is
one or more of that MO type already in your configuration.
Fixed a bug in Alarm
Processing for Descrete MOs. If a Descrete MO was
associated with an Alarm Object that employed a notification schedule,
the schedule was not correctly processed when the end of the schedule
was reached. If the schedule was not set to repeat,
new new alarms were
not reported until the MO's alarm state was cleared. If the schedule
was set to repeat,
the repeat of the schedule would not start until the
next alarm was detected by the MO, not on the next scan as is expected.
Renamed the ePage Monitored Object to "Email to Page". This was done to
better communicate the function
of the MO.
Modified Web Status to support user customization. If you wish to cust-
omize the Web Status html files, you can create a sub directory in the
install directory called "WebCustom".
Copy any files you wish to modify
to this directory. Files in this directory will not be overwritten by
a subsequent
install. Create a registry string key "WebStatusCustom" in
the Globlas section and set the value to "True".
This setting causes
the Web Status server to look in the WebCustom directory for Web Status
html files. If files
are not found in WebCustom, then they will be read
from the install directory as in the past. For now, image files will
continue to be read from the standard web and web16 directories, which
will be overwritten on subsequent installs.
PageR now automatically checks for updates when started. When a new
version
is available a notification will be logged at startup and a
menu item will appear on the menu bar stating an update
is available.
Clicking the item will open a browser to the update download website.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.2.3 March 22, 2010
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Starting with Windows
Vista, the Event Log system was replaced with a
new second generation event log system called "Windows Event Log"
(no
kidding). The documentation indicated that existing event log API set
would be forward compatible with the new
event log scheme. Testing did
support this and no changes to our code appeared to be required. As it
turns out,
the old APIs are in fact not 100% compatible with the new
scheme. Some events from code that had been updated to use
the new log
scheme would not return event description text to via the old APIs.
This was not found in testing because
few programs had been updated to
the new scheme. As time has moved forward we have now started seeing
events in
the log that would not return descriptions to our code. The
solution to this problem requires the use of the new Windows
Event Log
API. However, this API requires the .Net Framework 3.5 to be installed
and only works when our code is
hosted on Vista or later. Our code now
looks at the OS version of the target system of an Event Log MO and the
hosting
system OS version and if both systems are Vista or later, and
the .Net Framework 3.5 is installed on the hosting system,
then the new
event log API is used. If these conditions are not met, then the old
API is used and some events may
not return thier description text.
On the Web Status System View display, if you
right-click on a system
object, the context menu listed a choice of "View System Details". This
feature
has not yet been implemented and this menu choice should not
have appeared. It has been removed pending the implementation
of this
status display in a future release.
If you enable scan logging and
have the log file set to overflow by
creating a new file with date&time string as the file extension and you
then
later switch to a sequential number as the scanlog file extension,
if there are any scanlog files with the date&time
extension present in
the install directory, we will fail with RTE 6-overflow on next attempt
to open a scanlog
file. This is fixed.
Fixed a bug in the logging via MSN Messenger feature. Messenger
users
known to Hotmail could receive notification of waiting email during the
Messenger login process. Our code
did not correctly handle this notifi-
cation, failed to complete the login process and reported login ok.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.2.2 March 16, 2010
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Corrected a bug in the Speech Tab of the More Options screen. Selecting
some of the speaking options would cause a
Run Time Error.
When using notification via MSN Messenger, if you supplied an
incorrect
MSN user name or password, our code incorrectly reported the problem as
a timeout. We now indicate login
has failed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.2.1
March 3, 2010
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Corrected a bug that would
cause an endless loop during configuration
load at startup. This problem only occured on Windows 2000 systems.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.2 February 22, 2010
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This release features two new Monitored Objects.
The MBSA MO will scan a target Windows
system using the Microsoft Base-
line Security Analyzer and generate alarms if security issues are found
on that
system. A detailed report of the issues is available for view-
ing in Web Status. See the on-line help for more information.
The Windows Update MO will check a target system for updates that are
available but not applied. An alarm is
generated if updates are missing
on that system. A detailed report of the missing updates is available
for viewing
in Web Status. See the on-line help for more information.
On the Alternate Interface Main
screen, Navigation tab, consolidate the
Enabled and Suspened columns into one.
Improve
the 16x16 icons used on the Alternate Interface Main screen.
Improve the 16x16 gifs used by
Web Status.
On the Alternate Interface Main screen, the tree view now shows an
in-
dicator of MO state by overlaying a colored triangle on the MO icon.
A red triangle will appear if the MO is
in the alarm state, a yellow
triangle if in the Processing Error state and a grey triangle if the
MO is suspended
or disabled.
The SMTP code used to send alarm notification emails did not support
email servers that require connections secured with SSL. Added a new
advanced version of SMTP code that does support
SSL. You continue to
configure sending SMTP alarm emails on the Email Tab of the Options
screen but you can now
go to the Email Tab of the Options2 screen to
enable use of the advanced SMTP code and SSL connections. This only
applies to alarm emails. The Email Ping MO was also updated to support
using advanced SMTP to send ping messages.
The POP3 email reading code used by the Email Check, Email Ping and
ePage MOs
did not support secure connections. Added new advanced POP3
code to allow reading of email via POP3 over a secure connection.
Note that use of the advanced POP3/SMTP options for secure connections
is supported on Windows 2000 or later
and requires the .Net Framework
2.0 to be installed on the hosting system.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.1.3 January 15, 2010
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
For hosting systems
with multiple network cards (NIC), added a registry
key that allows you to select which of the system's IP addresses
that
the Web Status server will listen on. The Globals key 'WebStatusIPAddr'
can be set to the IP address
of the NIC that Web Status will listen on
and will be published in alarm emails. If this key is not set, then the
NIC that Web Status listens on will be selected automatically.
In Alpha Numeric Paging script
(AN script) the R command matches text
read from the modem to control the flow of interaction with the paging
service.
The R command matched the strings coded in the script to modem
data as case-sensitive. This caused problems when one
of the services
changed thier pager ID prompt from Pager ID? to pager ID?. Changed the
R command to match strings
case-insensitive.
The Disk Space MO had a bug where alarm messages from volumes
and pro-
cessing error messages from other volumes were mixed together. Fixed to
report the last processing error
ecountered unless an alarm is raised.
Alarms take precedence over processing errors.
Fixed bug in sending alarm emails via MAPI. Simple alarm format had the
first 3 characters of the subject line
truncated.
Modified Disk File MO to accept very large file size value.
Modified Microsoft network Scan to support the Symantec SNAC network
provider.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.1.2 October 21, 2009
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed several bugs in MibExplorer screen.
Fixed bug in Alarm Object. Was not
saving the Override Contact Quiet
value to the registry.
Fixed bug in Web
Status. Was dropping MO icon on refresh of MO detail
web page.
Fixed several
bugs in the Alternate Main screen that caused run time
errors.
Fixed several
bugs in the Status and System View screens that resulted
in incorrect context menu actions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.1.1 August 28, 2009
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed bug in ScriptGlobals.SendMail
function. Text submitted with this
function as message body was incorrectly truncated at 255 characters.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.1 July 8, 2009
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Major upgrade to the Web Status service code to improve responsiveness.
Major redesign of
Web Status. Eliminate Java Applets, improved naviga-
tion, added System View, use of Ajax to update pages without refresh,
improved formatting and content of status displays for MOs, Room Alert2
MO status display expanded with gauges and
24 hour history chart.
Added Alarm notification via Twitter.
Added Vista Sidebar Gadget application as additional status reporting
capability for Vista desktops. See help
for details.
Added support for Windows 2008 to the Windows System Check MO.
Added support for Windows 7 to the Windows System Check MO.
Added Vista System Performance Counters pre-defined MO.
Added Windows
7 System Performance Counters pre-defined MO.
Various modifications for compatibility with
Windows 7. Note that for
correct operation, PageR must be run as an administrator on Windows
Vista, 2008 and 7.
The installer now configures this automatically for
these operating systems.
Added
option to the Settings pull down menu to minimize directly to the
task tray instead of the taskbar.
Modifed the new MO selection screen to not show the Windows NT, XP and
2000 MOs. These MOs are superceded by
the Windows System MO which can
handle all Windows operating systems. The older MOs are still supported
but not
available when creating new MOs.
Modified the Disk Space MO to better support
tera-byte disk volumes.
Added a feature to print a listing of the configuration. This is a
new
program added to the install package that will read and format the .cfg
file created when you save the configuration
to a file. This function
can be invoked from a choice on the Settings menu. Requires Microsoft
.Net Framework 2.0
to be installed.
Improved the Database Archiving reports with new selection capabilities
and display of selection criteria in the report header. Please note the
changes to the reports require that you run
SA for at least one full
scan and then stop scanning. This action will cause the database struc-
ture to be updated
with a new field used by the reports.
Fixed bug in Bandwidth MO. It improperly
reported processing errors as
alarms.
Fixed bug in Bandwidth MO. In some cases, the add/change
screen did not
display all of the interfaces available on the target system.
Fixed several
errors in the Database archiving system.
Fixed several errors in the Axis Camera MO.
Fixed minor errors in TCP & UDP service MOs.
Fixed several errors in the SnmpQuery
MO Add/Change and MibExlorer
screens.
Fixed a design error in the PerfQuery, WmiQuery,
SnmpQuery and Room
Alert 2 MOs. These MOs were logging thier data samples to the Event
Console. This is not really
correct as the Event Console is supposed to
record events of significance. Showing the data samples in the console
floods theonsole with records and reduces its usefulness. Data samples
are no longer sent to the Event Console. The
will continue to be logged
to the database archive.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.0.10 April 14, 2009
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed a problem
with Database logging. When db logging is enabled, on
the first configuration save after that, all the MOs are posted
to the
database. After that, only new/changed MOs are posted to the db. If db
logging was disabled and then reenabled
later, new MOs or changes to
existing MOs made while logging was disabled, were not posted to the
db when logging
was reenabled. This resulted in incorrect db reports.
If you use database logging, it is reccomeneded that you go into
the
Options Database Tab and disable the Database then save the configura-
tion. Then go back to the Database Tab
and reenable the Database. Then
save the configuration again. This will ensure your Database is updated
with the
current state of all MOs. After that, MO posting will be done
correctly only as needed.
Fixed
a bug in logging Processing Errors to the Database. In order to
log Processing Errors to the db, you must select an Alarm
object to be
used for Processing Errors on the Global Options Tab. However, if no
notification action is selected
on that Alarm object, the Processing
Error would NOT be sent to the db. Now Processing Errors are logged
even if
no notification action is selected on the AO.
Fixed a bug in the Eventlog Database Report.
It did not correctly sel-
ect records when a Selection Field was specified and the Errors Only
option was set to
True.
Fixed a bug in the Event Log MO. The Suppress Duplicate Events option
was not correctly
retained and if turned on, would be turned back off
at the next time you clicked Save in the Options screen.
Updated the Database Report Viewer and several of the Database Reports
to offer additional data selection options.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.0.9 January 23, 2009
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed a buffer overflow problem that could cause the login to the MSN
Messenger service for IM logging to fail.
Our product Icon now appears in the browser URL bar, favorites and tabs
when you use Web Status.
Fixed several problems in OPSLib that resulted in memory leaks when
Host Login MOs or the SQL Database logging
feature were used.
The SNMP Mib Explorer screen can handle a maximum of 32000 items in the
Mib tree used to display the mib objects. Previously the screen would
crash if the mib contained more than 32000 objects.
Now the screen will
stop walking the mib at this limit and display the first 32000 objects.
Fixed
several problems in OPSLib that caused hangs or RTEs when using
the Database feature.
Fixed
a bug in SNMP Trap MO and one in the mibx files that resulted in
some object IDs not being translated into thier names
as defined in mib
files.
Fixed a bug in SNMP Trap MO that resulted in incorrect name
lookup for
SNMP v2 traps. SNMP v1 traps were handled correctly.
Fixed an RTE that occured
when opening the Speech Tab if the currently
selected voice or sound card has been deleted from the system.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.0.8 September 24, 2008
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed bug in Log File and Directory Monitored Objects that did not log
the start of scanning of these MOs before operations
on these MOs were
begun. This gave the appearance of a hang as nothing appeared to be in
progress looking at the
log.
Fixed the timeout used when checking the availablility of Windows based
systems
over the network. The timeout was too short and caused spurious
results and error messages to be logged in some cases.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.0.7 August 13, 2008
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Modified the Event Log monitored object to support event consolidation.
With this option enabled, when the MO enters
an alarm state, events are
recorded and duplicate events will be logged but won't generate a new
alarm notification
after the first. When the alarm state is cleared the
event record is cleared. Events are identified by a concatenation
of
the source computer, event source and event Id number.
Modified the Email Check MO
to include an option to generate an alarm
when no email messages are found that match the selection criteria.
Modified the Disk File MO to include an option to create a checksum of
the file and recheck it on each scan.
This will detect changes to the
file that are not reflected in the file size.
Modified
the DialUp modem MO to support dialing fax machines. Dialing
fax machines requires a new dialing script, DialUpFaxTest.msg
to dial
fax machins successfully. The DialUp MO now supports the selection of
the dialing script to use to the fax
script can be selected. This also
allows new scripts to be easily added.
Fixed a bug
in the Skype notification feature that would cause a run
time error at shutdown.
Fixed
a bug in Web Status that would allow browser users to view files
outside our install directory.
Fixed a bug in Email Ping MO. Starting with version 5, a ping message
sent via MAPI had the first 3 characters
of the subject truncated. Now
correctly sets the ping message subject.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.0.6 April 9, 2008
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Correct several
bugs in the Disk File MO. It did not work correctly in
all combinations of the Close File After Scan, Delete File After
Scan
and Report on File Found options.
Fix bug in Web Page MO. The MO did not correctly
construct the Urls for
images contained in web pages for all formats of relative Urls.
Fix
bug in Disk Space MO. It would report an error on disk volumes with
a volume name more than 31 characters in length.
Volume names up to the
system maximum size are supported though they may be truncated for dis-
play.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.0.5 February 26, 2008
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Our on-line help was authored in WinHelp (WinHelp32) format. Starting
with Windows Vista, WinHelp is no longer
supported. Microsoft provided
a patch for Vista which allowed WinHelp based help to function and this
patch was
included in our 5.0.3 install. However, this patch is not
available for Windows 2008. In order to
be able to run on Windows 2008
our WinHelp based on-line help has been converted to the new HtmlHelp
format. This
help works on all versions of Windows we support and will
be the help format that will used from this point forward.
The HtmlHelp
form of our help is stored in the Help.chm file. The old WinHelp based
help, stored in Help.hlp, will
continue to be included in the install
for the time being but will not be updated.
Fixed
a bug in the SNMP Query MO. If you leave the target system field
blank, the MO will default to 127.0.0.1, which is the
local system.
Fixed a bug in the new Alternate Interface. If you added Pre-Defined
MOs
from the Alternate Interface, you could get duplicate MOs added to
the configuration. This would result in an RTE on
the next restart.
Modified the Disk Space MO to do an RPC check on the target system pri-
or to reading the disk space information. This will prevent waiting for
the very long timeout that occurs if you call
for disk space info on a
system is not available.
There is now a Registry key in Globals
called IncludeTitleInEmail which
controls if the monitored object description is included in the body of
an email
alarm notification. This key defaults to True which contines
the current behavior. This key allows this title information
to be left
out of the email so that the message body contains only the text of the
alarm message.
The Win32 Process MO has been renamed the Windows Process MO as this MO
works with both 32 and 64 bit target
Windows systems.
Fixed a bug in SNMP Trap handling that might result in the description
of the trap not being retrieved from the MIB database.
Fixed a bug in the internal Wait
routine (which allows us to wait for
long running operations to complete without freezing our process) that
would
cause the Wait call to not end (appearing as a hang). This issue
only applied to some of the MOs and only if the wait
routine was called
within a second of midnight.
Previously, the Alarm Group names entered
on the Contact Add/Change
screen did not allow embedded spaces. However the screen did not edit
for this and the
help did not point out this restriction. Group names
with spaces would not work correctly. This release now allows embedded
spaces in Group names. The only character disallowed is the semi-colon.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.0.4 January 25, 2008
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed a problem
in the EventLog MO. The MO allowed for 25 substitution
strings in an event message. If a log recored had more than 25
strings
we would fail with an RTE. Expanded to 64 strings.
Fixed a problem with the Performance
Counter MO. It did not retain the
setting of the Log Samples option when the configuration was saved.
Fixed a bug in the installer. On 64-bit systems, it would hang near the
end and not complete. It was found that
if you waited long enough, it
would actually finish, but it was delayed waiting for the completion of
the self-extracting
zip files that are executed as the last step of the
install process. The self-extracting zips extract correctly, but
do not
exit for a number of minutes after completion and the installer would
wait for them. Now, on 64-bit systems
the installer does not wait for
the self-extractors to complete.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.0.3 January 8, 2008
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Added a new
feature to the Skype inteface. You can now send alarms via
SMS using the Skype SMS gateway. This can be useful when you
cellular
service provider does not have an email SMS gateway. Skype supports SMS
to all service providers world
wide and is a fee based service. See the
help on the Skype configuration screen for details on using Skype SMS.
Fixed a bug that turned off the Alternate Interface Screen option if
Scrambler was run as a service.
Fixed a bug that prevented the Disk Log file overflow from working.
Modified the
More Options screen to not fail with an RTE if the Micro-
soft Speech Library is not installed. Speech will be disabled
if the
library is not installed.
Fixed several bugs that caused RTEs if the host system
had no audio
device (or it was disabled) and you accessed the More Options tab or
selected spoken audible alarms.
Fixed several problems with Web Status security checking.
The WinHelp32 library,
which we use to display our online help, was
dropped from Windows Vista. This was overlooked during Vista testing.
Our install has been modified to install the WinHelp32 update for Vista
by invoking Microsoft Update. You may also
install this update from the
Microsoft web site or by running WinHelp4Vista.msu found in our install
directory.
Fixed a bug in the Quiet Times selection Screen. When using the new
Alternate Interface, if you invoked the
Contact Add/Change screen from
a Context menu (right-click) on the Alternate Interface screen, then
entered the
Quiet Times selection screen, the context menu used on the
Quiet Times selection screen to set quiet times (by clicking
a time of
day box and then right-clicking to set the quiet time value) would not
display. This problem was caused
by trying to open a new context menu
while inside the event processing of an existing context menu.
Fixed a problem in the HostVolume MO. When used on VMS systems, the MO
would fail to match reported volumes
to the volumes defined in the MO.
You may now customize HostTypes.txt and save to LocalHostTypes.txt
so
that your changes are not overlayed during update. LocalHostTypes.txt
if present, is loaded instead of HostTypes.txt.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.0.2 October 11, 2007
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Added a new option to Alarm and Contact objects for sending alarm noti-
fications by email. You can select the Simple
Format option to have the
email messages formatted with the notification text only. This reduces
the length of the
email message to the mimimum possible. This improves
sending alerts via SMS using email based SMS gateways.
Fixed several bugs in the new alternate interface screen.
Fixed Axis Camera MO to
record downtime in the same manner as other
event based MOs.
Added a log message (level
2) to the Axis Camera MO to record when the
MO captures an image from the camera and stores it on disk.
Fixed a bug where configuration settings for Skype alarm notifications
were not being saved to the registry.
Fixed a bug that caused a Run Time Error when sending a test message
via SNPP.
Fixed
a bug that caused a Run Time Error at startup when installed on
a localized, non-english version of Windows.
Fixed a security problem with Web Status. If you set Web Status to req-
uire a user name and password, then
once a browser on a client attached
to Web Status and provided the authentication, any browser instance on
that
client would be accepted for the duration of our execution. Even
if you closed the browser and restarted, you would
not be prompted to
re-authenticate. This problem has been fixed and any new browser ins-
tance from the same client
PC will be detected and re-authenticated.
Note that there is no logout mechanisim available.
The only way to end
a browsers authentication is to close the browser. To assist with this
requirement, there is
now a Logout button on the Web Status button menu
which will close the browser window.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.0.1 September 18, 2007
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Room
Alert monitored objects have been renamed Room Alarm. This was
done for marketing purposes.
Added
a new right-click context-menu choice that will reset the % Down
Time for a monitored object. This is available on the
Status window and
the new Alternate Interface Main window. On the alternate interface
this new choice is
available for groups of MOs (such as all, by type,
by severity, etc). Warning: if you reset the % Down Time for an MO,
any
outstanding alarms will be cancelled and the down time data is reset to
zero immediately. This action is not
confirmed and cannot be undone.
Added a registry key Globals\SmtpPort that will override the
default
SMTP mailing port number of 25. Use this when your mail server is using
a different port. This sets the
port used for sending alarm emails and
the Email Ping MO.
Corrected a problem in the
new Alternate Interface Main screen that
caused the status bar at the bottom of the screen to be drawn poorly
when
the screen is displayed on a desktop using the XP/Vista native
display themes.
Removed
a simulated processing alarm from Ping MO that was used during
development and left in the release version.
Alarm email subject formatting changes made in release 4.4.2 were not
applied to email sent via MAPI. These
changes have been applied to the
MAPI code path as well as SMTP.
The alarm email subject
formatting changes made in release 4.4.2 would
leave trailing spaces on the email subject line. These spaces are now
trimmed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
5.0.0
July 30, 2007
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
In an effort to make large
configurations more manageable, there is a
new alternate Main window available. This new interface has an explorer
style design and is fully resizeable. You may enable the alternate Main
window on the Settings pull down menu. After
restarting, the new Main
window will appear. The new Main window has various ways to view and
navigate your configuration
and works with Scrambler objects directly.
This new interace is in development and is available now as a preview.
We encourage you to take a look and give us your feedback on the new
interface.
Added
new Monitored Object Disk Drives. This MO will monitor attributes
of physical drives on the local or a remote system
and raise an alarm
if problem conditions are detected on a drive. See the online help for
details.
Added new Monitored Object WMI Events. This MO uses WMI Events to watch
for events on the local or remote systems.
A WMI event is created and
posted to the target system on scan startup. This event then monitors
for occurences
of the defined event on that system. PageR does not have
to scan for such events. If an event occurs, the WMI event
monitor will
notify Scrambler that the event has occured generating an alarm. This
allows for events to be monitored
in an asynchronous fashion and reduce
overhead on Scrambler's hosting system and on the network. See the help
for details.
It is now possible to have alarms spoken using the Windows support for
Speech.
On the Options 2 tab, in the audible alarms box, enter the word
"Speak" and alarm text will be spoken. A new
Options tab, called "More
Options", hosts a tab where you can customize the speech. See the help
for details.
It is now possible to send spoken alerts via the Skype VOIP client. You
can configure Alarm objects to send
alarms as calls to Skype clients or
to physical telephones via the SkypeOut feature. This requires the Skype
client
to be installed on system hosting PageR. Logging via Skype chat
is also supported. See the help for details.
PageR now supports recording scans, events, alarms and notifications in
an SQL database. This provides historical
recording of monitoring data
and subsequent reporting and analysis. The database can be created in
SQL 2000
or later and Scrambler can be configured to record information
to the database while scanning. A Report Viewing application
and sample
reports are included. The database feature is an additional charge add
on to PageR. See the online
help for more information. This feature,
while available now, is still being refined and should be viewed as a
"preview" technology. Note that the Report Viewing feature requires the
.Net Framework 2.0 and Crystal
Reports 10 runtime to be installed on
the system that will run the Report Viewer.
Improved
the accuracy of statistical information collected to support
the database feature.
You
may now define a global Schedule which is applied to all MOs when
scanning. An MO must pass the scheduling criteria of
the global Sched-
ule before any Schedule defined at the MO level is applied.
Added a
new log file, Errors.log, that will record processing errors.
You must enable the logging of alarm notifications on the
Logging
Options tab to have processing errors recorded in this file.
Modified the alarm
notifications log, Notify.log and the new process-
ing errors log, Errors.log, to be subject to the same overflow and
file extension settings as the scan log file, as set on the Logging
Options tab. Scan logging does not have to be enabled
to set these
items for the notification and error logs.
If logging of alarm notifications
is enabled, Alarm objects would log
any external notifications (email, broadcast, etc) they generate in
the file
Notify.log. However, if an Alarm object did not define any
actions, there would be nothing recorded in Notify.log. Alarm
objects
have been fixed to record any execution of themselves in Notify.log.
Modified
the Disk File MO to add two additional processing options.
Normally, this MO reads all new records in the target file
since the
last scan and reports all matches. You can now select to have the MO
stop reading the file on the first
record match that occurs. On the
next scan, the MO will pick up reading the file where it left off.
You can additionally
have the MO stop reporting matches on the first
match but advance the file to the current EOF, so the next scan will
only new records.
Fixed the NetWare Server MO to report when it is unable to connect to
the server due to a configuation problem instead of reporting this as
the server being down.
Fixed the Host Volume MO to report when there are problems processing
the data returned by target systems with
SNMP instead of reporting this
as a volume problem.
Fixed alarm escalation errors on
MOs that have monitored sub objects.
These MOs would escalate for each sub object found to be in alarm state
instead of once for the scan of the MO. TCP/UDP Serivce, Perf Counter,
SNMP Query and Host Volume MOs had this problem.
Fixed bug in the Web Status code that caused audible alarms to fail to
work on Web Status pages.
Fixed bug in the Web Status code that caused problems with IE7. In some
cases, IE7 would repeatedly prompt for
permission to display Web Status
pages due to the applets embedded in the pages.
Fixed
bug in Scan timer. If you clicked the Stop button while counting
down to the next scan and then restarted scanning with
the Start button
the scan interval could be shortened to the the time that was remaining
on the count down when
the Stop button was clicked. From that point on
the interval would be short until PageR was restarted.
Fixed a bug in the Event Log MO. If PageR was unable to find the message
text associated with an event, it blanked
out the event message text in
reporting of the event. This was incorrect because, even if the event
message text
cannot be found, there is usually still useful information
that can be displayed. This information is now reported in
its raw form
if the message text cannot be found.
The Windows Performance Counter Query
MO now has an option to record
the counter samples it takes to the new Archive database. This is simi-
lar to the
sample recording already available for the SNMP Query MO. In
the case of the Performance Counter MO, samples are not
recorded to a
disk file, only the database. The SNMP Query MO will continue to log
samples to a disk file but will
also log them to the database. In both
cases, you must turn on sample logging for each Perf Counter or SNMP
query
MO and have database archiving enabled samples to be recorded.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.4.5 December 8, 2006
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed bug
that caused RTE 9 to occur when SNMP Query MO was reading the
target SNMP MIB.
Fixed
bugs in HostVolume/snmp that failed to handle missing objects in
the target mib gracefully.
Fixed
WMI Explorer window to be resizeable.
Fixed bug in Web Status, Event Console page, that would
cause the page
to fail after toolbar button press, if the browser url system address
component was 'localhost'.
Fix bug in Email Ping MO caused by 4.4.3 changes to smtp mailer code
that generates the email subject from the
alarm message text. This bug
would cause Email Ping MO to not detect it's ping messages and report
an erroneous
failure to ping.
In the Options screen Email Tab, you can now have Email enabled and
leave
the Default Recipient blank. This means Email can be enabled but
no messages will be sent unless there is an email recipient
defined in
the Alarm or Contact objects.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.4.4 October 20, 2006
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed several
probelms with the WebPage MO that would cause it to fail
when doing a forms based login.
Added
a Clear button to the Paging Queue window to allow the paging
queue to be emptied.
Added
registry key Gloabls.ApplyQuietToPaging to prevent page requests
from being added to the paging queue during global quiet
time.
Fixed the Messaging feature to correct problems connecting to the MSN
servers.
Updated to reflect changes to the protocol by Microsoft.
Fixed bug in WebStatus that would
cause looping page refresh on Mozilla
browsers.
Fixed bug in emailing that resulted in
Run Time Error 5 during mailing
of alarm email messages without subjects.
Previously
when installing on Terminal Server systems, you had to set
your session into TS install mode by opening a command box
and issuing
the command 'change user /install' before running our installer. Many
users failed to
do this which resulted in problematic installs. This
step is now automatically performed by the installer.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.4.3 August 21, 2006
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed several bugs in the Network View Screen, one of which could cause
the Network View Screen to rescan the network
when the screen was opened
after a restart. Scan should only occur on the very first open of this
screen.
As of release 4.4.2, email alarms include a url that will take the user
to the Web Status page of the MO that
generated the alarm email. Some
users do not want to have this url in the alarm email. You can disable
the inclusion
of the url by adding the registry key InlcudeMOUrlInEmail
to the Globals section and setting the value to false.
Fixed a bug that was introduced in 4.4.2 that would cause a Run Time
Error if you had the Alarm as Mail Subject
option enabled and you sent
a test email from the Options/Email tab.
Fixed a bug
that was introduced in 4.4.2 that would cause the Schedule
Object's "Never Check" option to be ignored.
Fixed a design error. The sequence \c is used to mark the alarm clear
message text in the MO alarm text field.
But in messages that contain a
disk directory like \c$ or \c: or \c\ the directory be recognized as an
alarm clear
marker. We now ignore these 3 character sequences as the
alarm clear message text marker.
When
using Web Status with the FireFox browser, the Refresh button did
not work. This is due to a difference in how IE and
FireFox are told
not to cache web pages. We now send the correct codes to disable cach-
ing of our pages by FireFox.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.4.2 July 18, 2006
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Bandwidth Monitored Object only worked with network interfaces that
had a physical address. This excluded serial
and loopback interfaces.
This restriction is removed and you can now monitor the loopback and
serial interfaces.
Corrected a problem introduced in 4.4.1 where using the alarm message
as the subject of alert emails put too
much information into the email
subject, in effect the entire alert mail message. Now, only the alarm
message itself
(as it used to be) is put into the email subject.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.4.1 April 20, 2006
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Modified the
ScriptGlobals.SendMail function to allow the mail subject
and an attachment file to be specified. The funciton calls
new form is:
SG.SendMail recpient, msgtext, subject, filename
The
attachment file must be a full path to the file to be included in
the email message.
Modified
the Alarm Object to allow the specification of a Task MO to be
executed on Alarm Clear. The existing Task MO is executed
on every call
to the Alarm object by MOs that use it. The new On Clear Task will be
executed when the Alarm is cleared.
Fixed a bug in the EmailCheck MO that could result in a run time error
if messages in the mail box being read
by the MO had attachments.
The Directory MO has been converted from Descrete type to Persistent
type. This means that the MO style is to detect and report conditions
that may occur, persist for some period of time
and clear on thier own.
This allows the alarm Delay feature to be added to this MO. The checks
for directory total
size and file count against some expected value are
the conditions the MO normally looks for and alarm notification will
be
delayed for these conditions if Delay is non-zero. This allows these
conditions to clear if they are transient
and not generate false noti-
fications. Note that the alarm on size or file count change checks are
events not conditions,
and as such alarm notifications for these checks
are not subject to the Delay setting.
The
Win32 Process MO monitors a Windows system with a list of process
names to make sure the processes are present. It alarms
if the expected
processes are not present. You can now have the list of process names
function as an approved process
list. In this case, processes found on
the target system that are not on the approved list will generate an
alarm.
Emailed alarm notifications have been improved to have more information
about the alarm. If Web Status is enabled,
the message will incliude a
link to the web status page for the Monitored Object that generated the
alarm notification.
The Alarm Text field on the MO add/change screens now allows the alarm
clear message text to be specified.
In addition to the \p (prefix),
\x (extended) message separators, the new \c separator allows an alarm
clear message
to be defined for the MO. An example of using \c is:
primary message text\xextended message
text\calarm clear message text
There is a new option to scan only MOs that have been changed
during
the current execution. This is located on the Options 2 tab and if it
is enabled, then only those MOs that
have been added or changed since
startup will be scaned. This allows new/changed MOs to be test scaned
without scanning
the entire configuration.
Corrected a problem with the UDP Service check MO. Apparently changes
to Windows 2000/2003/XP cause this control to fail with an RTE under
some conditions. This problem has been fixed and
the UDP Serivce Check
has been improved to more accurately check UDP services.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.4 February 6, 2006
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Added new Monitored
Object, Windows System. This MO functions in the
same way as the NT System, Windows 2000 System and Windows XP system
MOs. It supports all Windows systems in a single MO and adds support
for Windows 2003 and Windows Vista.
Modified SNMP Query Monitored Object to allow you to edit the names of
the SNMP Mib Objects retreived to something
more meaningful.
Modified WebPage Monitored Object to allow you to select if images are
downloaded as part of the web page checking process.
Added an option to make a backup of
the configuration before a changed
is saved. Configuration is backed up to the file Backup.cfg located in
the install
directory.
Added an option to keep a log of alarm notifications sent in the disk
file
Notify.log located in the install directory.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.3.7 September 1, 2005
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed bug
in duplicate instance check that caused failures if we run as
a service under LocalSystem user instead of a named user.
Fixed bug in license checking of Axis Camera MO.
The internal object id number assigned
to each Monitored Object is now
displayed in the caption bar of each MO Add/Change screen.
When
installing on a system that is a Terminal Server, you must switch
your session into Install Mode before running our install
exe. Open a
CMD window and issue the command: change user /install to switch to
Install Mode. Then run
our install. Installation on a Terminal Server
should be avoided if possible.
The SNMPQUERY
MO now supports logging the MIB object values (samples)
it retrieves from the target SNMP agent system to a log file.
The log
file is called SnmpQuery(systemname).log in the install directory. The
file will contain one record per
scan with the current values for each
MIB object separated by commas.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.3.6 July 27, 2005
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The IP address
of the MSN Messenger Server (used by the logging/notifi-
cation via messenger feature) changed and so caused a failure
when the
messenger function tried to logon to the messaging server. This has
been changed to use the DNS name
of the server and so get the current
IP address in use by the messaging server.
Fixed
bug where we did license checking in Maintenance Mode. The Main-
tenance mode instance should leave license checking
to the service.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.3.5 June 24, 2005
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The detection
of another instance of PageR already running in order to
prevent duplicate instances and support Maintenance Mode (running
as a
service) has been an area of ongoing problems. The method of instance
detection introduced in 4.3.2 again
proved to be problematic. This rel-
lease tries a new scheme to do instance detection that works reliably
in remote
sessions and has no side effects!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.3.4 May 4, 2005
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Logging via the
.Net Messenger service quit working due to changes in
the Messenger protocol by Microsoft. This is fixed.
HostLogin MOs now require a timeout as having a zero timeout causes the
MO to fail to login. The default timeout
is now 10 seconds.
The SNMP Query MO was previously available only in the DataCenter Edi-
tion. It is now available in the Enterprise and DataCenter editions.
The Axis Camera MO
is supposed to be available in the Enterprise and
DataCenter Editions but was incorrectly available only in DCE. This
is
fixed and the Axis MO is available under EE and DCE.
Fixed several bugs in the RoomAlert
2 MO.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.3.3
March 18, 2005
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The implementaiton of SSH
tunneling in release 4.3 had a major design
error and did not work as described in the documentation. This problem
has been fixed in this release. If you are using SSH tunneling, please
read the help file information on SSH and review
your SSH configuration
on the Options screen SSH tab.
Fixed a bug in Maintenance Mode
where the MM session tried to enable
the SNMP trap socket upon exit if SNMP traps are enabled. This would
result
in an error if the instance of PageR running as a service had
the SNMP trap socket already open. The socket should not
be opened in
Maintenance Mode.
Fixed a bug in the Axis Camera and Room Alert 2 Monitored
objects that
caused the camera live video to fail to appear in the Web Status pages
for these MOs.
Alpha Numeric dial-up paging with the UCP protocol is now supported.
Use the UCP.msg AN script file to send
page requests to UCP providers.
Also note that dial-up paging with ATT and T-Mobile has been discontin-
ed by these
providers.
As of 4.3, a bug in the Performance Counter Query MO Add/Change screen
would
not allow counters to be deleted. This has been fixed.
Fixed a bug in the Disk File MO. If
the Alarm on File Found option was
checked, no other options were processed including Delete File After
Scan. All
processing options selected are now done after the File Found
option completes it's part of the file scan.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.3.2 February 1, 2005
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed a bug that would cause problems with the Axis Camera notification
feature if camera notifications arrived while
we are not scanning.
Corrected some HTML formatting errors that might cause the Axis Camera
MO Web Status page to display incorrectly.
Modified the Web Status server code so that Web
Status will function
correctly when accessed through a firewall.
Fixed a bug that could
cause the Web Status server code to loop in some
rare situations.
It was found that the
scheme used to detect an already running instance
of PageR did not work when the second instance was launched in a remote
session. This would cause the new Maintenance Mode to fail. The previ-
ous instance detection scheme has been redesigned
to work when PageR
is executed in remote sessions.
When McAfee firewall products are
used to block outgoing ports on the
system where PageR is located, the port blocking technique used by
McAfee resulted
in a Run Time Error and shutdown in the TCP/UDP Service
Monitored Objects. These MOs have been modified to not to generate
RTEs
when the outgoing ports are blocked by McAfee. The errors caused by the
McAfee port blocking will be logged
and the MOs will report that they
unable to connect to the target port (service).
The
SQL Check MO no longer requires a User Name to be specified so that
the MO will work with SQL drivers that store the
User Name in the DSN.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.3.1 January 20, 2005
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Previous
versions allowed a monitored object to appear more that once
in a MO Group on the Options screen. This is not allowed
under 4.3 and
an existing duplicate MO in a Group would result in an RTE when opening
the Options screen. This has
been fixed not to fail and to just discard
any duplicate MOs in a Group.
Changes to the
emailing support code in 4.3 resulted in email messages
sent by PageR having a trailing null character. Some email systems
will
reject mail with null characters in the message. This is now fixed.
Fixed bug that
allowed auto start to occur when starting up in the new
Maintenance Mode. Auto start in MM is not supported and would
result in
failure.
The Email Options Tab now requires a default mail recipient address
if
mail is enabled. This is to prevent the case where email is enabled but
there is no default recipient address
and no recpient defined on Alarm
or Contact objects and so email alarm notifications would not be sent.
The Axis Video Camera Monitored Object has been modified to apply the
Schedule (if defined) to motion detection
alarms received from cameras.
This allows the user to control when motion detection is reported. Note
that if capturing
images on scans, the schedule will apply to both that
scan function and processing of motion detection messages.
Fixed bug in Room Alert 2 Monitored Object which failed to handle dead
box condition when connected serially
after changes for TCP/IP support.
Also fixed to simulate Power2 and Flood sensor alarms when doing simu-
lations.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.3 January 10, 2005
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Added support for SSH secure Telnet access to host systems. SSH tunnels
can be configured to be used for Host Login,
Host Process and Host Vol-
ume MOs for secure communication with host systems.
Added
new SQL Query Monitored Object. This MO will connect to an SQL
server system and execute a user defined query and generate
an alarm if
the query fails or does not return any records.
Added new Axis Video Camera
Monitored Object. This MO supports Axis 210
network video cameras and will generate alarms in response to motion
detection
done by the camera. When alarms are generated, the current
video image from the camera can be captured. Regular image
capture is
also supported. When emailing alarm notifications, the video image is
included in the email. The Web
Status page for this new MO also shows
the live video feed from the camera.
Modified
the Alarm Object to allow a sound file or system sound to be
associated with an AO and played when an alarm is processed
by the AO.
Added a new pre-defined Performance Query MO that will monitor for the
presence
of PageR on another system.
Added COCOUNT, COFIND, COGET, COSET functions to ScriptGlobals
to allow
limited access to Contact Objects from scripts.
Added new script function, sh.stopscript
that allows scripts that have
long running loops to watch for termination signal.
Add
option to Disk File MO to delete file after scanning it.
Add option to Disk File MO to alarm
on file age.
Because of the large number of fields on the Options screen tabs, the
method
for highlighting the focus for check boxes and radio buttons has
changed. Instead of an inverse video highlight on the
label as has been
done in the past, the label will have an underline highlight and the
text of the label will change
to a contrasting color.
Windows XP Service Pack 2 may cause problems with PageR. WXP SP2
contains the new Windows Firewall service. This service will likely
prevent PageR from performing network based operations
against XP SP2
monitored systems and to a lesser extent, when PageR is hosted on SP2.
When
PageR is hosted on XP SP2, you must go into the Firewall control
panel applet and configure PageR as an Exception Program.
When PageR is monitoring XP SP2 systems, if you use any Windows Manage-
ment Instrumentation based MOs (WMI
Query, Win32 Process), you must
enable remote administration in the firewall on the monitored system.
You can
do this in the Group Policy Object MMC snap-in, in the Windows
Firewall policy section. You can also open a command
box and enter the
following command:
netsh firewall set service type=remoteadmin
mode=enable scope=all
profile=all
Further, if you use the TCP/UDP
Services MO or the SNMP Query MO with
an XP SP2 monitored system, you will have to configure the ports needed
as
port exceptions (opening them) on the monitored system.
The RoomAlert 2 Monitored Object screen
now allows the setting of the
temperature & humidity correction amounts for each MO. If the setting
for the
MO is zero, the global corrections (if any) will be used.
The RoomAlert 2 Monitored Object
no longer supports daisy chaining RA2
boxes together. Only one box per MO.
The RoomAlert
2 Monitored Object now supports the network enabled RA2
box. You can enter an IP address/name and port number on the
RA2 screen
and that address will be used to connect to the RA2 via a network con-
nection instead of a COM port.
The Monitored Objects List displayed on the Monitored Objects Tab of
the Options screen can now be displayed
as a Tree View. This tree view
organized the MOs into trees by MO type, severity and system. This view
can help
manage large configurations. You can right click on MO groups
to perform group enable/disable/delete. Copy is still one
MO at a time.
The Monitored Objects List on the Monitored Objects Tab now supports
clicking
anywhere on the MO list to select the MO. Multi-select with
the control and shift keys is now allowed. You can right
click to per-
form enable/disable/delete on multiple MOs. Copy is still one MO at a
time.
The Status, Event Console and Mib Explorer screens are now resizeable.
For those
who use PageR in Service Mode, the removal of the configura-
tion display on service pause has been a problem. This has
necessitated
stopping the service, making configuration changes, and then restarting
the service. To address this,
PageR has been modified to be run as a
desktop application at the same time the PageR service is running. When
this
happens, the desktop PageR detects the service PageR and enters
Maintenance Mode. When in Maintenance Mode, the desktop
PageR reads the
configuration from the registry and will allow you to change it, all
while the service continues
to run. If you save the configuration,
PageR will ask if you wish to restart the service so it will load the
new
configuration. This should help streamline configuration changes
for service mode users.
PageR
now supports a formal way to manage multiple configurations.
Using a new field on the Global Options tab, you can assign
names to
configurations, copy configurations and create new configurations. Then
from the Main screen Settings
pull down menu, you can select the con-
figuration that will be loaded on the next start of PageR. See the help
for
a detailed discussion of this feature.
PageR tracks total monitoring time (scan time) and
total alarm time
for each Monitored Object. This information is displayed on the Status
screen and Web Status. Additionally,
this information is used to calcu-
late the % Downtime shown in these same locations. By default, these
times are
not saved when PageR shuts down. So this information is for
the current execution of PageR only. You can now persist
this informa-
tion at shutdown and reload it at start up. Then the monitoring and
alarm time and % downtime displays
are cumulative starting at the point
this option is enabled. See the Options screen Logging tab for more
information.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.2.4 August 23, 2004
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you have customized any Host Login scripts, you need to make the
following changes to your scripts when they are
run on 4.2 or later.
Scripts will run slowly until these changes are made. Change:
sg.trace
-> sh.trace
sg.createobject -> sh.createobject
also,
any objects created via sh.createobject should be released by
setting the object to nothing, instead of calling sg.releaseobject.
Fix bug in Processing Error alarms. Alarms caused by Processing Errors
and delivered by broadcast message were
incomplete, leaving off the
error description.
Removed errors logged when the alarm messages
send by broadcast are
truncated by the Windows operating system.
Fixed Run Time Error
in Web Status Manual Page function. Certain char-
acter sequences entered into the message box on the Manual Page web
page were not properly handled after they were encoded by the browser.
Added special Registry
keys to adjust for incorrect readings from the
RoomAlert 2 monitoring device. The keys RA2TemperatureCorrection and
RA2HumidityCorrection may be added to the Globals area. These keys can
contain a numeric value (entered as a string)
or negative numeric value
which will be added to the values returned by RoomAlert 2 device before
checking that
value against the threshhold.
Fixed a bug in the HostLogin MO that caused login passwords
to not be
stored correctly in the Registry.
Fixed a bug in the EventLog MO that prevented
event description text
from being retrieved for some Security log events.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.2.3 May 5, 2004
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed run time
error when browsing directories in the Directory MO. Any
error encountered while browsing resulted in the RTE instead
of more
graceful handling.
Fixed SNMP MibExplorer to use the SNMP port entered on the
SNMP Query
MO screen instead of hardcoded port 161.
Fixed several bugs in SNPP paging
that prevented this paging from work-
ing in all scenarios. Entry of the user name is no longer required if
user
name is not required by the target SNPP service provider.
Fixed problems in Host Login script
for AS/400 systems.
The Room Alert 2 Monitored Object was designed to detect temperature
and or humidity that rose above a defined threshold. It is now possible
to configure this MO to detect temperature/humidity
values that fall
below a defined threshold. On the MO add/change screen, add the > char-
acter after the temperature/humidity
threshold value to cause alarms on
actual temperature/humidity falling below the threshold. A single RA2
MO can
only alarm on a value above or below the threshold, not both. To
monitor both directions, two MOs are required.
The Room Alert 2 MO now tracks the high and low temperature/humidity
actual values recorded and reports this
on the Status and Web Status
displays.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.2.2 February 1, 2004
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Modified
the Web Page monitored Object to identify itself to the target
web server as IE5 so that web pages that do browser validation
are read
correctly. Fixed some minor bugs on the MOs add/change screen.
Fixed several
minor bugs in the Room Alert 2 monitored object.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.2.1 January 12, 2004
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed a variety
of problems in the Out-of-Process Server Libary compo-
nent (OPSLib.exe) added in 4.2 release.
When running PageR in a remote VNC sesssion, you must add the registry
key shown here:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ORL\VNCHooks\Application_Prefs\OPSLib.exe\
use_Defferal to 0
This will prevent run time errors at startup.
Added new function to ScriptGlobals
object available to scripts run by
Task MOs. The match function will compare a string to patterh and will
return
TRUE if a match is found, false if not. Calling sequence is:
boolval = sg.match(string, pattern)
The format of the pattern string can be found in the on-line
help under
pattern matching in the topic index.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.2 October 1, 2003
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
With
this release of PageR, significant changes have occurred in the
design of this product. Please read these notes carefully
and consider
the impact of the changes on your use of PageR before you proceed with
this update.
Multi-Threading
Previous PageR releases used multi-threading to keep the user interface
responsive during
the time PageR is scanning monitored objects for
alarm events. This was fine for the early releases but as the number
of
features has grown the multi-threading technology has become untenable.
In 4.2 the
multi-threading design has been changed. The new form of MT
is active at all times so the menu option to enable/disable
MT has been
removed. With this new design, a compromise has been found that has
removed the increasing reliability
problems of the old MT design and
retained most of the scan speed and user interface responsiveness. This
means
(depending on your specific installation setup) the scan time and
user interface may be slightly slower than with old
MT turned on. How-
ever it will be much faster than running with old MT turned off, and
will give vastly improved
reliability.
For the most part, MOs remain unchanged. One area that does need your
consideration
is Task and Host Login MOs. One side effect of the new MT
design is that scripts run slower than before. This will most
likely
mean that the timeout value on your Task and Host Login MOs will need
to be increased. The exact impact of
this varies with processor speed
and load, so some users may see no problems and some may see timeouts
if they don't
increase the existing timeout values.
Service Operation
There are several major changes
in Service Mode Operation. Prior to 4.2
if you paused PageR while running as a service, the PageR main screen
would
appear and you could interact with that screen. Due to a variety
of interconnected problems with service mode operation,
this feature is
no longer supported. With 4.2, if you pause the PageR service, the
service will simply pause operation
but no screen will appear. In this
respect, PageR now functions the same as all other services. Services
do not
normally present any user interface and doing so was causing
problems that could not be fixed.
During Service Mode Operation, PageR must impersonate some user account
in order to have appropriate security
credentials. Prior to 4.2 the
service installed with Local System as the default service logon user
account and
then PageR would assume (impersonate) the identity of the
user account that is entered on Options Tab 2, Service Install
area.
This after start-up impersonation scheme worked for the most part but
more and more problems came up with
this scheme failing to provide the
security context needed for newer PageR features, like WMI and logging
via
Instant Messaging.
The solution in 4.2 drops impersonation after service start. Instead,
it will install the service with the user account entered on Options
Tab 2 as the default Logon user account for the
service. By doing this,
the security context of that user is successfully assumed by PageR for
all functions when
the serivce is started.
For updating users who run PageR in Service Mode, after update you
will need to go to Options Tab 2 and UNINSTALL as a service. Then you
must enter a user in the boxes on the tab with
appropriate priviledge
to run the service and support the MOs and features you wish to use.
Then click the Install
as a Service button to install the PageR Service
with that user as the default Service logon user. If you leave the user
name blank and click Install as a Service, the Local System account
will be used. Local System is adequate for some
MOs but not others.
Selecting an appropriate administrative user account is the better way
to set up the PageR
service. See the on-line help for more information
on running PageR as a service.
Processing
errors now include identification of the Monitored Object
that caused the processing error.
Microsoft's
forced upgrade of MSN Messenger users to version 5.0 or
later, created major problems for our Messenger client logging
feature.
Our implementation of MSN Messenger logging was based on verion 4.7 of
Messenger. That implementation was
not compatible with Messenger 5.0
and later. This required a rewrite of our Messenger support. This new
implementation
is contained in the OPSLib.exe file and is not dependant
on any specific Messenger version. In fact, Messenger not longer
needs
to be installed on our host system. The file MessengerTool.exe is now
obsolete and can be removed.
Added mew toolbar button the the System View screen that will show only
the defined MO groups and the MOs they
contain.
It is now possble to customize the alarm cleared message text that is
sent via
email and paging with a registry key. If this is of interest,
please contact tech support for details.
All MOs that use COM ports and the Paging Tab of the Options screen now
display a drop down list of all COM
ports that exist on the host system
instead of a fixed list of COM1-COM4.
The ScriptGlobals
object that supports Task MO scripts now exports a
function called Shutdown. This function will shutdown the local or
a
remote system. A new script sample called Shutdown.txt is included in
the Scripts\Samples directory.
A new Monitored Object has been added that supports the Room Alert 2
environment monitoring hardware device.
Paging can now be done over a network connection via the SNPP (Simple
Network Paging Protocol) protcol to an
SNPP capable paging provider.
SNPP offers and alternative to paging via dial-up using the TAP paging
protocol. TAP
is being discontinued by some providers including ATT and
in that case access to such paging providers is by email or
SNPP only.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.1.3
August 11, 2003
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed a bug in saving configuration
to a disk file. On reload, any pass
words read from the .cfg file were corrupted.
You
may now set the SNMP query port on the SNMP Query MO. Previously it
was fixed at the standard value of 161. Being able
to change the port
allows PageR to support agents using a non-standard port.
Fixed run
time error when selecting paging groups on the Manual Paging
screen.
Fixed email return
address to be the return address entered on the
Options screen Email tab. Previously, the return address was always
'PageR@systemname'. Fixed run time error on the Service MO add/change screen.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.1.2 June 2, 2003
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Modify Verizon paging .msg files. Note that VerizonPager.msg works with
Verizon Wireless Messaging PAGERS. Verizon.msg
works with Verizon cell
phones. Verizon paging and cell phone messaging are handled by two very
separate divisions.
The list of dial up numbers has been updated for
the two Verizon services.
The FTP Get
monitored object was extensively reworked to handle the IBM
AS400 system correctly.
Fixed
bug in Event Log monitored object that caused a run time error if
an event record contained more than 25 message substitution
strings.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.1.1
April 21, 2003
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fix DNS Monitored Object.
This MO is included in the DataCenter Edition
of PageR but was incorrectly set up to be in the Enterprise Edition.
Fix the System View screen to be rebuilt the next time it is opened
after MOs have been added, deleted or modified.
The Microsoft part of the Network Scan function would fail if there was
a Termial Services server present on
the network. This has been fixed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.1 March 24, 2003
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Added a new Monitored
Object, Bandwidth. This MO monitors the network
interface(s) on a target system and generates an alarm if traffic on
an interface exceeds a user defined threshold.
Added a new Monitored Object, Directory.
This MO monitors a windows
disk directory and can generate an alarm if the directory disk space or
file count exceeds
user defined thresholds. If can also alarm on any
change to directory size or file count. This MO can also monitor a
specific file for size or size change.
Added a new Monitored Object, DialUp. This MO
monitors a dialup modem
line by dialing the line number and confirming that the modem connects
and does so with
a time limit. Also supports RAS via Windows Dial Up
Networking.
Added a new Alarm Notification
option, Instant Messaging. This feature
allows activity logging and alarm notifications to be sent to Instant
Messaging
clients. This feature uses the Microsoft MSN Messenger client
version 4.6 or 4.7 on the system where PageR is installed.
A messaging
user is established with the MSN Messaging Service (or the MS Exchange
Messaging Service) for PageR.
Messaging users can add the PageR user to
thier contact/buddy lists and will receive information from PageR when
it is scanning. See the Help for more information.
Fixed bug that could cause a run time
error if running multi-threaded
and a scan was stopped while scanning a TCP or UDP Service Monitored
Object.
The Log File MO has been modified to allow wild cards in the disk file
name. When wild cards are present, the
MO searches the target directory
and opens the most recent file meeting the wild card spec. This file is
examined
and closed. This allows the MO to monitor a log file that may
have ongoing iterations denoted by date/time or a sequence
number in
the file name. The MO selects that most recent interation of the file
on each scan. The processing of
file names without wildcards remains
unchanged.
The SNMP Query and Performance Counter
Query MOs have been modified to
allow individual Objects or Counters in the Query to be disabled. If an
Object or
Counter is disabled, it's value is still retrieved from the
target system (so the value is available to the option
script) but the
value is not automatically evaluated by the MO.
The Web Page MO has been
enhanced to allow multi-level link checking.
You can now specify on the MO how many levels of links will be checked.
Level zero checks no links in the target page, which is the same as the
MO has operated in the past. If the Link Level
is set to 1, the page
links (A html tag) in the target page are each retrieved. If set to 2,
the Links on the Level
1 pages are each retrieved, and so on. Note that
graphic file references and forms pages are always retrieved.
The Host Process and Host Volume Monitored Objects have been enhanced
to use SNMP as well as Telnet to retrieve
process and volume data from
host systems. This allows access to hosts without Telnet support. New
host types added
to the Host Type drop down list include VMS via Telnet
and NetWare via SNMP.
In the AlphaNumeric
Script paging language, the W (write to log window)
statement used to write text to the main Activity Log window if the
Log
Level was 2 or 3. The Log Level must now be 3 for W messages to appear
in the Activity Log window.
Fixed bug in Manual Paging screen that caused a run time error if a
paging Group was selected as the target
of a Manual Page.
Added the ReBoot System and Delete Files pre-defined Task Monitored
Objects.
These Task MOs can be added from the New Monitored Object sel-
ection screen. The ReBoot System Task executes a script
that will re-
start the target Windows system. The Delete Files Task will delete the
specified fileset from a Windows
directory.
Added the NetWare Server Health check pre-defined SNMP Query Monitored
Object.
Fixed bug in SNMP Mib Explorer that caused the SNMP objects retrieved
from some MIBs to not have the correct
data type.
Fixed a bug in the Disk Log File Viewer screen. Some users encountered
run
time errors and some cases where the Print button did not function.
Fixed a bug in the FTP
GET Monitored Object that caused it to not work
correctly with VMS systems.
The Licensing
and copy protection mechanisims in PageR have been
strengthened in this release. If you have problems with MOs that quit
working, it may be because PageR was not correctly enforcing some of
our licensing rules in the past and allowed
use of MOs that are not
part of the license you have purchased.
The Install process had
a bug which caused a new entry to be added to
the Windows Add/Remove Programs list for each new version, instead of
just updating the existing entry. This is because the version number
was included in the Add/Remove entry name. This
caused an accumulation
of out of date entries in the Add/Remove list. Now, the Installer will
add a single entry
for this product and update it with each subsequent
install. To remove the redundant entries, use RegEdit and find the
key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
Delete any subkeys with this product
name and a version number.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.0.3 January 14, 2003
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed bug
in search string processing that would cause a match to be
found if the search string file contained a trailing blank
line and the
target string contained any spaces.
Fixed Run Time Error in SNMP Mib Explorer.
Mib Explorer would abort if
the target Mib contained an object id value with a very large number in
any of the object
id component parts.
Fixed bug in HostVolume MO. Extraneous output lines on host disk volume
display output were not correctly ignored and fouled up the reading of
volume information for the legitimate volumes.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.0.2 December 16, 2002
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed bug in Web Status. Display of activity log failed under some con-
ditions.
Added
Windows XP System Health pre-defined Performance Counter MO.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.0.1 December 2, 2002
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed bug
in Performance Counter MO that caused a Run Time Error.
Fixed bug in Host Volume MO that caused
a Run Time Error.
Fixed bug in Manual Page screen that caused a Run Time Error.
Improved formatting of SNMP Trap messages when additional SNMP objects
are sent as addendums to the trap message.
Fixed the Web Page MO to correctly handle the BASE html tag.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.0.0 October 25, 2002
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
When installing
4.0.0, you may be prompted to insert the Microsoft
Office CD. This is caused by a bug in a Microsoft component that is
shared by PageR and MS Office. Insert the Office CD and continue.
Added new Monitored Object,
Host Process, which monitors processes on
host systems, such as Unix, Linux, VMS, AS400, HP3000. This MO uses
Telnet
to connect to specified host systems and obtain a process list.
This list is compared to a list of expected processes
and an alarm is
generated for any missing processes. This MO works in a manner similar
to the Host Login MO, but
is simpler to configure.
Added new Monitored Object, Host Volume, which monitors disk volume
free space on host systems, such as Unix, Linux, VMS. This MO uses
Telnet to connect to specified host systems and
obtain a disk volume
list. Disk volume free space is extracted from this list and compared
to preset threshholds.
An alarm is generated when a disk's free space
falls below it's threshhold. This MO works in a manner similar
to the
Host Login MO, but is simpler to configure.
Added new Monitored Objects, Win 2000
System and Win XP System. These
MOs monitor Windows 2000 and XP systems to see if they are up in the
same manner
as the exsting Windows NT System MO.
Added new Monitored Object, UDP Services. This MO monitors
UPD network
services such as SNMP and generates an alarm if the services are not
active. Note that TCP and UDP services
are very similar in nature but
use different protocols. Note: the UDP Services MO only works when
PageR is running
on Windows 2000 or XP.
Added new Monitored Object, DNS Check. This MO monitors a Domain Name
Service server to make sure the server is functioning and returning
correct name to address mappings.
Added a new Monitored Object, ePage. This MO monitors an email mailbox
and processes each mail message as a
Page request. Contact names are
put in the message subject separated by semi-colons. The first 80 bytes
of the message
body is sent as the page text. This allows you to send
pages by sending email to the mailbox that is being monitored.
Added a new Monitored Object, Heart Beat. This MO generates an alarm
on every scan, subject to Interval and
Schedule settings. It can be
connected to an appropriate Alarm object to perform notification that
PageR is still
up and running.
Added a new Options Tab called Auto Add. This tab displays the list of
known network objects as detected by the Ping, SNMP and Windows auto
discovery scans (also known as Network Scans).
From this list of
network objects, you can select a group of objects and automatically
create new Ping Monitored
Objects for them.
Added a new feature to aid in displaying large configurations. You can
now organize monitored objects into Groups. You can then select these
Groups for display on the Status screen and Web
Status. On the new
MO Groups tab of the Options screen, you can create arbitrary Groups
and added MOs to these Groups.
The Groups are then listed in the MO
subset dropdown lists on the Status and Web Status displays.
The Status Screen now has grid lines drawn to separate the rows and
columns to make this screen easier to read.
The Status Screen now displays the Monitored Object Type icons along
with the object type text label.
The Web Status display's list of Monitored Objects will now allow you
to toggle between display of the MO
Identifier and MO Description. You
can click on the small white box next to the Identifier column header
to switch
between Idenitifer and Description.
The Monitored Object Selection screen displayed when adding
a new MO
has been enlarged so more MO types can be seen without scrolling. You
can also see the available MO types
as a list.
Scan time and alarm time for MOs is now tracked and allows for a new
display
of percent alarm time (down time) for each MO on the Status
screen and Web Status display. This new display shows the
percent of
time an MO spends in alarm state versus the total time the MO has been
monitored. This data will help
identify problem network objects by
highlighting those objects that spend excessive time in alarm state.
The Scan Logging function now includes the information collected for
the computation of the percent alarm time.
There are new fields for
total scan time and total alarm time. The log file also includes a new
record for alarm
end events with the elapsed time of the event. Users
who employ the Scanlog log files should generate sample files with
the
column labels included to see the new format.
The Web Status pages used to display
'N/A' in blank fields. Now, blank
fields are just that, blank.
The maximum message
length for TAP paging protocol now defaults to 100
characters. This limit can be changed in a .msg script file with the
T
statement or you can change the default with a registry key.
The Web Page MO now will
insert http:// into the page URL if it is
missing. The Web Page MO add/change screen has been updated to better
display
the mini web browser that allows you to verify the URL to be
monitored.
Fixed Disk Volume
MO to handle 32 character volume labels correctly.
Fixed Web Page MO to correct handle HTML
tags with redundant attributes
specified in the tag.
Fixed Web Status internal web server
bug that caused error 24056 to be
intermittently displayed in the log window.
Previously,
the Mib Explorer screen would not display any MIB objects
downloaded from the SNMP agent if the STOP button was clicked
during
the MIB walk (download). This did not support stopping the MIB walk
early on very large MIBs. Now, if the
STOP button is clicked, the SNMP
objects downloaded to that point are displayed and can be selected.
The Disk File MO can now monitor the size of files.
The Search Strings function on
various monitored objects now supports
matching on strings not found. Search strings may be prefixed with the
!
character to invert or not the result of the search string match to
the target text supplied by the monitored object.
See the online help
for string searching.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
3.0.2 June 11, 2002
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Performance
Counter Explorer would not display the counters correctly
for a Windows XP target system. Fixed to allow for differences
in the
counter information returned by XP systems.
Updated DLL files for SNMP related
support from our SNMP tool vendor.
The SNMP MIB Explorer would incorrectly report error 12015
when walking
the MIB of a Windows 2000 system. The Explorer was fixed to correctly
handle the end of MIB indication
on W2K systems.
The Email Ping and Email Check MOs would experience Run Time Errors if
they encountered a processing error and the processing error notifica-
tion was turned on and set to email a notification
of the processing
error. Fixed to correctly handle this case nested calls to the email
routines.
Expanded the Pre-Defined Monitored Objects list to include several new
Performance Query definitions and Unix
Host Logins.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
3.0.1
May 15, 2002
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed several formatting bugs
on the System Console screen. Changed the
font used for text to one that better displays on all OS and monitors.
If
after installing 3.0.1, if your System Console shows garbled or in-
correctly justified text, click the reload toolbar
button to refresh
the display.
Increased the initial size of the Select MO (MO Add)
screen and this
screen is now sizeable. Additionally, a list view (instead of icons) of
the Monitored Objects to
pick from is now available.
The Email Ping MO has had some problems with Run Time Errors and
these
RTE would terminate PageR. This MO has been modified not to terminate
on an RTE, but instead ending the scan
of the MO and continuing with
the next MO to be scanned.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
3.0.0 May 1, 2002
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Windows XP is
now a supported host operating system along with Windows
NT 4.0 and Windows 2000.
Updated
underlying libraries and components. Supported system software
configuration is now Windows NT 4.0 SP6 or later, IE 5.5
or later.
Modified the Email Ping MO to support pinging email relays. This means
that
the email ping message can now be submitted to a mail server and
the ping message read from a different server. This
allows a ping test
in situations where mail is relayed or forwarded from the submission
server to a different server
for delivery.
Fixed the AN script (paging) P command to allow any COM port to be
specified.
Was restricted to COM1 or COM2.
Fix Task MO add/change screen. Was not retaining the Interval
value.
Fixed problems in Host Login MO scripts. Updated telnet control caused
the scripts
to fail when login errors occured. Updated all of the Host
Login scripts to handle the changed behavior of the Telnet
control.
Fix Run Time Error caused by clicking on the System Console Screen
before the
systems were loaded and displayed.
Fix error in System Console Screen that caused inconsistent
sorting of
systems on the screen.
Modify audible alarm feature to support executing an
exe/bat/cmd file
along with sound files. This allows executing an external program to
make noise or voice alarms.
An example is voicing alarms with the
ReadPlease application. Enter the following in the audible alarms box
to use
ReadPlease: "d:\Program Files\ReadPlease 2002\ReadPlease.exe"
/state=1 /action=close /text=
Improved error checking on the configuration import from file feature.
Improvements
and bug fixes to the SNMP Query and Trap MOs. Additional
MIB files added for Novell servers.
Improved
the Manual Page screen and Web Status page to have enough room
in the message text box to type and view a complete message
up to the
180 character maximum.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
2.0.3 February 14, 2002
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed Run
Time Error in Web Page MO caused by duplicate attributes on
HTML tags in a web page.
Fixed
Run Time Error on NT Service MO Add/Change screen.
Fixed Run Time Error that occurred during
some Schedule object updates.
Updated SNMP libraries.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
2.0.2 February 1, 2002
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Extensive
update to Web Page MO to support target pages that use Frames
to load additional pages creating the final view on a user's
browser.
Add an un-documented feature to the Web Page MO to support logging into
a web
site and downloading the page after the login page. If you are
interested in this feature, contact tech support for
details.
Fixed bug in Disk File MO that could result in Run Time Error 13 when
tracing
and using Disk File MOs.
Fixed a bug in the use of MAPI for Email Check and Email Ping MOs.
When
a login to the MAPI system failed, internal structures were not reset
causing ALL subsequent MAPI logins to
fail.
Modified the MAPI message reading function for Email Check and Email
Ping MOs to
process unread messages only. Previously, all messages in
the target mail box were processed. It is possible to restore
the pro-
cessing of all messages with a registry value. Contact tech support.
When saving
the configuration to either the registry or a disk file,
the save confirmation message now states the target of the save,
disk
file or registry.
Add explicit error messages when the MicroSoft XML Parser 3.0
cannot
be invoked. MS XML is used for the SNMP MOs to handle MIB definitions
and the configuration save to disk
file feature. The MS XML Parser is
not included in our install. You can download the free MS XML Parser
version
3.0 from the MicroSoft web site.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
2.0 November 1, 2001
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Added
a new screen, the Network Event Console. This feature provides a
global event history display. EventLog MOs, Syslog MOs,
and SNMP Trap
MOs all see every event that occurs, even if no alarm is generated. You
can now enable logging of
these raw events to the Network Event History
and view this history with the Network Event Console. This provides a
global, aggregated view of events from multiple systems and sources.
Extensive filtering and sorting options are provided.
See the on line
help for more details.
Added a new screen, the System Console. This
screen provides a graphi-
cal, system level view of your network and monitored objects. Systems
with monitored objects
defined for them or detected by network scans
appear on the screen with appropriate highlighting for systems with
alarms or processing errors in progress. You can display the MO list
for systems and quickly see which MOs are in the
alarm state. You can
add/modify/delete/disable/suspend MOs as well as view detailed status
information for MOs.
This new screen simplifies viewing your monitored
systems and quickly identifying which systems are having problems.
It
can assist in configuration by showing your systems and allowing you to
click on a system to add or update MOs.
See the on-line help for more
information.
Added support for Windows Management Instrumentation
or WMI. WMI is the
Win32 platform's implementation of the Web Based Enterprise Management
standard (WBEM). WMI
essentially functions in a manner similar to NT
Performance Counters or SNMP Mib objects. There is a new monitored
object called a WMI Query. This MO contains a list of WMI object prop-
erties whose values are retrieved from a target
system and compared
to threshold values to detect alarm conditions. The MO uses the new
WMI Object Explorer screen
to allow the user to explore the WMI objects
and properties on a system and select the items to be added to WMI
Query
MOs. This MOs model is very similar to the NT Perf Query MO. See
the online help for more information.
Extensive enhancement to the Web Status feature. The Web Status pages
have been reformatted for improved appearance
and readability. The new
Event Console has been added to Web Status as well.
Added new
monitored object, Win32 Process. This MO will monitor a list
of processes on a target system and alarm if a process
is not running.
Requires WMI 1.5 Core on both local and target system.
Added new feature
for event logging. You may now log the status of all
or selected MOs after each scan. This information is a complete
picture
of MO state after the most recent scan of the MO. This data is written
to a text file called SCANLOG in
the install directory. This logging is
intended to record MO status information long term and is retained when
scanning
is restarted. The data in the file is designed to be imported
into spreadsheet and database programs for analysis purposes.
Logging
is configured on a new tab which appears on the Options screen. See the
on-line help for more information.
On the Options screen, the tab "More Globals" has been renamed to be
"Globals 2" in anticipation
of additional global options tabs to be
added in the future.
Normally, Monitored Object
scanning is done in the order that the MOs
were created. You can now set an option to scan in the objects in order
of Severity. Severity scanning scans all Severity 0 MOs, then Severity
1 MOs and so on until Severity 9 is completed.
Within a Severity level,
the MOs are sorted by thier Description text. You may enable scanning
by Severity on the
Options screen, Globals 2 tab.
The Email Options Tab now has a checkbox to enable alarm messages
to be
sent as the email subject in email alarm notifications. The default is
to send a generic alarm announcement
as the subject and the specific
alarm message in the email body.
The HostLogin and Task
MOs now have a checkbox to allow scripts execu-
ted by these MOs to display user interfaces. This means that the script
can display message boxes or other user interface elements available in
the scripting language. Normally scripts are
not able to display user
interface elements. This is due to the fact that if a script times out
and user interface
is allowed, the script engine automatically displays
an error message box that the user must respond to in order to continue
execution. This can easily hang PageR if a user does not see and
respond to the message box. If you enable the user
interface and set a
timeout, be aware of the possibility of a hang. Also note that script
user interfaces are never
allowed when PageR is run as a Service.
The FtpGet MO now has a field where you may enter
a timeout value to be
applied to ftp communications with host systems. This should prevent
hangs when host system
ftp servers fail to respond in a timely manner.
The Monitored Object Status screen has been
enhanced to allow you to
control the order of the columns of information displayed for each MO.
See the on line
help for details.
The EmailCheck MO has been enhanced with two new features. First, you
may enter a mail recpient address that will subset the mail messages on
the mail server that the EmailCheck MO examines.
This will help if the
mail box being examined is used for multiple purposes. Second, this MO
now supports Paging
by Email. If you configure an EmailCheck MO to look
at a mail box, and check the new Paging Mode box and enter a recipient
in the Recipient box, the MO will expect mail messages to the recipient
to contain a list of Contact names in the message
subject (separated by
semicolons). The first 80 bytes of the message body will be sent to the
Contacts as identified
by each Contact's defined paging options. Using
this feature, you can send an email that will trigger paging delivery
of a text message in that email.
Before release 2.0, default alarm notification messages
were generated
by each Monitored Object when an alarm was detected. It was possible to
completely replace the alarm
default message with user defined text put
in the Alarm Message Text field on each MO, but you could not see or
modify
the default format. Further, the second line of detailed alarm
information that appears for some MOs was not controlable
by the user
at all. As of 2.0, all alarm messages are created from the content of
the Alarm Message Text field on
the MO screens. If the field has not
been modified by the user, then it will contain an appropriate message
template
that will create the default message for the MO. So, you can
now control the message format, including editing the default
and you
can also control the content of the second alarm message line. For more
information on this topic, please
consult the on-line help.
Pager service phone numbers may now contain alpha characters. This
will
allow a phone number to entered as (example) 1-800-SKY-PAGE as well as
1-800-759-7243.
Modified the TCP Services Monitored object to support more extensive
testing of services. By default, the MO
simply connects to the service.
You can now attach a script file to a service that will be executed if
the MO successfully
connects to the service on the target system. The
connected socket is passed to the script, so the script can communicate
with the service and perform whatever testing of the service is needed.
Two samples are included in the install in
Scripts\Samples directory.
TcpEchoCheck.txt is really just a sample and peforms a test of the echo
service by sending
data and reading back the echo. TcpDnsCheck.txt is
an actual check of DNS service function. This script accepts a DNS
name
for a system and the expected IP address for that name. The script then
performs an actual DNS name resolution
with the target DNS server and
checks that the returned IP address is the one expected. This scripting
function
adds a lot of power to TCP Service monitoring.
Fixed licensing control problems that appear
when the product is run on
a system with multiple NIC cards.
Fixed a bug in the FTPGET
MO that could result in successful retrieval
of files but failure to save them on the local disk.
Fixed bug in some Monitored Objects that caused errors processing alarm
schedules for the objects. This problem
manifested itself as a skipping
of rows on the notification schedule. This row 1 would be notified, but
row 2 would
skipped, row 3 notified, row 4 skipped and so on.
Updated the Email Ping MO to support sending
ping mail messages to SMTP
servers that require authentication to submit mail. The user name and
password used to
login to the server and read the ping message are now
also used to submit the message.
The
Host Login script "MPE Login.txt" had a bug in it and has been up-
dated. If you use this script, you will
need to integrate any changes
you have made to your existing copy in the \Scripts directory into the
new file in
\Scripts\Samples and save the new script back to \Scripts.
Using the old script with version 2.0 may result in hangs
when running
the script.
You can now click the columns of the Contacts List tab on the
Options
screen to change the sort order of the Contacts List.
The Manual Paging screen
now supports sending messages to Groups.
Modified the EventLog Monitored Object to support
selection of event
logs beyond the basic System, Security and Application logs. All Event
logs available on a system
are now listed for selection.
Modified EventLog Monitored Object to correctly handle event
records
that use Parameter substitution or event Category message files.
You can now
assign an administrative password to Web Status. When this
admin password is used, the Web Status user must logon with
the admin
user name and password to access any Web status function that modifies
the operation of PageR. This includes
starting/stopping scanning and
clearing alarms.
You can now export the configuration
to a disk file. The Options pull
down menu has a choice called "Export Configuration to file". This will
save the current configuration to a disk file with the .cfg extension.
The file is in XML format. This feature requires
the Microsoft XML 3.0
parser (msxml3.dll) to be installed. You can obtain this parser from MS
as a free download.
This configuration file can be used to make a back
up of your configuration. Importing a configuration file is supported
but requires the assistance of tech support.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.5.3 May 22, 2001
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed a bug in
the MibExplorer screen that caused run time errors when
run on a system with the German language locale set.
Fixed a bug in the Web Page MO that caused the MO not to handle URLs
with data included in the URL correctly.
Fixed a bug in alarm notification processing. When running in multi-
threaded mode, and the first alarm generated
occurs during a quiet time
period, the wait time between retrys of the notification process will
be computed incorrectly,
causing the retry to occur every second. It
should be set to the Paging Delay value set on the Options screen. If
the notification process is retrying every second, this can be quite
distracting and scroll useful information off
of the log screen...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.5.2 February 2, 2001
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed a bug
in the NT Service MO introduced in 1.5.1 release. The NT
Service MO would identify the Service to be monitored incorrectly.
It
appeared to select correctly on the add/change screen, but at scan time
the MO would use an incorrect Service
Name to actually connect to the
Service.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.5.1 January 4, 2001
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
In the Alarm
Text box on the Monitored Object add/change screens, you
may now use the \n format code in the alarm text to generate
a new line
in the message delivered by broadcast, email, pager or to the NT event
log. This allows for multi-line
alarm messages to be sent. The \n will
be replace by a space when the message is displayed on the log screen
or
if the message is used as the subject of a notification email.
Fixed a bug in the Task MO.
When running NT .exe or .cmd files as the
task, handles were not closed at the end of the task. This "leak"
of
handles would consume resources until the system would have to be shut
down.
Fixed
a problem where some screens and screen elements were not follow-
ing the system control panel color selection. If you
selected a color
scheme other than the Windows Standard, the screens would not follow
that setting and appeared
incorrectly.
Fixed a problem in the NT Performance Counter Explorer screen. The perf
counter
description text was not being displayed when running on Windows
2000.
Fixed a problem
in the NT Performance Counter MO. On Windows 2000, if a
performance counter was selected on a perf counter query and
the counter
was found not to exist on the target system, a different error code was
returned that on NT 4 and so
this error was not handled corrrectly.
The NT System Health pre-defined NT Performance Query
MO has been split
into two versions, one for NT 4 and one for Windows 2000. The counters
selected for system health
measurement are located in different places
in the performance counter name space on W2K, so a different System
Health
MO is required for W2K. Existing Perf Counter Query MOs will
need to be changed when you update from NT 4 to W2K.
Modified the SNMP Trap MO to allow for multiple MOs to be defined. In a
manner similar to the Syslog MO, you
may create as many Trap MOs as you
like, but each must be assigned a unique IP address or name that iden-
tifies
an SNMP Agent system or trap source. Traps from a specific Agent
system will be handled by the MO with matching address/name.
You may
create one MO with no Agent address to be the default Trap MO. This MO
will handle all traps not handled
by an Agent specific Trap MO.
Fixed several problems caused by non-english registry parameter
values.
This caused problems with Network scanning and NetWare server access on
systems localized to non-english
languages.
Fixed a run time error that occured when the disk log file viewing
screen
was displayed, but disk logging was disabled.
Fixed a bug in the Alarm object when using escalation
schedules. If all
10 contacts were used on an escalation line, a run time error occurred.
9 contacts worked fine
and now all 10 work correctly.
Fixed a long time problem with the Event Log MO. Events would
generate
errors indicating that the event description text could not be found in
the event source file. This was
due to certain events that use a spec-
ialized scheme for substituting parameter values into the event desc-
ription
text. We were not handling this scheme correctly resulting in
the errors.
Fixed several
corner case run time errors in the Network scan code and
in certain MOs.
Fixed a problem
in parameter expansion in alarm messages. Substitution
parameters of the form [NAME] were not correctly expanded if NAME
was
in lower case. The parameter name can be upper or lower case.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.5 October 20, 2000
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Added
a new Monitored Object, Email Checker. This MO will read email
messages on a mail server and examine the subject and/or
body of the
messages for user defined text strings and generate alarms or execute
Tasks if strings are found. See
the on-line help for details.
Added a new Monitored Object, Email Ping. This MO will send
a unique
email message to a mail server and then try to read that message back
from the server in a set amount of
time. Used to monitor timely mail
delivery. See the on-line help for details.
Made improvements
to the Web Status code and Web Status html pages to
improve performance.
Added Copy
buttons to the Alarms and Contacts Options Tabs.
The default TCP/IP port number for Web Status
is now 1088 instead of
81. If you are currently using 81 (or any other port number), that port
will continue to
be used.
The Ping MO now includes the description text in alarm messages along
with
the IP address for clearer labelling of Ping alarm messages.
The Ping, Web Page and Email
Ping MOs now maintain an average response
time while scanning is in progress. This response time can be viewed on
the Status screen under Object Details (right click on MO) or on the
MO detail view of Web Status.
Added an option to apply Global Quiet time to alarm notification by
Email. When this option is checked on the
Global Options screen, any
Email alarm notification generated during Global Quiet Time will not be
sent. Note, it
will not be delivered after Global Quiet Time ends, as
are paging notifications.
Fixed
the missing help for the Mib Explorer screen.
Fixed the problem where the Mib Explorer would
not work correctly when
an IP address was used to identify an SNMP agent system instead of a
system name. Name or
IP address should work the same to identify the
SNMP agent system on Mib Explorer and SNMP Query MO.
The SNMP Mib Explorer screen now automatically starts the Mib Walking
process when the Explorer screen is displayed.
As the Mib Walk is the
first action to be taken after this screen is displayed, it makes sense
to have that action
start automatically when the screen appears.
The FTPGET MO will now allow the selection of
the character used to
separate the components of the file path on the target system. This
allows this character
to be set as appropriate for various host systems
instead of the previous fixed "/". The character defaults
to / and will
be set automatically by the Ftp Explorer if the Explorer recognizes the
target system type.
The FTPGET MO has a fixed timeout value of 15 seconds. This value is
not long enough for some ftp target systems.
As a temporary fix, a new
Registry key has been added to control the FTPGET timeout. The key is
"Globals\FtpGetTimeOut"
and the value is the number of seconds.
The TASK MO has a timeout value that is applied to
scripts to prevent
runaway scripts. If a script times out, a message box is displayed
(when running in desktop mode)
and the user must respond to the message
box before scanning can continue. This has resulted in "hangs" caused
by message box wait. The message box can only be suppressed by disabl-
ing all user interface access for the script.
This has been done as the
new default for script execution. If a timeout occurs processing will
continue and the
timeout is logged to the Log Window, but no message
box appears. If a script needs to have a user interface, you can
set a
new Registry key to allow script user interface, but if you do, you
will get the message box on script time
outs. In this case, you can set
the script timeout to a large value. To enable script user interface,
set reg key
"Globals\AllowScriptUI" to the string "true".
The Task MO had a bug that
prevented escalating Alarm schedules from
working. This is fixed.
The Schedule Object
had an option labelled "One Time". This meant that
the Monitored Object the Schedule was attached to would
be scanned just
one time after start of scanning. This option has been deemed to be of
little use and based on user
demand, this option has been changed to be
"Once Per Day". This means that the MO will be scanned only once
per
day, subject to the other scheduling options. The once per day tracking
is reset if scanning is stopped and
restarted.
The WebPage MO accesses web pages (URLs) directly or via proxy based on
the
logged on user's Windows Internet Settings (IE). If the user has a
proxy defined in these settings, then the WebPage
MO will use the proxy
server. However, since the proxy settings are stored by individual user
this has presented
some problems. As a temporary solution, you can now
specify a global proxy server name in a registry key. The WebPage
MO
now looks for the registry key "ProxyServer" in the Globals section. If
a server name is set, WebPage
MOs will access thier URLs via that proxy
server. If a server name is not set, WebPage MOs will access thier URLs
using the proxy set (if any) in Windows Internet Settings.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.4.3 April 27, 2000
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Corrected a
bug in both the HostLogin MO and the Host Login scripts.
Alarms generated by HostLogin MOs would not escalate or clear
when the
alarm condition ended. The scripts are responsible for clearing alarms
but the scripts did not have the
code to do this. The scripts have been
updated to clear alarms. If you have modified scripts, you will need to
integrate
the changes to your custom scripts.
Corrected several bugs in the WebPage MO. These bugs were
fairly minor
but a few customers have seen problems with the WebPage MO hanging when
connecting to the web server.
We have not been able to prove the bugs
are the cause of the hangs, but they are fixed none the less.
Corrected several bugs in the SNMPQuery and SNMPTrap MOs that prevented
SNMP object IDs from being mapped to
thier English names as defined in
the SNMP MIBs. Also expanded the alarm message substitution variables
available
for the Trap MO. The formatted Trap message is now available
to a Task script attached to the Trap MO.
The EventLog MO now has additional substitution variables for the alarm
message. The formatted EventLog record
is now available to a Task
script attached to the EventLog MO.
The new feature in 1.4.2
that saves the network search results in a
disk file for reuse, had a bug in it that would cause the reload of the
disk file on startup to fail, if the comments returned about a system
on the network contained quote characters. This
has been fixed.
The pager service phone number box on the Paging Options tab had a bug
that would cause a Run Time Error if you opened the phone number drop
down list, ran the cursor over the list and then
clicked outside the
list area. This has been fixed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.4.2 April 06, 2000
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Changed the
way screen fields are handled. When a screen field is empty
and receives the focus, the field is NO longer hightlighted
by changing
the background to to an alternate color. The cursor is in the field but
the background remains white.
When a field that contains data receives
the focus, the test is highlighted instead of changing the background.
If
you move the cursor or type, the highlight is removed so that you
can selected data in the field and see the selection
highlight. This
scheme is much closer to the Microsoft standard and should make using
the screen fields easier.
Added a button to the Status screen to reset the Total Alarms and Total
Pages Sent counters.
The Paging Options Tab now allows you to use COM ports 3 and 4.
Reformatted the Schedule
Screen to try and make the Schedule function
more clear. Please review the on-line help for the Schedule Screen for
revised documentation of the Schedule object.
Added a Clear button to the Schedule Screen.
Clears all schedule fields
and if you click OK while the schedule is blank, the schedule will be
deleted.
Add new scripting capability for string searching. In order to provide
the most powerful and flexible string
searching possible, you may now
write a Visual Basic Script routine to perform string searching. On any
MO that
supports string searching you can enter a VB script function or
name a disk file containing a VB script function that
will be executed
and passed the MO's string information, so the script can perform ex-
tensive analysis of the
string to determine if an alarm condition is
present. See the on-line help for String Searching.
The NT Performance Counter Query and SNMP Query Monitored Objects have
been modified to function as Persistent
type objects. Both of these MO
were of the Discrete type. This change allows these objects to clear
any alarms they
have if all counters/objects being measured return to
normal states after being in alarm state. As discrete objects,
alarms
would have to be manually cleared.
Added the new Room Alert PLUS Monitored Object.
This MO monitors the
new Room Alert PLUS environmental sensor interface device.
Corrected
bugs in Room Alert MO that could cause it to use incorrect
COM port settings on the port used to communicate with this
hardware
device.
The results of network scans and TCP/IP & SNMP address auto discoverys
are now saved and automatically loaded at any location you can select
a system name or address. Buttons have been added
to the same screens
so you can request a rescan or rediscovery if your network has changed.
Also, this function
has been renamed network search instead of network
scan to remove confusion with monitored object scans.
Fixed a variety of minor bugs introduced in the 1.4 release.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.4.1 February 15, 2000
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Correct
bugs in sharing of the com port between paging and monitored
objects that use the com port.
Correct
bug in Event Log monitored object. Failed to detect errors on
log record read under some conditions and continued to
process the log
record when no record had actually been read.
Modified Task object to
enclose the name of NT program or command file
in quotes (if you do not) to allow for file names with embedded spaces.
Corrected problems with Room Alert Monitored Objects handling of the
com port when reading the RA box.
The TCPService and NT System monitored objects were not saving the
schedules assigned to them to the Registry,
thereby losing schedules
for these MOs when PageR was restarted. These MOs now save thier
schedules correctly.
The MO dependancy feature of the MO Schedule object was not working
correctly in cases where MOs are copied
to create new MOs. The source
MO and copied MO would incorrectly share the schedule object and depen-
dany list
instead of each MO having a private schedule object. This
has been corrected and every MO has it's own schedule object
and depen-
dancy list.
Modified the refresh period of the Web Status page refresh function
to
be longer than the scan period. We were having problems with web status
refreshes coming at the same time as
the start of a new scan and this
would slow down both the scan and the refresh. Increasing the refresh
period to
be somewhat longer than the scan interval reduces the problem.
The SMTP mail control used
to send SMTP mail alarm notifications was
using too short a timeout and this caused problems with mail delivery.
The timeout has been lengthened from 5 to 15 seconds and can be further
controlled with a Registry key.
The installer incorrectly registered the MSWINSCK.OCX control and this
would cause runtime errors when using
the TCPServices MO. The install
has been corrected to install MSWINSCK.OCX properly.
The
NT System MO would occasionally encounter error 2114 and was
unable to locate and format a system error message for this
error. It
has been determined that error 2114 indicates that the Server service
is not running on the target NT
System. Message text to this effect has
been associated with this error so it is now reported as a problem with
probing
the NT system, which it is, instead of a message formatting
problem.
The HostLogn MO
was not saving the Interval value if one was assigned.
This has been corrected and the Interval value is retained.
The NetWare Server MO has a new feature. If your NT system employs the
NetWare Client32 application for NetWare
connectivity, you can select
to have an alarm generated if the target NetWare server is up, but has
no connections
available. By default, no connections is not reported as
an error because we have confirmed the server is still up even
if there
are no connections available.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.4 December 17, 1999
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Syslog
Monitored Object has been enhanced to allow multiple objects
to be defined and associated with Syslog host systems. This
means that
a Syslog MO can now be identified with the name or address of a host
system, and syslog messages will
only be processed by that Syslog MO.
One Syslog MO can be defined with no name or address to act as default
MO.
In this manner, different notification options can be defined for
different Syslog MOs.
Added
a new Monitored Object, SNMP Query. This MO queries a network
device that supports SNMP, for selected SNMP MIB variables
and tests
the values of the variables against predefined thresholds and generates
alarms for variables that are
outside of tolerance. Since many network
devices support SNMP, this MO greatly extendes the monitoring reach of
PageR. This MO includes an SNMP Explorer that allows you to peruse the
MIB of a network device and select the varibles
you wish to monitor
interactively. See the on-line help for more information.
Added a
new Monitored Object, SNMP Trap. This MO is of the listener
type and allows PageR to receive SNMP traps sent from network
devices.
This enables PageR to record and generate alarms in response to network
problems that generate SNMP traps.
See the on-line help for more infor-
mation.
Added a new Monitored Object, TCP Services.
This MO monitors the TCP
Service(s) active on a selected system. TCP Services are processes that
listening on various
TCP ports on the target system. This new MO will
connect with the defined services and verify that they are available.
TCP Services are also known as TCP ports. This MO allows the user to
select from a list of known services and also
allows the user to add
services to the list. See the on-line help for the TCP Services MO for
more information.
Added a new Monitored Object, Host Login. This MO logs onto a host sys-
tem, optionally performs monitoring
tasks and logs out. It is used to
check the availability of host systems and perform some host monitoring
tasks.
This MO performs the login, logout and monitoring functions via
VBScript scripts. As such, these scripts can be modified
by CPL or the
user for customization purposes and to add new monitoring tasks. See
the on-line help for more information
and the sample login scripts in
\Scripts\Samples.
All Monitored Objects that are active
in nature, that is, are scanning
MOs, now have the Schedule Object as an option. This means that you can
have greater
control over when an MO is scanned. Each MO add/change
screen now has a Schedule button you can click to set up a schedule
for
the MO.
The Schedule Object has been enhanced to include a list of Dependant
Monitored
Objects. This means that a Monitored Object, can be made to
be dependant on other Monitored Objects. That is to say,
if MO-1 is
dependant on MO-2, MO-1 will not be scanned if MO-2 has an alarm in
progress. Scanning of MO-1 will resume
when the alarm on MO-2 clears.
See the on-line help for the Schedule Object for more information.
MOs which use search strings for record or message content matching are
now able to accept a list of search
strings directly instead of using a
search string file. When entering text in the Search Strings/File box
on an
MO, the text is examined for the pattern ?:\ in the first 3 chars
of the text. If this pattern is matched, the text is
assumed to be a
disk file name. This file is expected to contain a list search strings
as before. If the first 3
chars of the text in the box do not match the
pattern, the text in the box is expected to be a list of search strings
separated by semi-colons.
The Ping MO has been updated to allow retries. You may specify
the num-
of times the MO will ping the target device before generating an alarm.
You
may cause the position and size of the Main window to be saved and
then used to restore the same window position and
size on next startup.
To save the Main window size and location, add a Registry key to the
Globals section called
"SaveMainWindow" and set the value to "True".
The Monitored Object List
tab of the Options screen now allows you to
copy an existing object to create a new Monitored Object. The old MO is
cloned into a new MO and it's add/change screen is presented so you can
customize the new MO. This same list can
now sorted by any of the col-
umns in the list. Click on the column title box to change the sort.
You may now specify a dialing prefix on the Options Screen Paging tab.
Any characters entered in this field
will be substituted in dialing
scripts for the [PREFIX] substitution keyword.
Fixed a
bug in Web Page MO that caused the MO not to retain a search
string file name assigned to the MO.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.3 July 6, 1999
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Added a Monitored object, "Task". The Task MO will execute a script, NT
command file or program each time
it is scanned. Execution can further
be controlled by a Schedule which indicates when and how often a Task
is executed
no matter when and how many times it is scanned. Tasks can
also be triggered by clock ticks independant of scans. Tasks
can also
be executed by Alarm objects allowing you to extend alarm processing.
Alarm scripts have extensive access
to PageR internal data items and
functions. With this capability, you can use the Task object to create
your own
monitored objects. Given the functions available to scripts
from the Windows Scripting Host Object Model (WSHOM.OCX)
and Scripting
Run Time (SCRRUN.DLL), Tasks are a very powerful addition to the capa-
bilities of PageR. See the
on-line help for a complete discussion of
Task objects. See the \Scripts\Samples directory for sample scripts.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: You must have the Windows Scripting
Host installed on your system
to use Task objects. WSH is installed with IE 4.1 and NT 4.0 SP4. You
can also download
WSH from the MicroSoft web site.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the new script functions available to Task objects is the ReBoot
function. This function allows you to
write a simple script to reboot
the local system or a remote system.
The Alarm object
now supports repeating an alarm escalation schedule
indefinately until the alarm condition is cleared. The repeat scheme
varys for descrete or persistent monitored object types. See the help
for Alarm objects.
The
NT Performance Counter Add/Change screen has been improved making
the performance counter grid easier to view.
The String Search capability employed on some monitored objects has
been improved. To date, each line in a
string search file contained one
or more words of text. Each line was treated as a whole phrase and the
target text
was searched for the whole phrase. To give more flexibility
in string searching, pattern matching is now supported. Existing
search
files will continue to function in the old manner. You may now specify
a pattern match by enclosing the pattern
string in quotes. Only one
pattern per string file line. Pattern matching greatly improves the
capability of string
searching. See the on-line help for a detailed
discussion of pattern matching in string searching.
By default, when an alarm notification is emailed, the subject line of
the email contains a generic announcement
of an error notification and
the details of the notification are in the email body. You may now set
a registry key
to cause the notification detail text to be used as the
email subject line. The registry key is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PageR\Globals\AlarmIsMailSubject
Set the value of this
key to a string of True.
In any field were you can enter an e-mail recipient for alarm notifica-
tion, you may now enter multiple e-mail recipients separating the mail
addresses with a semi-colon. The alarm notification
will be mailed to
each recipient.
The AlertScript W command is used to display text to
the Activity Log
window. The yellow "warning" icon was used for such messages. The blue
"information"
icon is now used for AlertScript W command activity log
messages.
The Status screen now
displays the Last Alarm ID number assigned to
monitored objects that have alarm notifications. This enables the use
of the alarm ID number on numeric pages and the recipient of the page
to determine the MO that originated the page.
Improved the buttons used to control the Web Status functions on the
Web Status web pages. Added the ability
to subset the Monitored Object
List display on Web status, in the same way you can subset the Status
screen.
When using security with Web Status, you can now disable that security
checking for the Manual Page function
of Web Status. This allows users
to send manual pages without having access to the rest of Web Status if
they don't
know the user and password that secures Web Status.
Added a new Monitored Object, Room Alert.
The Room Alert MO monitors
the Room Alert(tm) environmental monitoring product from AVTECH.
Room Alert is a small,
simple hardware device that interfaces commer-
cially available environment sensors to the COM port of the NT system.
This allows the Room Alert MO to monitor the Room Alert hardware via
the COM port and report environmental problems
such as overtemp, smoke,
water (and much more) just like any other monitored object. See the on-
line help and
the AVTECH Web Site for more details on the Room Alert
product.
Added string searching
to Web Page monitored object. If a web page is
downloaded without error, you can then search the page contents for one
or more text strings, whose presense define an alarm condition.
TCP/IP port number fields
on the Options Tab are now edited for correct
range, 1 to 32767.
The Scan Now button
and pull-down menu choice will run a one-time scan
if not in scanning mode or will trigger the next scan if in scanning
mode. When not in scanning mode and the one-time scan is requested, the
scan will be performed in single-thread
mode, even if multi-threading
is enabled. This is to work around problems with multi-threading in one
time scans.
If scanning mode is in progress and the the Scan Now button
is clicked, the next scan is started immediately and will
be multi-
threaded if multi-threading is enabled.
Fixed a bug that caused corruption
of the configuration stored in the
registry when extensive add/delete of monitored objects was performed.
Expanded the Predefined NT Performace Counter selection to include
basic Performance Counter Query MOs for
MS Exchange, MS SQL Server and
MS Internet Information Server. These new predefined performance query
objects are
now visible on the Add Monitored Object Selection screen.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.2.4 April 19, 1999
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
When monitoring
Event Logs on another NT system, event text would not
be retrieved if the software application that generated an event
log
record was not also installed on the local system. Fixed to correctly
retrieve event text from the remote application's
message file.
The IP address Auto Discovery would continue to run even after it's
screen was closed, causing very slow execution of the user interface
until the auto discovery completed. Fixed to stop
auto discovery when
the screen is closed.
Fixed bug in NetWare Server MO that would intermittently
report servers
as down when they were really up.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
** SPECIAL NOTICE **
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you wish to use
the Web Page Monitored object, the Wininet DLLs must
be installed on your system. If you DO NOT have Internet Explorer
4.x
installed, and you are on NT 4.0, execute the program WintDist.exe in
the install directory, or if you are
on 3.51, execute Wint351.exe. This
will install the Wininet DLLs for use.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.2.3 March 12, 1999
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed a bug
in the Network scan function that autodiscovers the systems
on the network accesible via Microsoft or Novell networking.
The scan
would fail on 1.2.2 due to a memory management problem.
Fixed several small
bugs in the Email notification Options Tab. Test
mail can now be sent without saving the configuration and returning
to
the tab.
Fixed a bug in the Ping Monitored Object that would cause the ping to
fail if the hosts file name maintained internally is incorrect.
The Contact screen now edits
the .MSG file name for validity.
Fixed several bugs in the Options screen that caused intermittent
fail-
ures when adding/deleteing Contacts and Alarms.
Fixed a problem in the new Internal
Processing error Alarm Object that
would cause a loop if the alarm object employed had an error during
alarm processing.
Fixed a problem with the NT System Monitored Object. Due to security
constraints in NT networks, this MO would
sometimes fail with the error
"Access Denied".
The [PARM] substitution function
now removes any exclamation point (!)
characters in the data to be substituted. Exclamation points inserted
into
Alert Script paging files would cause the script to fail since the
! is the comment character in Alert Script.
The [PHONE] substitution parameter now removes any special characters
found in the phone number. This allows
phone numbers to be entered in
any format desired, such as (nnn) nnn-nnnn and the non-numeric charac-
ters will
be removed before dialing.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.2.2 February 23, 1999
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The PageR
install incorrectly installed CALWIN32.DLL starting with
release 1.1.7 and this may cause problems with other applications.
This
DLL is no longer part of the installation package.
The NT Performance Counter Monitored
Object has two new substitution
parameters for use in alarm messages. [NAME] will substitute the perf
counter name
without it's object path. [COUNTERN] will substitute the
name of the counter and the test and current values for
the counter.
[COUNTER] continues to substitute the full path of the counter along
with the counter values.
If you experience problems with the NT Performance Counter MO causing
unexpected terminations on NT 4.0, you
need to install Service Pack 4.
SP4 corrects a number of issues affecting this MO.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.2.1 February 5, 1999
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Corrected
a bug in the Alarm Object that caused a failure when an NT
Service monitored object caused an alarm notification to occur.
When doing test paging from the paging options tab and using a Message
Server device, some subsitution parameters
were not replaced with thier
values. Now works as documented.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.2 January 22, 1999
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Release 1.2
is a major functionality upgrade for PageR Enterprise.
**************************** NOTICE
***********************************
When you install 1.2, you will be required to obtain a new License Key.
When
you run 1.2 for the first time after upgrade, be presented with a
screen, which displays your system serial number and
license informa-
tion. Call, mail or fax Avtech that information and the corresponding
License Key will be returned.
When this screen is displayed, PageR
will automatically become a 30 day demo. You must obtain a new license
key
in 30 days to avoid an interruption in PageR service.
***********************************************************************
Added a "Scan Now " button to the tool bar. If scanning is in progress,
this will cause the next scan
to start now. If not scanning, a single
scan is performed.
Added progress display to
the splash screen while SNT is loading it's
configuration.
Add an item to the File
pull down menu to write a test record to the
NT Application Event Log. This facilitates demoing the EventLog Moni-
tored Object.
The file selection dialog for MSG files (.MSG) and String Search files
(.STR) now allows you to navigate from the Alerts or Search directories
to the Samples directory below Alerts or Search.
If you select a sample
file and edit it, the file save dialog will be pointing to Alerts or
Search and if you accept
the this, the modified sample will be saved
in Alerts or Search, not Samples. This makes it easy to customize the
sample files and move them to the "production" directories.
The Quiet Time maintenance
form now has a Clear button to reset the QT
object.
Substitution parameters in message
strings and MSG files may now be
assigned a default value. Substitution parameters may have the form
[PARMNAME]
or [PARMNAME=value]. If the parameter is not substituted
prior to use of the string or file record and a default has
been speci-
fied, the parameter will be replaced by the default value. Setting the
default value as nothing [PARMNAME=]
will remove the parameter.
The Pager Phone Number box on the Paging Options Tab is now a drop
down
box with a selection of common pager serivces and thier phone numbers.
You may select from the list or type
in a number.
When adding a new Monitored Object, the drop down list of object types
has
been replaced by a form showing icons for the various object types
available. Single click on an icon for a more detailed
description of
the monitored object or double click to add a new object of that type.
The
NT Server Monitored Object has been renamed the NT System Monitored
Object, as it can monitor both NT Server and Workstation
systems.
Added the P command to the Alert Script Alpha Numeric dialing function.
This
command sets dynamically modem port characteristics. See the Alert
Script documentation in the on-line help for details.
On the Device Test form of the Pager Options Tab, there is a new field
called Message Text. Any text placed
in this field will be substituted
for any [ALARM] substitution parameter in the paging script file being
tested.
This allows easy testing of alpha numeric pagers.
The Email Options Tab now has a Test button,
which will send a test
email message using the options configured.
You may now specify
the value "All" as a paging group on Alarm Notifi-
cation Schedules. This will page all defined Contacts.
Added the ability to send "manual" pages. This is invoked by a new tool
bar button or via Web Status.
It allows you to interactively send a
page to any of the defined Contacts.
Added a new
Monitored Object, the NT Performance Query. This MO allows
you to define a query, made up of one or more NT Performance
Counters.
During a scan, the query is executed against the selected NT system and
the values of the defined counters
are retrieved. The values are then
checked and can generate alarms for values found to be out of the range
you have
defined. See the on-line help for details.
The Paging Queue screen (Status screen) now shows
the alarm message
text that will be sent for each page request.
The Paging Queue screen
now allows you to select a page request by
clicking on the object type field and pressing the DEL key. Active
page
requests cannot be deleted.
The Status screen now supports detailed MO information display.
You can
click on an MO listed on the Status screen to select it and then right
click to bring up the context menu.
Click on Object Details to see a
detailed display of all of the monitored object's attributes. Click
anywhere
on this display to return to the normal Status screen object
list. The Web Status Monitored Object display now includes
much more
detail for each MO as a parallel to this addition to the Status screen.
Extensive
changes to the Web Status function. The information is now
presented in a more sohpisticated format using HTML Frames.
Web Status
performance has been improved and several bugs fixed. This new format
is now the default format, but
the old format can still be used by
adding /Status.htm to the URL you use to access Web Status.
There is now an option to log or not log Web Status requests on the
More Options Tab.
Alarms no longer automatically clear when leaving the Status screen.
Alarms must be cleared individually with
the Status screen right click
context menu. You can also clear all alarms by Stopping the scan.
This leads to the definition of some new terms. MOs have an attribute
of "alarm type". This alarm
type is DESCRETE or PERSISTENT. Descrete
alarm objects have alarms that are descrete or separate events. The NT
Event
Log or disk file scan are examples. Each alarm detected for these
MOs, is not connected to any other. When an alarm is
detected, the MO
goes into the Alarm state, but each new alarm is processed and alarmed
as just as the first. In
this case, being in an alarm state really just
serves as a highlight that the MO has reported an alarm. The alarm state
of this MO is cleared manually or when scanning stops.
PERSISTENT alarm objects enter
the alarm state and stay there until the
alarm condition clears or is manually cleared. NT systems and Netware
Servers
are examples of this. If an NT system goes down, and this is
detected by the MO, the MO enters the alarm state and stays
that way
until the NT system comes back up (auto clear) or the alarm is cleared
manually. Once in alarm state,
no new alarms are possible with this type
of object. See the on-line help for more information.
Alarm Objects can now generate an "alarm" when the alarm state of an MO
clears. This allows you to
be paged when an alarm condition is cleared.
The Disk File Scan MO watches the EOF (end of
file) of the target disk
file and if the eof of the file is found to drop below the current scan
position in the
file, the file is assumed to have been recreated, and the
scan position will be reset to zero, causing the entire file
to be
scanned and a new file position established.
The Disk File Scan MO normally scans
forward from the ending file posi-
tion set on the last scan of the file. You can now tell the MO to scan
the entire
file every time it is scaned.
The NT Service MO now has an option to send an alarm when the
service
is found to be down, even if the restart of the service is successfull.
This allows you know there was a
problem with a service even if the
service has been restarted.
On the Global Options
Tab you can now select an Alarm Object to be used
to generate Alarms for internal errors encountered while scanning.
This
will allow paging when processing errors (not Alarms) occur.
The Disk File Monitored
Object now supports the use of the Control-Z
character to mark the end of file in a disk file. This is a selectable
option allowing the disk file MO support different disk file eof con-
ventions.
Due
to the fact that the exclamation point character is used in paging
files (.MSG) to denote comments, use of the ! character
in alarm mess-
ages or any other text items that can be substituted into paging files,
causes paging to fail. PageR
now removes all ! characters from paging
file lines before processing them.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1.7 October 26, 1998
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Disk
File Monitored Object did not correctly handle disk files with
embedded control-Z (end of file) characters. This problem
caused run
time errors. The Disk File MO has been modified to ignore control-Z
characters. The size of the disk
file determines the end of file. The
1.2 release will include support for using control-Z as the end of file
marker.
When running as a service, or logging to the NT event log, PageR did not
create a certain Registry entry correctly
on NT 3.51 and this caused PEM
to report LoadLibrary errors whenever it encountered an eventlog record
it had
created.
PageR did not recognize the Novell Client 32 for NT as a network
provider and
so could not detect NetWare servers when Client 32 is
installed. PEM now supports Novell's Client 32 for NT as a
network
provider.
The Web Page Monitored Object now handles secure pages using the SSL
protocol (https://).
Fixed a bug in the Web Page MO that did not handle relative URLs for
images contained in a monitored web page.
The FTP GET MO failed if no remote path was specified.
It now allows
a blank remote path and looks for the target file in the remote user's
login directory.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1.6 July 15, 1998
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Disk File Scan monitored object normally holds the disk file being
monitored open between scans. This is to reduce
overhead. In some cases
holding the file open interferes with other processing of the file. You
may now set an option
to have the disk file closed after each scan and
reopened on the next scan.
The scanning
of the network to discover servers and clients has become
a significant problem due to the amount of time it takes. The
length of
time of the network scan is driven by the number of systems on the net-
work and how many of them are
turned off when the network scan is done.
PageR has been modified to not perform a network scan until you select
the drop-down button on an option field that shows a list of systems on
the network. At that moment, if the system
list is not already cached,
the network scan will take place. Further, a dialog form now appears
warning of the
impending network scan and gives the option to continue
or cancel the network scan.
The
setup process now creates a PageR Enterprise sub-menu on the NT Start
Menu that contains shortcuts for running PageR
in trace mode or License
mode, displaying the help or release notes.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1.5 June 18, 1998
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Corrected a
problem with Message Server Polling. The first attempt to
send the PollStar.msg file to the message server would cause
an abort.
The Search Strings file tab on the Options Screen would save new search
string
files to the Alerts directory instead of the Search directory.
It now saves new files to the Search directory as expected.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1.4 June 10, 1998
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Corrected a bug in the "Scan Objects Now" command. The command was not
executed when in multi-threaded operation
mode. Now works in single or
multi-threaded mode.
Fixed Web Page monitored object to
report badly formed URLs as an error
instead of just ignoring them with no indication of a problem.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1.3 June 9, 1998
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Added a "Scan Objects Now" command to the File pull down menu. This new
command allows the user to perform
a one-time scan of the monitored
objects when scanning is not started, or causes an immediate scan if
scanning has
been started. This feature should help with demo and setup
testing and at sites who wish to use a long scan interval.
This command
will likely be added to the tool bar at a later time.
Updated the Alert
Script .MSG files in \Alerts\Samples.
Added a new file to \Alerts\Samples, PAGERINF.TXT.
This file contains
the dial-up numbers for major Paging services in the USA and Europe.
Created
a new "Search" directory to hold Search String files. A Samples
directory within Search holds sample search
string files.
Modifed the Search String file Browse/selection function to copy any
search
string files selected in \Search\Samples to \Search and select
the file in the \Search directory. This preserves sample
files and will
protect user customization from being overwritten during an update.
On
the Alert Script R command, you may now use the ^x escape sequence
to generate control characters in the modem input
match strings.
Corrected a bug in the Web Page monitored object that would cause an
abort
of PageR. The Web Page MO was not handling some URL formats
correctly and Wininet.dll is not very tolerant of incorrectly
formatted
URLs!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1.2 June 5, 1998
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Added a sample
string search file for use when scanning the log files
from Legato Networker. The file is \Alerts\Samples\Legato.str.
The documentation for Alert Script omitted an important detail. On the
S command, you can use the escape sequence
^x to generate control char-
acters. Thus, ^B generates a control-B in the output stream sent to the
comm port.
Add support for full TAP paging protocol to Alert Script. On the S com-
mand of Alert Script, you can use the
new escape command ~[ to generate
a TAP checksum for the TAP data block that preceeds the ~[ on the S
command. A
TAP data block is defined as all characters between an STX
and ETX (inclusive). The STX can be generated on the S command
line with
^B and the ETX with ^C. Added a new sample .MSG file TAPFULL.MSG, that
implements paging using the full
TAP protocol.
You can now have comments in search string (.STR) files. When an * or !
character
is encountered on a line, everything after the * or ! will be
treated as a comment.
Fixed
a problem that caused PageR to not completely shutdown when
exited.
The Paging Queue
screen (accesible from the Status screen toolbar) now
indicates when a page has not been performed due to being in either
the
global or a contact level quiet time.
The design of the PageR install directory
has paging files (.MSG)
that are in use located in the Alerts directory. Sample .MSG files are
in the Samples directory.
Files in Samples will be overlayed during
updates, hence placing in-use .MSG files in Alerts. In this way, any
customizations
made to .MSG files will not be lost during updates. The
Paging Script browsing button on the Alarm and Contact object
screens
will allow you to select a .MSG file from the Samples directory, but
it will automatically copy that .MSG
file to the Alerts directory and
select it for your use.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1.1 May 27, 1998
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
** SPECIAL NOTICE
**
If you wish to use the Web Page Monitored object, Wininet.dll must be
installed on your system. If you are on
NT 4.0 and you DO NOT have
Internet Explorer installed, just execute the program WintDist.exe in
the install directory.
If you are on 3.51 execute Wint351.exe in the
install directory. This will install and configure Wininet.dll for use.
** SPECIAL NOTICE **
Multi-threaded operation was disabled for a short time with the 1.1.0
release. You
may now resume multi-threaded operation.
The Alert Script Samples directory now appears in
the Alerts directory.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1.1.0 May 1998
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a major enhancement
release. Enhancements are discussed here
at a simple level of detail. For more information about enhancements
please
consult the on-line help.
You may now use your own icons in place of the standard OK, info,
Warn
and Alarm message icons. The More Globals option tab allows you to
browse and select an icon to be used for
each message type.
Several new .wav files have been added for audible alarms.
All monitored objects have three new attributes you can set. They are:
Interval
- Sets an object specific scan interval. PageR still
scans objects on the global interval but objects with
an object level interval are not scanned until their
interval time passes.
Delay - Sets an amount of time
that an alarm condition must
persist
before an alarm is generated. Alarm generated on
next scan after delay time passes.
Severity - Sets a numeric value 1-9,
with 9 as lowest, that is used
to
indicate how severe an alarm on a object is. At this
point this attribute is only used to sort the Status
Screen monitored object display. It can be used to put
the most important objects at the top of the list.
When adding new monitored objects on the
Monitored Objects Tab, you now
select object types from a drop down list instead of individual buttons
for each
object type.
The Status Screen has been extensively reworked. It now allows the list
of
monitored objects to be sorted by Severity as well as Object Type.
You can subset the object list by status (OK, Alarm,
Suspended) or by
a specific object type (see EventLog objects only). You can also view
the new Paging Queue Screen
from a button on the Status Screen toolbar.
The status screen auto-update is no longer based on time. The Status
Screen
will update when any object or the overall status changes. The
various options are now selected from a tool bar.
Paging is now handled by a Page Queue. Any alarm that generates a
page now queues that page request in the
Page Queue. Paging is now
handled by a separate thread from the scanning thread, allowing paging
to be processed
asynchronously from scanning. This should improve per-
formance. The Page queue allows greater flexibility and control
over
paging and supports page escalation (covered below). There is a new
screen that displays the Page Queue, accessible
from a tool bar button
on the Status Screen.
In all locations where substitution parms
are used, the [TYPE] parm
is now available. It expands to the object type description of the
monitored object being
processed.
All screens have been modified to handle text fields in a more standard
fashion.
When tabbing to text field or selecting with the mouse, the
cursor will be set to the end of any data present in the
field. If you
press backspace, it will delete the data. To modify the data, you must
move the cursor in the field
to the location to be modified. To add
data to the field, you must press the right arrow once, before typing.
Add phone number and pager id fields to the Paging Options Tab. These
fields may be substituted in paging or
message server scripts with the
[PHONE] and [PAGERID] substitution parms.
The Disk File
Monitored Object has two new scanning options. Normally,
if the disk file named for a Disk File Object is not found at
scan
time, this error is ignored. If the file appears, it is scanned. You
may now cause an alarm to be generated
if the file is not present. You
may also cause an alarm to be generated if the file is found. This will
allow alarms
to be generated based on the presence or absense of the
file, as well as on the content of the file when present.
The Disk File Monitored Object used to validate the file name in the
disk file field as it was typed. This caused
some significant delays
when a UNC name was typed. Validation is now separate from typing and
is invoked by a button.
After typing or browsing a file name, you can
click the button to have the file name validated.
Prior to 1.1, when running as a service, disk files on remote systems
specified by mapped drives or UNC names
could not be scanned. You can
now scan disk files on other systems in Service Mode by specifying the
file name as
a UNC name (drive mapping is not supported). A UNC name
has this format: \\system\path\file Note that you must set up the Serivce User
Name and Password (on More
Globals option tab) for this to work correctly.
Setting up
Service Mode operation is no longer done by running the
PageR.exe program with -switches (servin.bat & servunin.bat).
You
can install/uninstall PageR for Service Mode operation on the More
Globals option tab. You can also identify
a system or Domain User that
PageR will impersonate while in Service Mode. Impersonating a user
solves some security
problems for Service Mode programs. Setting up
the user allows remote disk files to be scanned while in Service Mode.
The user name selected should be a system administrator and needs to
have the "Act as Part of the Operating
System" and "Logon as a Batch Job"
rights assigned.
When the STOP button
is clicked on the Main Screen, scanning stops and
the page queue is cleared. Alarms in progress are not cleared, allowing
the Status Screen to be used to view status as of the moment scanning
stopped. When the START button is clicked all
alarms are cleared before
scanning begins.
PageR now supports browser access to status
information and control
functions via NetScape or Internet Explorer. If browser status requests
are enabled, PageR
listens for HTTP requests from browsers and will
display status information back to the browser. you can view global
status information and a list of monitored objects and their status.
More detailed information for each object
can be viewed and you can
view the current Activity Log. You can stop/start scanning, enable or
disable paging,
clear alarms, suspend/resume objects. This feature
gives remote access to PageR status and control.
The NT Service Monitored Object has a new option, Attempt Restart. If
the service is not running and this option
is enabled, the service will
be restarted. If the restart is successful, no alarm is generated. If
the restart fails,
an alarm is generated.
Note that to monitor NT Services on other systems, you must be logged
on as a Domain user with Administrator privileges. You can monitor
services on other systems in the Domain that
you are logged on to. If
running as a service, the Service User (see above) must be a Domain
user with Administrator
privilege.
Added a new Monitored Object, Web Page. This object lets you check a
web address
(URL) on each scan and will generate an alarm if the web
page fails to download or takes too long (you set a timeout).
Added a new Monitored Object, FTP File Get. This is not a monitored
object in the normal sense. This object
performs a function for you
on each scan, and that is to retreive disk file(s) from a remote system
and place them
in a local directory. This can be used to watch for SPIN
files on a remote system and transfer them to the SPIN directory
for
processing. You can retreive disk log files from other systems and then
scan them with the Disk File Monitored
Object.
Added a new Monitored Object, Syslog Server. This is not a monitored
object in
the normal sense. If you add the Syslog Server Object, it
creates a Syslog server process that listens for Syslog messages
from
other systems. Syslog is a UNIX error handling and reporting system.
Event messages generated on UNIX systems
can be handled by the Syslog
system on the UNIX machine. One capability of Syslog is to forward
messages to another
system. You can configure Syslog on UNIX systems
(and other devices that support Syslog) to forward errors to the NT
system on which PageR is running. If the Syslog Server Object is
configured, it will receive the Syslog messages and
process them. In
this fashion, PageR can monitor events on non-windows systems that
support Syslog.
Quiet Times are now set by a special screen that shows a 7 x 24 grid
representing all hours in a week. You can
click on grid locations to
set quiet time ranges. Quiet times can be set at the start of an hour
or on the half
hour. If you have global quiet time set, after you
install 1.1, you must go to the Global Options Tab and reset your
quiet
time using the new screen.
PageR uses an object model to describe it's environment.
Monitored
Objects represent the things on the network that are monitored. Alarm
Objects define actions to be taken
when a monitored object generates
an alarm. PageR now supports Contact Objects. A Contact is simply a
person that
is to be notified on an alarm. A Contact can be notified
by paging, e-mail or message broadcast. Contacts are setup on
the new
Contacts Tab on the Options Screen. The Alarm Object Screen has been
modified to allow you to specify alarm
attributes directly on the alarm
object screen, as you have in the past, or by specifying a list of
Contacts to
notify. This list of Contacts is a grid that allows you to
specify one or more individual Contacts or Contact groups,
that will be
notified on an alarm. Further, you can specify a different set of Contacts
to be notified at each
scan that an alarm persists through. This allows
you to escalate alarm notification over time, to different people.
This
capability allows simple alarm notification or extensive alarm escalation
schemes. See the on-line help for
more details on
this major enhancement to PageR.
PageR now supports alpha numeric Paging
via a modem. As before,
PageR does paging by copying script files to the modem or message
server. Modem scripts
are simply modem commands. Alpha numeric Paging
required the use of the message server, which uses a script language
called Alert Script, to perform intelligent paging. PageR now
supports Alert Script directly. Using Alert Script in
the paging script
files now allows you to perform alpha numeric paging with a normal modem.
Alpha numeric paging
supports all paging providers and protocols via it's
paging scripts. It also allows information from PageR, such
as alarm
messages to be sent as part of a page.
Use of substitution parms in paging
scripts has been expanded. You may
now substitute information about monitored objects, alarms and contacts
into
paging scripts. This allows scripts to send alarm message text in
alpha numeric pages. It also allows the phone number
and pager id to
be substituted into a paging script from the Contact object being paged
or from global defaults.
This greatly enhances paging flexibility and
supports alpha numeric paging.
Corrected
a problem in Event Log monitored object that caused it to not
not report some event records on remote systems.
On the configuration screens for event log, NT system and NT service
monitored objects and several places on
the Global option tabs, the
drop-down boxes for selecting NT systems would only show systems on the
local domain.
This has been fixed and all NT systems on the network
will appear in the boxes.
When
running PageR as a service, you can now specify StartUp Para-
meters on the Service Control Manager screen. At this time,
the only
valid parameter to use is "trace". This will cause PageR service
to start up with tracing turned
on.
--------------------------------------------------------------
1.0.1 February
3, 1998
--------------------------------------------------------------
Fixed a problem in Event Log scanning where
very complex event log
records caused an index overflow.
Modified the .MSG and string
file edit boxes on the Options screen.
These boxes would cause program error 62 when opening disk files that
contain
a control-d as an eof. The edit boxes now handle files with
ctrl-d.
Further modified
these edit boxes to use a fixed font and not wrap
lines. This should make editing these files easier.
Changed the default Log Detail Level to zero instead of 3.
Fixed a problem in the
NT Service Monitored Object. Some Services
refuse active status interrogation. The code did not allow for this
and
would incorrectly trigger an alarm on this type of Service. An
example of this type of Service is the TCP/IP Service.
The code now
handles this case and correctly determines the status of this type of
Service.
Corrected errors in the on-line help.
--------------------------------------------------------------
1.0 January 5, 1998
--------------------------------------------------------------
First Production Release.
