Sunday, June 14, 2009

Writing an SNMP Java Client

I was surprised on Friday to discover that NSClient++, which collects private information from Windows PCs for Nagios, is essentially useless. You can already install a free SNMP service that can provide any information you might need to know about a machine. The Nagios author claimed that SNMP was 'anything but simple', but it seems that he just didn't consider the possibility of integrating it into Nagios at an early stage. Now he has support for SNMP traps, whatever they are. But he doesn't need NSClient++ – it's redundant. What a waste of time for me to write my own service to supplant NSClient++ for the dos monitoring! I feel deflated but I need to have something working soon, and the good news is that writing an SNMP client in Java should be easy.

Strange how I was hired to write C code with no mention of Java but I am finding it difficult to justify the writing of any C code :). It seems that all the necessary C parts are already written. If they had hired someone else with just C skills they would be washed up now. Luckily I know quite a lot about Java.

JetSpeed 2

The possibility exists for porting the dosTF application to Jetspeed 2. It would be a neat container for dosTF because it would allow me to create and configure the layout of multiple instances of the one portlet, say the public monitoring portlet, with the graphical interface. The users could even do that. The alternative is to develop a usable interface by response with users. I kinda prefer leaving it to them. The scenario file could also be rewritten as another portlet. Then the whole application could be a collection of custom portlets, which is what I had in mind at the start but didn't have the infrastructure for. I also get login and customisation of the interface appearance for free.

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