begin Andrew Ryan quotation of Mon, Dec 03, 2001 at 03:56:57PM -0800: > On Monday 03 December 2001 02:47 pm, Jim Trocki wrote: > > rock. i'll add the link to the web page. i have a feeling that lots > > of people pass right over mon and don't consider it something that > > they should use merely because there are no fancy screenshots on the > > web page. sadly, lots of people operate like that, but maybe in the > > end that's better for us. i have a suspicion that not pushing fancy > > graphics to the forefront attracts a particular set of people, and it > > quells arguments about aesthetics :) > > That's true. Lack of a screenshot was actually a big turnoff for me when I > first started using mon. But then again, the backend nastiness of BB and most > of the others was an even bigger turnoff. Which isn't to say aesthetics > aren't important, especially as system and network monitoring is integrated > into other parts of a business, and with people that might not be very > technical.
Mon was so low profile when we were looking for a BB replacement that I actually passed over it. I had hacked up BB so much that I was sick of it, and its ugly scripts all firing off sed/awk/expr/whatever and hogging the CPU every 5 minutes was bad for the monitoring host's performance. I think I was playing with Big Sister or NetSaint when another admin showed me an install of Mon that he did. I was amazed at what it allowed you to do right from the mon.cgi interface, and one look at the config file, and seeing how flexible it was had me sold. Mon was obviously written by a sysadmin, it's flexible, easy to use, and powerful. > I wonder if BB's new, non-free and *way* more confusing licensing is pushing > anyone mon's way? BB is not free anymore if you use it to monitor servers > which are 'revenue generating,' whatever that means. You can still use older > versions under the previous license. I didn't know about this, but the clues were many. I remember one day I clicked on the support link for BB off the BB4 page (to search the mailing list archives) and got a page selling 3rd party monitoring from the BB guys. The link was fixed within minutes, obviously a goof. It was clear they were about done with the bug fixing and enhancements from the community and were ready to start making money off everyone's hard work. Of course they never claimed it was free, either. Bug fixer beware, I guess. -- Nate Campi http://www.campin.net GnuPG key: 0xC17AEF79 Key fingerprint = BF12 722F 8799 E614 33CC FAB7 5A90 C464 C17A EF79 "If Microsoft can change and compete on quality, I've won." -- L. Torvalds
