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What is new?

Version FP1.99.375

This version contains a fix for a serious bug in the Error control feature.

  1. All earlier Monitor one versions contained a bug in the algorithms responsible for detecting the cause of a "device down" event (part of the Error control feature). This bug occasionally lead to incorrect interpretation and Alerting of such an event. The problem has been identified and it has been resolved.

Version FP1.98.372

This version contains a few functionality enhancements and some fixes for bugs that were found in version FP1.94.370

  1. A new option has been added to the "Alerting" feature. The new option allows you to specify how long an alert is delayed from being sent out after a critical event has occured. The delay is customizable and can range from 0 upto 900 seconds. This new option is important for reducing the number of alerts that are sent out.
  2. The previous version contained a bug in the Firebird interface module which could cause a deadlock. This problem has been fixed.
  3. Another bug was found in the software modules used for displaying the maps in the GUI. When the error occurred an "EOutOfResources" message was displayed.
  4. An enhancement has been added to the EM feature that displays the value of the SNMP "ifDescr" field of the interface for which EM has found a problem.
  5. The "Check for new version" option in Monitor one has completely been rewritten. The old implementation could cause program hangups of about 20 seconds or more when the PC or Workstation running Monitor one did not have a connection to the internet. "New version checking" has now moved from foreground to background processing.
  6. This version now supports Apache version 2.0.59. This Apache version is also included in the Monitor one installation file.

Version FP1.94.370

Maintenance release

Version FP1.92.365

This version contains a few minor fixes for issues that were found in version FP1.92.360 RC3

  1. There was a small issue in the html formatting of the History web-page in RC3. This is now fixed
  2. The default community list for EM1 scanning has been shortened to the "public" and "private" communities only. As a result IP-range and EM1 scanning has been speeded up quite considerably.
  3. Three new class definitions (Windows_Domain_Controller, Windows_Server and Windows_Workstation) have been added to the Monitor one default classes list.
  4. The "Instance Filtering" option has been added for History and Threshold Shooters that use the "All-instances" keyword. This option can be used to filter only the rows of an SNMP table that meet a certain criteria.

Version FP1.92.360-RC3

This version contains a number of fixes for bugs that were found in version FP1.91.355 RC2

  1. The Monitor one module that controlled the access to the Firebird engine was not "thread-safe" that could lead to a Monitor one crash when multiple threads tried to access the database simultanously. The module is now "Thread-safe"
  2. A bug was found in the Monitor one Alerter agents regarding the handling of Syslog messages. Version FP1.92.360-RC3 contains a fix for this issue
  3. The "Threshold-control" output was not correctly formatted in the web interface. This is solved in version FP1.92.360-RC3.

Version FP1.91.355-RC2

This version solves a couple of minor issues and introduces a major improvement of bugreport handling

  1. Added madExcept for bug handling in the Monitor one executable.
    MadExcept (from Mathias Rauen) was built to help locating crashes in software. Whenever there is a crash or exception in Monitor one, madExcept will automatically catch it, analyze it, collect lots of useful information, and give the end user the possibility to send us a full bug report.
    MadExcept uses the mailto: function of your default email client to send a bug-report, giving you full control over what information is being sent to us. This means no tricks, no sending of private information, just the sending of useful information that helps us improving Monitor one. See the screenshot of madExcept in action below (note that the exception was forced by the "DoCrash module" especially designed for testing!)

    madExcept in action
    madExcept in action

  2. Added a new /ENABLEHIS10 commandline switch for starting Monitor one from the commandline. This new switch enables the creation and use of History Shooters with 10 second polling intervals. Many simultaneously running 10 sec History Shooters can have a considerable effect on the performance of your Monitor one system. The use of this switch is entirely at your own risk!
  3. Modified Date and Time format on various Monitor one windows based on the Date/Time settings of your system.
  4. New Firebird SQL database version. The version used in this Monitor one release is Firebird version Firebird 2.0 RC5.
  5. Support for audible alerting in the web browser. Monitor one uses the HTML <embed> tag to implement audio. The <embed> tag is the most common way of adding sound to a Web page. We have tested two browsers: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 and Mozilla Firefox 1.5.
  6. A major bug was found (and fixed) in the Shooter wizard.

Version FP1.89.343-RC1

The most important change in this version is the substitution of the internal web server by the Apache web server as the next step in our striving for gaining more stability, speed and flexibility by extracting code-modules from the Monitor one core and implementing them as separately running processes. In the beta previous version we already introduced the separately running Firebird SQL database engine as the substitution of the "old" embedded BDE.

  1. Apache - Previous versions of Monitor one used an internal web server. In this version, Apache 2.0.39 for windows substitutes the old internal web server. The Monitor one installation executable includes a copy of the Apache installation file. It is recommended to use the default Apache installation settings!
  2. Added support for moving device objects from one map to another.
  3. Improved Error Control - Important improvements regarding the Error Control feature (EC). In previous Monitor one versions, EC only relied on the "connection information" it extracted from the map(s). This approach was no longer sufficient for the more complex network environments as of today with all kinds of redundancy. It could lead to incorrect interpretation of "Device down" events when, for instance, servers with multiple NICs where connected to multiple switches for reasons of redundancy. A new option that lets you set the "traffic forwarding" capabilities of devices at the Class level dramatically improves the working of EC.
  4. A new backup approach. The "Midnight backup" option now makes full backups on month- and weekly basis and database-only backups on daily basis.
  5. Some minor memory leaks were found (and solved) in Discovery and EM1
  6. Added support for instance selection in MGrapher (the viewer for accessing History information)

Version FP1.85.333-Beta1

This new version is primarily a maintenance release focusing on reliability and speed. It will not add many new features and options because most of the (many) changes are "under the hood".

  1. In previous versions Monitor one used the Borland database engine (BDE) for storing project data. In this version, the BDE has been replaced by the Firebird SQL database for stability and performance reasons. Firebird is a relational database offering many ANSI SQL standard features that runs on Linux, Windows, and a variety of Unix platforms. Firebird offers excellent concurrency, high performance, and powerful language support for stored procedures and triggers. It has been used in production systems, under a variety of names since 1981.
  2. New 1 and 10 minutes polling queues for supporting SNMP agents that update their counters on a 1-minute basis. The 10 minutes queue is only available for History Shooters.
  3. Improved MIB compiler. SNMPv2 is now fully supported (including SNMPv2 traps).
  4. Many bug fixes and improvements from which the most important one: a severe memory leak in one of the background threads that take care of saving data to the database!
  5. The Monitor one implementation of Trap filtering has almost completely rewritten in order to facilitate SNMPv2 filtering. Receiving and filtering of SNMPv2 traps is now fully supported. Blocking and unblocking of traps by adding or removing filter rules is now simpler than ever.
  6. In previous Monitor one versions, for History Shooters, a new "data-collection" session was created each time Monitor one was started/restarted. In this new version, the "old" session is simply restarted and newly collected History data is appended to the already existing data. This scenario is much more user friendly. It prevents you from getting lost in too many (usually almost empty) sessions and provides better trending functionality.
  7. Two new default menu-items have been added to a device’s right-click menu: The Desktop menu-item (which starts MSTSC.exe /v:<IPaddress>) and the History menu-item. The History item is only enabled if there’s at least one History Shooter running for the device. The History menu-item provides quick access to logged history data.
  8. In previous Monitor one versions, Trap, Syslog and Sensitivity (TSS) events were displayed on a separate tab on the "Event control" window. In this new version, this tab no longer exists and the TSS events appear on the Pending events list (along with the "No response" and "Threshold exceeded" events). However TSS events are treated differently compared to "No response" and "Threshold exceeded" events. TSS events differ from "No response" and "Threshold exceeded" events in the sense that they do not have a start- and end timestamp. They are "one-shot events" that cannot get the status "pending". "No response" and "Threshold exceeded" events are kept in the list until the problem is solved. They can be acknowledged but not removed. TSS events are kept in the for xx seconds or until acknowledged or removed! You can adjust the preferred behavior on the Alerting tab of the Globl configuration window.
  9. A variation on the already existing IDFFS ("Is Different From First Sample") operator is the new HCF ("Has Changed From") operator for threshold monitoring. The HCF operator compares retrieved values with the specified threshold value and generates a "Threshold exceeded event" when the value changes from the threshold value to another value. The HCF operator is ideal for health monitoring! It can help you detecting if the temperature in the computer room changes from the adjusted value, if there are hardware problems on servers (fan, disk etc) or if a port on a switch gets the "down" status while it is normally up!
  10. A device’s Serial# and Registration# can now also be included in the body text of an alert email.

Version FP1.78.316

  1. Update option for Class packages! If the Class package you want to import into your project defines a Class that already exists than a message box will pop up asking you to confirm updating the existing Class! If you confirm updating your existing Class then from existing Classes only Shooters and MIB related data is updated. Project specific Class settings as polling intervals, community names, severity levels etc are kept unchanged!
  2. Error-control bug fix!
  3. Version FP1.78.316 allows you to set the SpeedShooter property of a Shooter (in Designer mode) by right-clicking the Shooter on a device’s Shooters/Properties page.
  4. Commandline switch for the Monitor one UDP Source port used for SNMP querying! By default, Monitor one uses UDP port 6115 as the source port in SNMP requests. From version 1.78.316, the default port can be specified on the commandline by using the /DEFAULTSRCUDPPORT=<1..65535 | none> commandline switch.

Version FP1.75.315

  1. The content of a table Shooter is sorted if a column is clicked. In this new version, the "sort-column" is saved to the database and automatically restored each time the Shooter is reused. The "sort-column" setting can be cleared by right-clicking the table and choosing Remove all sorting.
  2. The "Get one shot" table type is no longer supported. Existing "Get one shot" Shooters in a project can still be used but new ones cannot be created anymore. In this new version, the new Table Shooter-type replaces the old Get and Get-next type Shooters.
  3. A new "Instance-mask" option for Graph-, Table and Pie Shooters. Instance-masks provide improved complex-instances handling. See appendix A, example 5 for details.
  4. Support for gradient colors for Graph and Pie Shooters. The old "Dark-foreground" option is no longer supported.
  5. New "Hide control panel" option for Graph, Pie and Meter Shooters.
  6. A new Data tab has been added to Graph Shooters. The new tab replaces the old Show Graph details option.
  7. New and nicer, glyphs, images and buttons throughout the whole program.
  8. Improved web server and web interface for more stability and a better look and feel.
  9. In the old version, you had to specify at least one username/password for web access. In this new version, the logon page is only displayed if there is at least one username/password specified. If no username/password has been specified, the logon page is not shown and everyone is granted access!
  10. In this new version, "Custom menu items" are also available in the web interface via java scripting, provided that your browser's security policy supports this and that the directory where the external program resides is accessible via the system path! Examples of frequently used Custom Menu Items are: SSH (putty.exe -ssh <IPaddress>) and Microsoft Terminal-server Client (MSTSC /v: <IPaddress>)
  11. The new Desktop feature allows you to save Monitor one desktop configurations to the database for later use. A desktop configuration contains the location and the size of opened Graph, Pie, Table, Meter and Map windows. The Desktop feature allows you to define desktop setups for problem spots (or other "areas of interest") in your network and save them under a specific name into the database. If a Desktop configuration is selected from the list of saved configurations, all Map and Shooter windows are restored instantly! A preferred (or default) Desktop can also be specified at the Monitor one commandline via the /DESKTOP= <desktop name> switch!
  12. In this new version, events that cause alerts are made visible on the network map by the use of indicators. Indicators are small glyphs that appear at the left or at the right of the device causing the alert. The indicators stay visible as long as the alerts are pending. There are indicators for Threshold, Trap and Syslog alerts.
  13. Monitor one polls the status of each device object on the map periodically. If a device does not respond to these queries, Monitor one assumes the device down and marks it accordingly (a red cross). If a device is down for a longer period (because it needs maintenance), you can use the Suspend Polling menu-item to stop polling the device. The red cross mark is replaced by a blue checkmark, meaning "Status unknown" and a small spanner (maintenance indicator) appears left from the device. In older versions, polling automatically resumed when Monitor one was restarted. In this version the "maintenance" setting is saved to disk and the "polling suspended" status is restored every time Monitor one is restarted.
  14. Various improvements have been made to SNMP responses. Monitor one now also supports the DateAndTime textual-convention specified in rfc2579 and the BITS construct specified in rfc2578.
  15. New font and format options for object labels on the network map. You can now define the font name, size and color for labels and you can display a device’s IP address on the maps.
  16. With threshold shooters, monitored values are usually compared with predefined values. However, there are situations in which you want to be informed about the change of a monitored value and is the value less important. For example, in critical ISP backbone networks it is important to get informed if the operational status of one of the router’s interfaces changes (from up to down or vise versa). The new IDF operator ("Is Different From") compares the last retrieved value with the value of the first sample (the first value that was retrieved when the Shooter became active). This option makes it possible to monitor thousands of ports in large networks with hundreds of routers. See appendix A, example 10 for details.
  17. Various improvements have been made to the MIB compiler to better support the compilation of multiple MIB files at once.
  18. The new version also provides a new licensing policy. In older versions the required license type was dependant of the number of objects that were added to the network map AND the number of concurrently active Shooters. We received many complaints about the complexity of this licensing policy. The new version no longer takes the number of concurrently active Shooters into account. The number of objects on the network map now only determines the required license type and the number of concurrently active Shooters is no longer limited! Besides this, also the number of objects that can be added per license type has changed. The new numbers are: S-Type 60, M-Type 230, L-Type unlimited.
  19. A common problem with SnipMon Shooters is caused by the fact that they can only display one series at a time. A problem arises if you want to display CPU utilization of a host that has more than one CPU. Monitor one provides "Target macros" (in this version yet only for SnipMon Shooters), additional Formula options to overcome this problem. There are 5 Target-macros defined: SUM, AVG, MIN, MAX and CNT. See appendix A, example 11 for details.
  20. MLogToCSV.exe is a small and very simple commandline program that converts a project’s logbook (or part of it) to a CSV formatted text file. MLogToCSV.exe can be found in the Monitor one installation directory and is useful if you want to extract the events from the logbook on a reqular basis for reading them into an external database or spreadsheet for further processing. MLogToCSV.exe takes a few simple commandline arguments and can be scheduled to run unattended.
  21. This new version supports alert messages to be sent to pagers, mobile phones, PIMs and wireless devices by providing the option to send these alert messages to a messaging server. Monitor one supports generic messaging gateway systems that allow you to define a directory on a local- or server drive where you can save text files and the more sophisticated PageGate Messaging Gateway provided by NotePager.com ( http://www.notepager.com ). PageGate provides powerful options to define users along with their properties (cellphone/pager numbers, email addresses etc). Monitor one allows you to assign a PageGate username to each alert recipient so that the Groups and Recipients functionality is kept intact!
  22. Extended options for copying data to the clipboard are available for almost all windows that contain lists of data. The contents of these lists can be copied to the clipboard in three different formats: tab separated, as HTML table text or as CSV text. The new options make it easy to export data such as event messages or trap contents to external programs like spreadsheets or word processors for further processing or printing.