Comments wanted - OK to drop BB support in Hobbit? 🔗 link

user-92fd6827f6ae@xymon.invalid 04/21/05 8:22 AM >>>

Well, I don't see any problem with this, but I would like to see bbclient compatibility remain. I don't think hobbit yet has the right amount of client tests to be able to ignore what BB has. ie, even just the standard BB client works better than the current hobbit version (not that I've tried it, since you keep telling us it doesn't work)... but add to that all the stuff on www.deadcat.net, and, well... you know, thats a lot to try and replicate...

Losing deadcat stuff would be a bad thing.  I guess that's part of breaking away.  Hobbit will just need to spring something up like deadbunny or some other typical pet for a Hobbit.

To be honest, I wonder if the quest version of BB is actually selling/successful... ie, are there still loads of new BB users sprouting up, or is it just old BTF license users who are using/maintaining old BB installations.... We haven't seen any BTF releases, and I've not seen anything anywhere to indicate that there have been any commercial updates/changes either.

There haven't been many commercial updates, and it looks like Quest is starting to move away from giving the source out. I got an e-mail a couple of weeks ago, inviting me to try the new BBPe 3.1.  Interestingly enough, there is a pdf on their site that goes through the differences between the Pe and BTF versions, and there's really only one - integration with SpotLight and FogLight.

Apparently the QA cycle for the new features is much longer than when it used to be purely BTF.

Paul

Is there any plan for creating a team/group to develop the hobbit
clients, or is this something that Henrik plans to tackle himself? 

Just curious...

Daniel Magnuszewski
CCNA
M & T Bank
user-2179d46e0f82@xymon.invalid

user-c8222abeff59@xymon.invalid 04/21/05 8:23 AM >>>

On Thu, Apr 21, 2005 at 01:20:46PM, Henrik Stoerner wrote:

So what do you say - can I drop the BB support and focus entirely on
a pure Hobbit environment?

Absolutely. It will give you some time to work on a BB client
replacement as well :-)

On Thu, Apr 21, 2005 at 11:42:04AM -0400, DANIEL MAGNUSZEWSKI wrote:

Some work has already been done by Emanuel Dreyfus, who wrote the
NetBSD client currently available on Sourceforge.

I'll probably do some things a bit differently - one issue that must
be adressed is that it would be nice to have the Hobbit client work
with as many of the Deadcat extensions as possible. I also have some
plans to change the way data is reported for use in the RRD graphs, so
that it becomes simpler (and less error-prone) for Hobbit to pick out
the data reported by clients.

So any help is welcome, if you have some C programming skills and feel
like contributing some time to the project. If you're not really a
programmer, docs also need to be written - and most importantly, all
of you can help test it and find bugs :-)


Regards,
Henrik

I don't see a problem with breaking BB compatibility either.  One of the best things about BB is deadcat and the amount of useful extensions it contains (and how easy it is to upload and share extensions).

The most popular BB extensions will be converted for use with Hobbit, eg. bb-central, bb-mrtg, LARRD ;) etc

It would be great if a guide was produced outlining how to convert a BB script into Hobbit format.  ie. to send a request to BB you need x, to send it to hobbit you need to change the format to y.

That, and a place to store your own hobbit extensions.

So, short term I see BB clients still working until the Hobbit client becomes as functional, then it would be fine to cut BB scripts off (with some sort of migration path mapped out).


Craig Cook
--
Systems Monitoring Consulting and Support Services
http://www.cookitservices.com

On Thu, Apr 21, 2005 at 09:10:02AM -0400, PAUL WILLIAMSON wrote:

As I wrote in another message, being able to use as many of the
Deadcat client-side extensions as possible is important. And Hobbit
needs to stay compatible with the BB client.

(I have several hundred clients installed myself - upgrading all of
them just isn't an option).

One thing I've noticed is that traffic on the BB mailing list appears
to have dropped significantly after the Hobbit mailinglist started,
and the beta-testing really got going.

There are currently 169 adresses subscribed to the Hobbit list, and a
handful more only on the announcement-list. I guess I must be doing
something right :-)


Regards,
Henrik

I think you've done an amazing job.  Cutting the ties with Qwest is a good
thing.  I bought the PE version during a big sale last year, and haven't
heard a thing from them (upgrades, etc).  They should have given you a big
check and thrown bbgen into BB.  Just my personal opinion.

On the agent side, though I am not a programmer by trade, I am trying to
develop a windows client.  Just working on it when I have the time.  I'll
post something when I get it, however I expect it won't be for a month or
two.

Thanks for everything Henrik.

<snip>

One thing I've noticed is that traffic on the BB mailing list appears
to have dropped significantly after the Hobbit mailinglist started,
and the beta-testing really got going.

There are currently 169 adresses subscribed to the Hobbit list, and a
handful more only on the announcement-list. I guess I must be doing
something right :-)


Regards,
Henrik