ChangeLog

ChangeLog

BixData 2.7

BixDesktop
New Agent Overview page
Ability to create new templates and edit streams in report templates
Reorganized network scan
Reorganized Virtualization
Added ability to send selected hosts to any tag in network scan
Tags list takes up less space
New realtime graph sliders / labels

BixServer
Added MySQL monitoring
Fixed server stability problems with network scan and network topolgy
Fixed issues with network topology, when receiving no results
Fixed server stability when adding or removing a large number of reports
Fixed issues with not receiving data in data collections, resulting in empty reports/graphs.
Fixes problems with agents not reporting some data collections, now doing a synchronize of data collections with all agents on startup

BixAgent
Added custom monitoring through scripts/perl/python
Fixed a random segfault/crash in Agent.

BixData 2.6

BixDesktop

New visual layout, reducing the amount of wasted space
Removed the browser-style connect bar and replaced with the new HomeTab.
This tab is always visible and acts as a starting point for your connections.
Also houses favorites and recent workspaces.
Removed menu bar
Changed view dropdown to new smaller dropdown with subviews
Allowing custom fonts on a per user basis

Situation room:
Each scoreboard gets their own view
Tags are now semi-hierarchical.
Service check tags (up/down) are now together
Smart tags introduced. The BixServer can detect if the host

• Is running BixAgents
• Which OS the BixAgent is running
• Whether or not the agent is a VM Host or Guest

Notification History: reorganized to compact options
Notifications Setup: reorganized

Completely reimagined reporting. Allowing you to

• Browse existing reports
• Setup reports
• Setup templates

While browsing the static reports, you can import the actual data into a
dynamic viewer for closer inspection / debugging.

Virtualization support. See your VM Hosts and which Guests they have
running on them. Start, stop, and pause hosts.

Network scan: reorganized
Database setup: reorganized

New overlay screen while disconnected from server/agent

BixServer and BixAgent features include:

• Virtualization support
  • supports Xen and VMWare
  • support for hosts and guests
  • full graphical management console for multiple VMs
  • monitoring and data collection of VM statistics
  • screenshot: VM Management Console
• New reporting system
  • scheduling of reports
  • HTML reports demo here
  • graph and table template customization
  • realtime graph viewer for historical data
• Smart Tags
  • automatically label machines based on OS, VM type, or any custom identifier

BixData 2.5 SDK

BixData SDK for C++ is now available. You can now write plug-ins for data sources, performance, software and hardware monitoring. The SDK allows you to publish schemas for storage in the Operational Data store and SQL servers. The SDK compiles for FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
For more information read the BixData SDK page

BixData 2.5

BixDesktop

* New Features *

• Changed how you change views, new dropdown on top instead of buttons on left
• Middle click button to close tabs
• Moved error and apply/cancel bars to view title area
• Context sensitive help button for web based help
• Moved tags list in situation room to the left and merged into one list
• Moved status categories to the left
• Changed visual style to be consistent on all platforms
• Mac Universal Binary Desktop
• Added ability to make translations

BixServer

* New Features *

• Mac Universal Binary Server

* Fixed Issues *

• Service check failure range now works for all servicechecks. In 2.4.2 it worked for only agent and agent custom.
• Data collection timeout issues with data collections that contain more than 300 hosts
• Resolved installation failure of the DB version of Server (which includes PostgreSQL) on Windows 2000, and a separate issue on Linux when PostgreSQL is already installed.

BixAgent

* New Features *

• Mac Universal Binary Agent
• Disk and Network plugins for FreeBSD

* Fixed Issues *

• Small bug fixes for FreeBSD Plugins

BixData 2.4.2

BixDesktop

• Improved Desktop notification to include status icon
• Server log windows now has a customizeable size limit. See file preferences
• Notification history, added a visible count
• Reports now have row numbers
• Added clear button to Network Topology host list
• Fixed various issues with visible count being incorrect when adding or filtering hosts in situation room
• Fixed ctrl+click while moving accross widget boundaries in situation room
• Double click edits tags in situation room (except system)
• Service checks with more than 250 hosts load faster in Reports and Graphs
• Duplicate names are no longer allowed in Notification setup
• Server://92 connect bar issue resolved
• Reports and Graphs view improved by not refreshing anymore. Expand / collapse remains. User tags appear on top for easier navigation.
• Resolved issue with duplicate entries in Agent Interactive Graph.
• Added scaling to individual streams in Agent Interactive Graph.
• Stopped duplicates from appearing in realtime graph data browsing if
  they are the same machine but actually have different connections.

• Connecting to a new machine didn't add to connect history unless you
  switched tabs

• In some circumstances tab icons could get out of sync
• Allow you to change multiple data collection path properties at once
• Reports and graphs, not refreshing list on each view
• Agent icon in favourites list had a mask issue
• Not allowing duplicate ServiceCheck/Actions/Notifications Names
• Added scaling to realtime graphs
• Processlist on freebsd could be sorted incorrectly
• Can save images in reports / graphs view
• Clearing network scan results when scan button is pressed
• Added # visible to history view
• Service Checks graph was slow loading lots of hosts
• Service Checks graphs templates could get out of date
• Notification History refilters on refresh now
• Can limits the number of lines the log saves (3000 by default)

BixServer

• Added the ability to disable the Reports and Graphs popup, 'Should I automatically add data collection', by creating a nowizard.txt file in the bixserver/data/php directory
• Improved Service Check graphs
• Imrpoved graph scaling for disk space and memory graphs
• Service check status text shown in Server Status
• Scoreboard accuracy is now 100%. Since scoreboard is not a priority it does take 5-10 minutes to update for all hosts.
• Fixed issue with adding new actions that do not work until updated.
• Fixed issue with Remote Service Checks that do not fire when authentication is used and Linux returns fully qualified hostnames for 127.0.0.1
• Fixed issue with Remote Service Checks that do not fire on state changes
• Fixed issue where Service Check Tags for 'Success' and 'Fail' remain in Situation Room, even after the Service Check has been removed
• Fixed issue with Server Agent Authentication change. When Agent authentication was updated, scoreboard and data collections dont authenticate properly with agents.
• Fixed issue where Scoreboard totals are stuck with old values when Agents go offline
• Fixed issue with better support for SSL multithreading, under heavy load (300+) causes SSL_write segfault
• Fixed issue with executing external commands, that may have read strings that are too long
• Serer status queues all work
• Fixed issue with multiple scrubbers appearing when you update data collections aggressively
• Resolved various issues with network topology.
• Resolved various issues with using external ping and traceroute

BixAgent

• Fixed issue with better support for SSL multithreading sometimes causes broken pipe errors
• Fixed Common Memory % used on a few linux platforms
• Added descriptions for all data sources and namesapces
• Smart native and SmartCtl data sources now map correctly to SMART Common

BixData 2.4.1 Release Notes

BixDesktop

• New buttons, increasing visibility
• Added scan button to topology view
• Added + - buttons to views and removed [ New ] items from lists
• Right clicking on an empty part of a list with a selection will unselect it
• Added count of items in lists in server status
• New add dialogs for ServiceChecks/Actions/Notifications, eliminating the need for renaming new items
• New network scan add host dialog allows you to add multiple types of IPs easily

BixServer

• New Action, Remote Execute command on Agent
• Fixed Adding and removing Notifications (Refresh list)
• Fixed Network Topology scan (multiple scans after another would not execute)
• Fixed notification history bug where only one host is shown
• Added a delay starting BixServer in unix-like RTR versions

BixAgent

• New Action, Remote Execute command on Agent
• Fixed minor errors in detecting disk partitions on Linux for FileSystem and Disk space information
• Improved memory data collection on FreeBSD
• Fixed lock-up bug in BixAgent on FreeBSD
• Added descriptions to all fields on common namespace items

BixData 2.4 Release Notes

BixDesktop

• New scoreboard visualization and pre-configured scoreboards
• Added startup screen when no tabs are visible
• Added BiX items to topo view so its no empty
• Added quick graph templates to client view
• Removed graph menu from main menu bar
• Loading from quick graph templates dir when opening templates by default
• Server Info selected by default in Server status
• Removed ? from host add title bar
• When adding a host, it auto filters to all hosts not tagged
• Fixed situation room bug where if you add a host to a filtered list and its first it would lose the [ New ] item.
• Added ability for context menus to appear even when item isn't selected
• Changed network scan ping option to default to 200ms
• Changed how right click works in most lists. If an item isn't selected and is right clicked, it will take the selection. If it was already highlighted, the old selection is kept (for multi select)
• Changed network scan menu to be able to send to specific tags
• Clearing topo view when scan is clicked
• Exporting images defaults to PNG format
• Server can now send notifications to the desktops, added new icon next to [ Log ]
• Connect bar: Now moves recent items to top no matter what. Adds items when clicking connect or using favorites
• New details about agents/servers in topo view when host is selected
• Added tooltips to scoreboard graphs
• Fixed up some of the static graph templates. Should look better
• Changed some slight visual items
• New icons for service checks / actions
• Notification History uses correct icons
• Added SMS and Desktop Message to actions list
• Fixed crash in Topo View on Linux

BixServer

• Automatic configuration of Data Collections for Reports and Graphs
• New Actions
  • SMS - send a text message to a cell phone
  • Desktop - send a message to any connected BixDesktops
• New custom Agent service checks
• Added automatic data collections for reports and graphs
• Fixed up server status a bit
• Clarified some error messages
• Improved service check graphs
• Ready-to-run edition of BixServer -- no database setup needed
• Minor bug fixes

BixAgent

• New custom Agent service checks
• Minor bug fixes

BixData 2.3 Release Notes

Important Fixes

• Better Windows NT support for BixAgent, also fixed dynamic .dll problem on Windows NT
• Fixed bug during adding and removing Notifications on Linux
• Fixed bug in BixAgent with CPU load during process list on certain Windows releases
• Minor Reports and graphs fixes

Known Issues

• BixServer and BixAgent version reports 2.2, it is in fact 2.3

BixDesktop

• Improved performance in Situation room when adding and removing 100s of hosts
• Improved network topology viewer
• Improved server status
• Limiting ports in network scan to valid ranges
• Fixed Notification History range initialization
• Notification History filter now works on subitems
• Renamed [Clear] to [Wipe] in history
• Made notifications less prone to sync issues
• After changing tag icons machinelist will update automatically
• Split tags into separate lists
• Changed time control to be integer based
• Internal Mac OS X Beta of BixDesktop

BixAgent

• FreeBSD 6 Support (Beta)

BixServer

• now using runserver.sh to start BixServer
• FreeBSD 6 Support
• Better database backend support for MySQL and PostgreSQL on Linux
• Pre-configured support for PostgreSQL on Linux
• Improved server status

BixData 2.2 Release Notes

Important Fixes

• Fixed memory leak (<1KB) in certain SSL connections in Server and Agent
• Improved BixServer and BixAgent network interface startup and binding, especially for certain Enterprise Linux / firewalls
• Windows 2000 process list on certain service packs
• Minor processor, memory and SMART statistics fixes for Linux data sources

BixDesktop

• New scoreboard feature
• New intelligent tooltips, hover over hosts, or select multiple hosts
• Network topology viewer
• Simpler layout
• Truecolor Linux Desktop support
• Reorganized Reports and Graphs
• Added double clicks to many UI elements
• Load/Save feature for Graph templates
• More detailed database setup screen

BixAgent

• Common Linux and Windows Data Sources
• Data collection bug fixes
• FileSystem data source -- allows monitoring of free disk space

BixServer

• Common Linux and Windows Reports and graphs
• Service uptime graphs for all service checks including HTTP, Ping, Port Check
• Bug fixes for MS SQL Server users
• Network Topology scanning feature
• More descriptive error messages for most functions, including database and reports/graphs
• More information in Server Status
• Easier database setup

BixData 2.1 Release Notes

BixDesktop - General

• New drag & drop tab system, you can drag tabs out of the desktop and dock them again
• New login system to Desktop and Blowfish encrypted key store for saving your login usernames and password to servers and agents
• Supports SSL secure connections, shown with padlock icons in next to the server or agent name in the tab title
• Added new connection types
  • server:// tries secure connection, then open connection
  • sserver:// only tries a secure connection
  • iserver:// only tries an insecure connection
  • same as above for agent://, sagent://, and iagent://
• BixDesktop is now associated with saved desktops, and will launch when you double click .bdw files works
• Added ability to cancel changes or updates
• Stopped allowing null entries to be made in certain lists (netscan hosts/ports, etc)
• Moved database setup and added security setup to Server Setup view
• Added double click actions to most views for creating new items, and connecting to machines

BixDesktop - Situation room

• New tag icons
• Fixed problems with column width getting weird when you add tags
• Added details to tooltips which tell why a certain tag is associated with the host Drawing vertical lines to separate hosts

BixDesktop - Notification History

• Automatically sorting by time

BixDesktop - Reports and Graphs

• Showing progress
• Added cancel button

BixDesktop - Database Setup

• Added database table view

BixDesktop - Netscan

• Removing error bar when scan button hit
• Editing a host with a "-" in it like alpha-beta.org will launch an inline edit and not a range edit

BixDesktop - Graph

• Save/load graphs in .bdw files
• Can set lock graph Y axis min/max values

BixServer - Database setup

• When you select a database in desktop you can see a list of the tables in it and details of how BixData uses it
• You can set how BixData manages the size of its tables by setting Max Records and Prune Amount
• Bug Fix: Fixed a problem with edit DB

BixServer - Reports and Graphs

• New graphs show Hard disk temperature vs hard disk read/write IO, and CPU load per Hard disk models or per device
• Progress bars and the much desired cancel button
• SMART inventory reports correct serial numbers

BixServer - SQL Server support

• Microsoft SQL Server Support, works in theory... tests show that all features work but it's still a little buggy
• Other SQL DB support, for non production use, postgres works mostly and firebird to a lesser degree

BixAgent - Smartctl plugin

• Smartctl is used for getting smart data on linux without root access
• Edit the command used to run smartctl by editing agent/data/xml/dp-smartctl.xml
• Bug fix, works correctly for machines with more than one hd, data output reduced dramatically

BixAgent - SmartInfo Data Collection

• There's a new namespace for data collection on Windows called SmartInfo
• Get information on hard drive serial number, model and firmware version
• Smarctl Info -- Model reported correctly

BixServer and BixAgent Console

• BixServer and BixAgent, when run as a console application on Windows, or on Linux, allows you to shut it down by pressing CTRL+C or CTRL-BREAK