DBAmon
Change History

Home | Index / DBAmon Documentation | DBAmon Change History | DBAmon Event/Error Documentation |
What DBAmon Monitors | Free Oracle Tool: orastat | Request Support | DBAmon Download | DBAmon Gadget

DBAmon - Change/Enhancement/Bug Fix History

Version Release Programmer Date Description of Changes
5.28   Bill Border 20Jan12
  • (All) Program dbamon_mssql_sumread.pl was rewritten to be more efficient.
  • (All) New dbamonrc Use_DNS: parameter. This can be used to disable NSLOOKUP hostname checking on your DBAmon MASTER (rarely would this be needed).
  • (MSSQL) New MSSQL_String_Check: DBC parameter which allows you to search the SQL for any string and then report from the resulint DBAmon Performance Counter variable. See the URL above for more information.
  • (All) New Event Index at the top of the Events Detail WWW page.
  • (MSSQL) New PERF_SQL_LPIM_LOCKED_KB Metric which will show you whether LOCK PAGES IN MEMORY is REALLY enabled. New STATUS FLAG to show whether LPIM is ON or OFF.
  • (MSSQL) New PERF_SQL_RUNNABLE_REQS Metric which will show you the number of RUNNABLE tasks. See WHAT DBAMON MONITRS History for details
    • 5.27   Bill Border 08Jan12
  • (All) Some Iteration Completion messages are improved.
  • (All) A report of the DBC file contents are now displayed with INSTANCE DETAILS (WWW).
  • (All) New dbamonrc Admin_Pager: parameter where you can specify the EMAIL ADDRESS of a pager. If there is a fatal DBAmon error or if the DBAmon WATCHDOG finds that DBAmon has been dead for at least 90 minutes, a message is sent here.
  • (MSSQL) New Event_EMail_For_Sevs: DBC parameter which allows you to override the default behavior with regard to sending Event notifications via email. By default, DBAmon sends email notification only for (C)ritical and (U)ser events. With this new DBC parameter, you can additionally force EMail Event Notification for other severities.
  • (All) Now, the WWW Event Details page display what (if any) notification occurred for this event (COOL!).
  • (All) BUG FIX - For Sev=W events, consecutive-iteration duplicate event suppression was not working. It is working now.
    • 5.26   Bill Border 14Dec11
  • (MSSQL) New MSSQL_Job_OK_Owners: DBC parameter where you can specify OK Job Owners (in addition to SA).
  • (MSSQL) New MSSQL_DB_OK_Owners: DBC parameter where you can specify OK DB Owners (in addition to SA).
  • (MSSQL) New VLF (Virtual Log File) metric and check. New T_MSSQL_VLF_Count: DBC parameter where you can specify a monitoring threshold. If the threshold is exceeded, a DBA859 event will occur.
    • 5.25   Bill Border 05Dec11
  • (MSSQL) TLOG Backup age check - We don't do this for DBs that are in SIMPLE logging mode. Don't know wh I didn't do this sooner.
  • (MSSQL) Job Failure check - This event won't occur if the Job has status of Executing.
    • 5.24   Bill Border 26Nov11
  • (All) Cleanup of WWW Instance Summary pages. New "wider" look, a better looking header, etc.
  • (MSSQL) New DBA857 check and event for TEMPDB database file count. See the event documentation for more information.
  • (MSSQL) New DBA858 check and event for SIGNAL WAIT PERCENT. See the event documentation for more information.
    • 5.23   Bill Border 13Oct11
  • (MSSQL) New DBA664 event for "I/O Delay" messages in the SQL Log.
  • (MSSQL) New DBA670 event for "A significant part of SQL memory has been paged out" messages in the SQL Log.
  • (MSSQL) New MSSQL_Log_Min_Sev: DBC parameter which allows you to override the default SQL Log message severity of 17.
    • 5.22   Bill Border 05Oct11
  • (MSSQL) New DBA354 event for failed SQL Server jobs. New MSSQL_Job_Fail_Check: parameter.
    • 5.21   Bill Border 03Oct11
  • (MSSQL) New DBA856 event for SQL Server SUSPECT_PAGES rows. This new check looks for SQL Engine-detected PAGE CORRUPTION.
  • (MSSQL) New DBA519 event for new SQL Server check: Databases in FULL or BULK-LOGGED Recovery Model, but no TLOG backups within the last 30 days. This is a WARNING event.
    • 5.20   Bill Border 25Sep11
  • (MSSQL) New DBA352 and DBA353 events for MSSQL Jobs and DBs with an owner other than 'SA'. This new functionality can be turned OFF by specifying the new SQL_Job_Owner_Event: or SQL_DB_Owner_Event: dbamonrc parameters as N.
    • 5.19   Bill Border 15Sep11
  • (MSSQL) BUGFIX: SQL Error log checking - If we "last" out of the while, then a "finish" is missing on the statement handle. This only happens when there are ZILLIONs of errors.
    • 5.18   Bill Border 14Aug11
  • (All) New Windows GADGET code (prototype).
    • 5.17   Bill Border 01Aug11
  • (MSSQL) New Check - BAD DB Options. If you specify a DB option which is known to cause performance issues (currently AUTOCLOSE and AUTOSHRINK), then a new DBA855 (Performance severity) event will occur.
    • 5.16   Bill Border 19Jul11
  • (MSSQL) BUGFIX - Had to add more logic to deal with SQL DBs with spaces and hyphens in the DB name.
    • 5.15   Bill Border 10Jul11
  • (MSSQL) New MSSQL HUNG BACKUP check (SQL 2000+ only). A DBA854 (Critical severity) will occur if a SQL backup is found to be running at least 24 hours.
  • (MSSQL) New check of the SQL AGENT Log. If the string error is found in the text of an AGENT Log entry, an event is created.
    • 5.14   Bill Border 29June11
  • (MSSQL) New MSSQL DBMail check (SQL 2005+ only).
    • 5.13   Bill Border 26June11
  • (MSSQL) BUGFIX: The DBC Parameter: T_FG_Full: was not disabling sqlUp() with "N" specified. Fixed.
  • (All) New dbamonrc Default_DBMS: parameter. This specifies the default DBC DBMS: setting.
    • 5.12   Bill Border 12June11
  • (MSSQL) New DBC Parameter: T_PerfCounter: to specify warning and critical event thresholds against Windows and SQL performance counter readings.
    • 5.11   Bill Border 09June11
  • (All) New daily reporting program for Repos=SQL dbamon_mssql_eventrpt.pl.
    • 5.10   Bill Border 04May11
  • (MSSQL) New information has been added to the Instance Summary which displays the current CPU, Memory and Disk readings for this server.
    • 5.09   Bill Border 26Apr11
  • (MSSQL) New dbamon_mssql.cfg file to store various parameters. This allows me to eliminate some hard-coded parms (log check exclude strings and performance counter names and verbs).
    • 5.08   Bill Border 14Apr11
  • (MSSQL) Various fixes.
  • (All) New CUR icon on instance summary to view current readings.
  • (All) Logic change - for the DBAMON.INSTANCES table, now all of the MISCn columns will be populated from the IDn fields (DBC).
  • (MSSQL) The new event: DBA200 (User severity) will occur when any DB file is set to MAXSIZE=Unlimited.
    • 5.07   Bill Border 03Apr11
  • (MSSQL) New WWW Pulldown and Direct-Graph capability.
    • 5.06   Bill Border 28Mar11
  • (MSSQL) New CONFIG_SAVE capability. We now save important instance information for every SQL instance in /opt/dbamon/dat/config_save.
    • 5.05   Bill Border 18Mar11
  • (MSSQL) New MSSQL Job monitoring. You can specify MSSQL DBC MSSQL_JOB* Parameters which tell DBAmon to monitor certain MSSQL JOBS that should be running continously. The new event: DBA351 will occur if a job should be running, but is not running.
    • 5.04   Bill Border 11Feb11
  • (MSSQL, All) We now collect SYSTEM Metrics on Windows from Windows "Counters". The Windows "typeperf" command provides a good interface to this date. DBAmon now extracts and reports from these metrics in sqlPerf(). Some metrics that were previosly unavailable: System CPU Busy %, SQL Buffer Cache Hit Ratio, SQL Page Life Expectancy, etc. VERY COOL!
    • 5.03   Bill Border 01Feb11
  • (MSSQL) New MSSQL sqlPerf() routine. We now track MSSQL Performance metrics.
    • 5.02   Bill Border 14Jan110
  • (MSSQL) Various fixes after initial implementation in CYGWIN.
    • 5.01   Bill Border 08Jan11
  • (All) Previously DBAmon depended on an external graphing tool for graph. Now DBAmon had a built-in capability to dynamically create GIF Line Plot graphs, that are viewable on the WWW.
    • 5.00   Bill Border 28Dec10
  • (All) DBAmon Master logic has been ported to run under Cygwin (Windows).
  • (All) DBAmon can now use a SQL Server database as its repository.
  • (All) Many other enhancements, too numerous to list.
  • (MSSQL) All current SQL Server versions through 2008R2 are now support.
  • (MSSQL) Many improvements in WWW pages, LightBulb, etc.
    • 4.38 (Base) Bill Border 12Feb08
  • (MSSQL) New support for MSSQL 2005 64bit.
  • (All) The WWW summary page has been reworked so that everything shifts to the left (viewable without scrolling).
    • 4.37 (Base) Bill Border 29Jan08
  • (Oracle/UX) New DBA318 event for DB instances which have a grant to a non-SYSTEM userid for the IMP_FULL_DATABASE role (dangerous).
  • (Oracle/UX) New DBA319 event for DB instances which have a grant to a non-SYSTEM userid for the ALTER USER system privilege (dangerous).
    • 4.36 (Base) Bill Border 19Dec07
  • (MSSQL) DBAmon will now NOT create any backup age events (or rerun backups) for an MSSQL 2005+ snapshot DB.
    • 4.35 (Base) Bill Border 11Dec07
  • (Oracle/UX) New monitor for DF count within a tablespace. There is an Oracle limitation of 1022 datafile for non-bigfile tablespaces. This new metric measure the percentage of datafiles vs. 1022.
  • (Oracle/UX) The DST patch check will not occur for SAP instances.
    • 4.34 (Base) Bill Border 10Dec07
  • (Oracle/UX) New ability to exclude certain Alert Log strings on a per-instance basis. They are specified in the file /home/oracle/.dbamon_SID_alert_exclude.txt .
    • 4.33 (Base) Bill Border 22Oct07
  • (Oracle/UX) New DBA323 event for DB instances which DO need the DST2007 patch (either for TS-Cols or JVM) and DO NOT have the patch currently applied. Much more sophisticated than the previous DST2007 logic.
    • 4.32 (Base) Bill Border 12Oct07
  • (Oracle/UX) New monitoring logic to see if the COMPATIBLE parameter is set at least one version lower than the software.
    • 4.31 (Base) Bill Border 01Oct07
  • (Oracle/UX) New iSQLPlus icon on DBAmon WWW summary, if iSQLPlus is running.
  • (Oracle/UX) If iSQLPlus is not found to be running, it will be automatically started.
  • (Oracle/UX) If EM (10g) is configured and not found to be running, it will be automatically started.
    • 4.30 (Base) Bill Border 14Aug07
  • (Oracle/UX)New support for Oracle 10g+ DBs using ASM and FRA.
    • 4.28 (Base) Bill Border 17Jul07
  • (Oracle/UX)New DBA606 event. The number of datafiles vs. the DB_FILES parameter is now monitored.
    • 4.29 (Base) Bill Border 14Aug07
  • (Oracle/UX)New DBA940 event. The DB is now monitored for DB Block Corruption.
    • 4.28 (Base) Bill Border 17Jul07
  • (Oracle/UX)New DBA606 event. The number of datafiles vs. the DB_FILES parameter is now monitored.
    • 4.27 (Base) Bill Border 13Jun07
  • (All)New ID9: and ID10: DBC parameters.
    • 4.26 (Base) Bill Border 07Mar07
  • (Oracle/UX) New DBA956 event which indicates that the cron server daemon is not running.
    • 4.25 (Base) Bill Border 22Feb07
  • (MSSQL) DoubleTake monitoring support.
    • 4.24 (Base) Bill Border 12Feb07
  • (Oracle on Windows) New logic for the 2007 DST Change. New DBA320 DBA321 DBA322 events to determine whether a DB instance needs to be patched.
    • 4.23 (Base) Bill Border 05Feb07
  • (Oracle on Windows) New DBA655 event. This occurs when all Oracle Online Redo Logs are on one Windows drive.
  • (Oracle on UX) New DBA520 event. This occurs when the average Log Switch Rate for the DB exceeds 12 log switches per hour. This is a performance event. Solving this problem will result in improved performance.
  • (Oracle on UX) New DBA521 event. This occurs when the average Maximum Daily Redo Data Rate (over the last 30 days) is greater than 1.1 times the size of the archivelog filesystem. In this case, you should increase the size of the archivelog filesystem.
  • (Oracle on UX) The "Redo Rate" is now displayed on the WWW Instance Summary.
    • 4.22 (Base) Bill Border 07Dec06
  • (Oracle on Windows) New DBA654 event. This occurs when all Oracle controlfiles are on one Windows drive.
  • (Oracle on UX) New DBA380 event. This occurs when the backup schedule is missing, either for LVL* or ARC* RMAN backups.
  • (Oracle on UX) New dbamonrc Default_BA_Arc: parameter. This specifies the default Archivelog Backup Age.
    • 4.21 (Base) Bill Border 25Sep06
  • (Oracle/UX on HP-UX) New DBA932 event. When the maxuprc HP-UX Kernel parameter is exceeded for the userid which starts the Oracle DB, the results can be disastrous. DBAmon now counts the number of processes that this userid currently has active (at the OS level) against the maxuprc value. The new dbamonrc Default_T_NUSERPROC: parameter controls the default thresholds for all instances and the T_NUSERPROC: DBC parameter controls the thresholds and the instance level.
    • 4.20 (Base) Bill Border 14Sep06
  • (Oracle/UX) New DBA931 event. Now, if an orphaned RMAN OS process is detected, it will automatically be killed. See the details of the above event for details.
    • 4.19 (Base) Bill Border 02Jun06
  • (Oracle/UX) It is now possible to specify the SGA Full Monitoring Threshold on a per-instance basis. The new T_SGA_Full: DBC parameter allows you to specify Warning and Critical thresholds.
    • 4.18 (Base) Bill Border 07Mar06
  • (Oracle/UX) DBAmon now stores many details about each instance in a repository table. For details, see INSTANCE_DETAILS Table Overview . A schema change is required for this enhancement: 
     alter table instances add instance_key varchar2(32);
  • (All) The Notepad now has a second window for planning information.
    • 4.17 (Base) Bill Border 28Jan06
  • (MSSQL) New MSSQL Event: Check for Zero Non-System DB's. User DBA663 event.
  • (All) New ability to run DBAmon Test Mode from the WWW.
    • 4.16 (Base) Bill Border 11Nov05
  • (Oracle/UX) New Perf Monitor: Default tablespace (perm or temp) set to SYSTEM. Warning DBA930 event.
    • 4.15 (Base) Bill Border 31Oct05
  • (Oracle/UX) New Security Check: DANGEROUS init.ora parameters. For example, the REMOTE_OS_AUTHENT parameter is inherently dangerous. So if this parameter is set to TRUE, a DBA316 event will occur. The parameters that are checked are:
    • REMOTE_OS_AUTHENT
    • REMOTE_OS_ROLES
    • O7_DICTIONARY_ACCESSIBILITY
    If any of these are set to TRUE, then the event will occur.
    • 4.14 (Base) Bill Border 27Oct05
  • (Oracle/UX) The RMAN process hung event has been changed. Previously each hung PID would result in 1 event. Now all hung RMAN processes are combined into 1 event.
  • (All) There was always an issue when we monitor a server-wide event, such as a hung RMAN process. If a server has 10 instances, each instance would report the same event. Now there is a new feature called server-wide-events where duplicate events can be eliminated. So now, for the DBA912 RMAN process hung event, only the first occurance per server/userid and instance will be reported. This will result in far fewer chronic duplicate events.
    • 4.13 (Base) Bill Border 21Oct05
  • (Oracle/UX) New check for an archivelog destination under the ORACLE_HOME directory. This is a bad practice. Now on any instance where this is the case, a DBAmon Event DBA662 occurs.
    • 4.12 (Base) Bill Border 25Aug04
  • (Oracle/UX) New check for empty crontab. If crontab is empty then DBAmon Event DBA661 occurs.
  • (All) New ID5-ID8 DBC fields.
  • (All) New data is now extracted from STAR.
  • (All) New DBC_Class DBC Configuration Parameter.
    • 4.11 (Base) Bill Border 25Aug04
  • (Oracle/UX) New check for the number of controlfiles. See DBAmon Event DBA659 for details.
    • 4.10 (Base) Bill Border 18Jul05
  • (ALL) Fix to histCreate.pl routine. There are some MSSQL DB names that are very long. This was causing an INSERT to error. We now check the length of the field before inserting.
    • 4.09 (Base) Bill Border 06Jun05
  • (Oracle/HP-UX) DBAmon will now check for the presence of HP-UX autostart scripts.
  • (Oracle/HP-UX) If the $ORACLE_HOME/network/log/listener.log file is >= 50M, it will be gzipped.
    • 4.08 (Base) Bill Border 23May05
  • (ALL) Major Change: The DBAmon probe software is now download (on UX servers) to /tmp/DBAmon_{DBC_USERID}/ rather than /tmp. So, the probe software no longer has to be world-writable. This solves many security problems.
    • 4.07 (Base) Bill Border 14Apr05
  • (Oracle/UX) New performance monitored event: Server Memory Usage. This only works at this time for HP-UX. See: DBAmon Event DBA929.
    • 4.06 (Base) Bill Border 11Apr05
  • (Oracle/UX) New performance monitored event: DB Cache size underspecfied. See: DBAmon Event DBA928.
    • 4.05 (Base) Bill Border 11Mar05
  • (Oracle/UX) New performance monitored event: Dictionary Objects have been analyzed. This can cause serious and mysterious performance problems. New event is DBA927.
    • 4.04 (Base) Bill Border 04Mar05
  • (Oracle/UX) There was a bug in the collection of the timestamp of the most recent OFFLINE backup for Oracle/UX standby databases. Also solved a problem where the LVL0 age was being reported incorrectly for standby DB's.
    • 4.03 (Base) Bill Border 24Feb05
  • (Oracle/UX) New performance events:
    • &event("P",$thishost,"MTS is being used for this Non-RAC/OPS instance - Bad for performance - mts_queue=$mts_queue[$thishost]","MTSOn","DBA919");
    • &event("P",$thishost,"UNDO_MANAGEMENT Is not set to AUTO - It should be - undo_mgmt=$undo_mgmt[$thishost]","UndoAutoOff","DBA925");
    • &event("P",$thishost,"FORCE LOGGING Should be turned on - force_logging=$force_logging[$thishost]","ForceLogOff","DBA926");
    • 4.02 (Base) Bill Border 26Jan05
  • (Oracle/ALL) New event for the presence of an SPFILE. We don't use SPFILE, so we need to know where it is being used. This is only active if the Run_SPFile_Check: dbamonrc parameter is set to Y.
    • 4.01 (Base) Bill Border 19Jan05
  • (Oracle/NT) New Oracle/NT Performance Monitoring. Most metrics monitors for Oracle on UX are now monitoring for Oracle on NT.
    • 4.00 (Base) Bill Border 08Jan05
  • (ALL) New event classification:
    • New "S" Security Event Type
    • New "P" Performance Event Type
    WWW Reports changed to accomodate this change.
  • New Security Exceptions Report. This was created because we now have a role of security administrator. This report will become a to-do list for that person of security exceptions to fix. The DBA293 event (Probe Connect Timeout) is now a W event (it was C.) It didn't make sense for this to be C since it is almost always followed by a DBA290C event.
    • 3.95 (Base) Bill Border 16Dec04
  • (ALL) The DBA293 event (Probe Connect Timeout) is now a W event (it was C.) It didn't make sense for this to be C since it is almost always followed by a DBA290C event.
    • 3.94 (Base) Bill Border 14Dec04
  • (Oracle/UX) New performance monitor to see if the buffer cache has < 10 free buffers. In this case, a User event occurs. It is a rule-of-thumb that if your instance has no free buffers, then it could benefit from a larger buffer cache.
  • (Oracle/UX) For 10g, DBAmon will automatically detect which port the OEM WWW interface uses, if configured. On the WWW Instance Summary there will be a URL to the OEM WWW interface for that instance.
    • 3.94 (Base) Bill Border 25Nov04
  • (All) Many changes for a new Sun installation. Syntax changes to many grep commands.
    • 3.93 (Base) Bill Border 23Nov04
  • (Oracle/UX) The component mismatch event now will only occur on thread=1 in RAC/OPS clusters.
  • (Oracle/UX) Now "problem DB userids" will be automatically fixed.
    • 3.92 (Base) Bill Border 29Oct04
  • (Oracle/NT) DBAmon now correctly handles monitoring an instances whose listener password is set.
    • 3.91 (Base) Bill Border 22Oct04
  • (Oracle/UX) Now for OPS/RAC clusters, tablespaces will be monitored only on instance=1. This will eliminate duplicate events and improve performance.
    • 3.90 (Base) Bill Border 20Oct04
  • (ALL) The remsh retry logic has been enhanced to only create a DBA293 event on the LAST retry. Previously an event was occuring once per retry.
    • 3.89 (Base) Bill Border 11Oct04
  • (MSSQL) New check for how full any Drive is that contains MSSQL database files. New DBA805 event. The DBC parameter T_Disk_Full: controls this feature. The default is 95/99.
    • 3.88 (Base) Bill Border 28Sep04
  • (MSSQL) The MSSQL Transaction Logs are now monitored. See MSSQL TLog Monitoring for details.
    • 3.87 (Base) Bill Border 09Sep04
  • (Oracle/UX) The format of event DBA642 was altered to place the percentage near the beginning of the event text.
    • 3.86 (Base) Bill Border 10Aug04 Changes for MSSQL:
  • The TLOG size is percent full is now measured.
  • The MSSQL lightbulb now displays TLOG status for each database.
    • 3.85 (Base) Bill Border 10Aug04 New monitoring capability:
    • Oracle/NT 9i
    • Oracle via ssh
    3.84 (Base) Bill Border 27Jul04 Some improvements to the patch reporting.
    3.83 (Base) Bill Border 11Jul04
    3.82 (Base) Bill Border 11May04
    • (All) Change to Instance Summary WWW pages: Now the OS type and Comm_Method: will be displayed next to the DBMS version.
    3.81 (Base) Bill Border 24Feb04
    • (Oracle/UX) New check for "orphaned" datafiles. See error documentation for DBA313 for details.
    3.80 (Base) Bill Border 20Jan04 2 new DBC parameters:
    • (All) New parameter Suppress_Events:. Specify a list of event ID's (DBAnnn,DBAnnn) to suppress for this instance. This is handy for DB's with systemic problems that will never be solved.
    • (All) Fixed bug which prevented events from being generated for Oracle/UX process table overflow.
    3.79 (Base) Bill Border 02Dec03 2 new DBC parameters:
    • (All) New parameter Priority:. Specify H, M or L for the priority of this instance. Is passed to Ticket Creation Interface.
    • (All) New parameter Make_Tickets:. Specify Y or N for whether to create tickets for this instance.
    3.78 (Base) Bill Border 28Oct03
    • (Oracle/UX) The default threshold for T_Read_Hit: now, if not specified, is 80% (it was 90%).
    • (All) The Event History Viewer now allows you to report on ONLY C, W, I or U events.
    • (Oracle/UX) New DBA312 event which occurs when a non-SYS* DB user has been granted the DBA role.
    • (MSSQL) Fixed problem where automatic rerun of backups was not working correctly.
    3.77 (Base) Bill Border 18Sep03
    • (All) DBAmon now counts the number of databases in all Oracle, Informix and MSSQL instances. The count is reported in the instance summary. Also, the total amount of space allocated by DBMS is reported there.
    • (All) New dbamonrc parameter: Probe_Timeout:. There is now code in DBAmon to automatically kill any outbound connection after this number of seconds.
    3.76 (Base) Bill Border 03Sep03
    • (Informix/UX) There was a problem where a DBAmon Internal Error email message resulted from the chunks not being readable by the Userid: specified in the DBC file. Now, there is a new Event for this condition.
    • (Oracle/UX) DBAmon now monitors for whether the next extent of an object will fit in the designated tablespace. This is in addition to monitoring for full tablespaces.
    • (All) New dbamon_dbc_compile routine which compiles the DBC files into the repository. This compiled data will be used in a future release which contains a WWW-based DBC update feature.
    • (Oracle/UX) Before this release, DBAmon would monitor for passwords matching userid's, even for standby DB's. Now, we only monitor for this in non-standby instances.
    3.75 (Base) Bill Border 19Jul03 (Oracle/UX) New DBC Parameter: DF_Offline_Sev: . The default severity of the "Offline Datafiles" event is C (critical). With this new parameter, you can override that severity to W, I or U. We have a DB with known offline datafiles that we do want to monitor.
    3.74 (Base) Bill Border 25Jun03 (Oracle/UX) New logic to alter the listener.ora to permission=700 and to set a listener password.
    3.73 (Base) Bill Border 14Jun03 (Oracle/UX) New Monitor: UX NFILE's. If the total number of UX file descriptors is within 90/95% of the Kernel NFILE parameters, Warning/Critical event will occur.
    3.72 (Base) Bill Border 02Jun03 (Oracle/UX) New DBC parameter: In_Sync_Unrec_Sev: . With this parameter you can specify the severity of the DBA668 event.
    (Oracle/UX) There was a bug in the LAN half-duplex checking. Also, there were a few probe STDERR messages which were falsely causing DBAmon to re-rcp the software every iteration. Fixed.
    3.71 (Base) Bill Border 19May03 (Oracle/UX)New Performance event:
    • DBA923 - Rollback Segment Header Waits to Gets ratio.
    Also, new END_OF_PROBE string now appears at the end of every probe execution. This will help to diagnose Database hung problems.
    3.70 (Base) Bill Border 14May03 (All)The ID4: DBC parameter is now fully implemented. Also, there is a new dbamonrc parameter: ORACLE_Password: which specifies the Oracle Repository password for user=dbamon.
    3.69 (Base) Bill Border 05May03 (Oracle/UX)New events:
    • DBA308 - The DB is in archivelog mode, but the archiver is STOPPED.
    • DBA308 - The DB is hung because all online redo logs are full.
    3.68 (Base) Bill Border 30Apr03 (Oracle/UX)Major improvement to Primary/Standby InSync monitoring. New DBA668 event for which occurs when an unrecoverable change is detected on the primary SINCE the last standby rebuild.
    3.67 (Base) Bill Border 29Apr03 (Informix/UX)New DBA238 event for Informix objects that approaching the 32gB object size limit.
    3.66 (Base) Bill Border 28Apr03 (Oracle/UX) DBAmon will now work with listeners that are configured with a password.
    3.65 (Base) Bill Border 25Apr03 (MSSQL) It is now possible to monitor MSSQL using ssh. The Connect_Method: and Userid: DBC parameters now work for DBMS: MSSQL.
    3.64 (Base) Bill Border 21Apr03 (Oracle/UX) New check for Oracle userids that have passwords equal to the username. For system passwords that are predictable, DBAmon can automatically change the password to one of your choosing.
    3.63 (Base) Bill Border 31Mar03 (ALL) New dbamonrc WWW_Event_Isolate parameter. Specify here DBAmon Events that you want to isolate to seperate WWW pages. A URL to these events will appear at the bottom of the Short and Long Instance Summary pages. If you specify more than one msgid, separate then with commas.
    3.62 (Base) Bill Border 28Mar03
    • (ALL) When DBAmon task(s) were in the middle of an iteration after a DBC file had been added, or after DBAmon has been started, the "Lightbulb" check did not work. This has been rearchitected, so the issue is gone.
    • (Oracle/UX) New DBA655 event which measures the number of dbwr_io_slave's versus the Oracle maximum of 40.
    • (ALL) New WWW_Font: dbamonrc parameter.
    3.61 (Base) Bill Border 24Mar03 (Oracle/UX) New Filesystem Capacity checking feature. See FS Checking Overview for details. New FS_Check* DBC parameters.
    3.60 (Base) Bill Border 27Feb03 (Oracle/UX) New DBC parameter: Alert_Log_Check:. If you set this to N then DBAmon will not perform normal Oracle Alert Log checking for this instance.
    3.59 (Base) Bill Border 27Feb03 (Oracle/UX) New performance event which detects OTRACE being on. If any .dat files are found in ORACLE_HOME/otrace/admin, then a DBA913 event occurs (Critical Event). OTRACE can cause performance problems and Oracle recommends that it be off. Also, DBAmon now checks the instance-level setting of SQL_TRACE. If it is set to TRUE, then a critical event will occur.
    3.58 (Base) Bill Border 26Feb03 (Oracle/UX) New Prevent_DB_Restart: DBC parameter. If this parameter is set to Y then even if Monitor: is set to Y DBAmon will never attempt to automatically start the DB if it crashes.
    3.57 (Base) Bill Border 21Feb02 (ALL) New Mailer , Mass Mailer and Notepad Search transactions. Also, the Notepad Edit transaction has been rewritten to improve useability.
    3.56 (Base) Bill Border 13Feb02 (Oracle/UX) Change to the dbamon_ora.pl probe. It now will immediately exit if the STATUS from V$INSTANCE is not OPEN. There was a theory that a few ORA-00600 [17059] errors that we have seen were caused by DBAmon querying DBA* tables while a DB was transitioning from MOUNTED to OPEN. This cannot occur now.
    3.55 (Base) Bill Border 07Feb03 (All) New STARS email interface.
    3.54 (Base) Bill Border 03Feb03 (All)New dbamon_stethoscope program.
    3.53 (Base) Bill Border 29Jan03 (All) New DBMS Software Version Oversight feature. See Documentation for details.
    3.52 (Base) Bill Border 28Jan03 (MSSQL) Now, all events found in the MSSQL event log during one DBAmon iteration will be consolidated into one event, rather than each event causing the creation of one DBAmon event.
    3.51 (Base) Bill Border 27Jan03 (Oracle-UX) New test to see if there are any 'rman ' UX processes that have been running for more than 2 days. If any are found, a critical event will list the offending process PID.
    3.50 (Base) Bill Border 21Jan03 (All) New auto-detect of UX server netaliases. Any time that a UX server has a different hostname than the DBC file supplied hostname or any network aliases are detected, DBAmon will place these names on the WWW Instance Summary with a pointer to the hostname supplied in the DBC file. This feature is enabled if the dbamonrc Auto_Detect_Aliases paramater is set to Y. This feature only works for Oracle on UX.
    3.49 (Base) Bill Border 08Jan03 (All) Abandoned confusing version naming convention. Now, all release will simply increment the release number. Also, add RMAN LVL0 age detection.
    3.48 (Base) Bill Border 19Dec02 (Oracle-UX) For 9i Oracle databases, now the UNDO tablespaces are not checked to see if they are full. SMU does a better job of managing space in 9i.
    3.47 (Base) Bill Border 21Nov02 (Oracle-UX) New funtionality: Oracle RMAN LVL0 Backup Age checking.
    3.46 (Base) Bill Border 12Nov02 (All) New addition to Instance Summary Page ... Event History over the last 18 hours and last 7 days.
    3.45 (Base) Bill Border 11Oct02 (All) I got rid of the previous confusing release naming convention. Also, New DBAMON.EVENT_HISTORY table and new DBAmon Ticket Governor.
    3.44
    A Bill Border 04Sep02
    • 1. (Oracle/UX) - New Oracle performance monitoring (data block buffer hit ratio). Associated T_Read_Hit* DBC parameters.
    • 2. (MSSQL) - New MSSQL_Agent_Mon: DBC parameter. Specify as N to prevent agent monitoring.
    • 3. (Oracle/UX) - Refinement to Oracle performance monitoring (data block buffer hit ratio). Now, the db_block_buffer hit ratio will be ignored if the number of consistent gets is < 1000000.
    • 4. (Oracle/UX) - DBAmon will now do archivelog filesystem monitoring for multiple archivelog destinations (8.0 and above).
    • 5. (Oracle/UX) - In the archivelog filesystem full logic, DBAmon will optionally start an archivelog backup (or whatever command you specify with the DBC: T_Arclog_Command: parameter) if the archivelog filesystem is over the specified threshold full. There was an issue when DBAmon ran this command for a DB that did not have any archivelogs to backup. So, this enhancement will prevent the command from being invoked if there are 0 archivelogs to backup. destinations (8.0 and above).
    3.43
    B Bill Border 29Apr02
    • 1. (Informix/UX) - The way that users are counted has changed. Now, a query is run against sysuserthreads for non-informix threads. Previously, onstat -u was run and the 'max concurrent' number was captured. This will satisfy an IBM requirement which requires us to report the number of concurrent users.
    • 2. (All) - The Notepad icon now appears differently if there are notes for and instance versus if there are not any notes.
    • 3. (SAP) - Fixed a bug where under some circumstances, an SAP instance down was not detected.
    • 4. (Oracle/UX) - Enhanced InSync logic to check that the primary DB is up.
    • 5. (SAP/UX) - Under some circumstances, SAP being down (0 work processes) was not being detected. Fixed.
    A Bill Border 26Apr02
    • 1. (All) - Anther Major Enhancement A new WWW "Event Detail" page. If you click on the Event Severity values from the Instance Summary, you will see all events of that severity.
    • 2. (MSSQL) - Bug fix. If a DB name contained a space (this is actually legal in MSSQL) the history data was not being created properly, not was the Instance Detail page correct. Fixed. Also, there was a bug where the ticket text would sometimes be for the wrong instance. Fixed.
    • 3. (All) - New 'Marquee' on the Instance Summary which shows the instances with the highest event count during the last 24 hours.
    • 4. (Oracle/UX) - Monitor: B now also invokes the "InSync" feature.
    • 5. (Oracle/UX) - Monitor: B now also invokes the Oracle Tablespace Full routing for the purpose of collecting Tablespace Size History data.
    • 5. (Oracle/UX) - If the Magnify: dbamonrc parameter is set to Y, there is now an on-screen pulldown on the DBAmon Instance Summary where you can invoke immediate display commands.
    • 6. (All) - Usability enhancements made to the WWW "Notepad" feature. New WWW icon for Notepad on WWW Instance Summary.
    3.42
    A Bill Border 11Mar02
    • 1. (All) - Major Enhancement Dist lists are now in the repository.
    3.41
    C Bill Border 28Feb02
    • 1. (All) - New "InSync" capability. For standby databases There was a bug in the bin/dbamon logic in how tasks were divided up when you use the task_config file. Fixed.
    • 2. (All) - The event message for the "Fileage" event now displays a range of ages instead of the precise age of the file. This will prevent numerous consecutive duplicate events.
    B Bill Border 31Jan02
    • 1. (Oracle/UX) - New "InSync" capability. For standby databases it is sometimes necessary to monitor how far 'out of sync' the standby database is from its primary DB. This new feature measures this time and creates events depending on the In_Sync_Age: parameter that you specify in the DBC Configuration for Oracle/UX.
    • 2. (All) - New DBAmon "Lock" capability. Sometimes there are processes that you may need to run against a DB which will cause DBAmon events. For example, a standby DB refresh that runs periodically that stops and starts Oracle. During that time, you do not want to receive DBAmon tickets that your DB is down. So, this new feature, which only works for Oracle on UX, will cause DBAmon to check for the existence of file /tmp/DBAmon_Lock_{ORACLE_SID}.txt. If this file does exist, then DBAmon will sleep until the file does not exist. Note that if the file exists for > 10 minutes, dbamon_checker will detect a hung probe and it will kill the probe. This will show up a connection error. So, if this feature is used, ensure that the file exists for no more than 10 consecutive minutes.
    • 3. (All) - A feature was added to the "InSync" logic: the ability to detect whether NOLOGGING tables or indexes exist on the Standby DB's primary DB. See: DBAmon Error DBA666.
    • 4. (All) - BUG Fix: When running in multi-task mode with a task_config file, the letters not contained in the task_config file were not being properly assigned. Fixed.
    A Bill Border 31Dec01
    • 1. (All) - New dbamonrc parameter Loc_Breakout: which, if speficied as Y, will cause a breakout by network location to appear on the WWW Instance Summary.
    • 2. (All) - The ID1, ID2 and Network Location breakout 'scoreboards' of the WWW Instance Summary now show an average Health Index for each entry. Also, the "Event Severity" / "Event Count" scoreboard now more accuratly reflects the total number of events of each type. Previously, it only counted the first event of each severity for each instance.
    3.40
    A Bill Border 20Nov01
    • 1. (Oracle/UX) - Major Enhancement DBAmon now is compatible with Oracle/UX Version 9i.
    • 2. (Oracle/NT) - The backup type is now correctly reported. Also, the table DBAMON.BACKUP_AGE is now interrogated. If it exists, then it will be used solely.
    • 3. (Oracle/UX) - Another Major Enhancement New "Magnifying Glass' WWW feature. This feature is active if the WWW_Magnify: dbamonrc parameter is set to Y. The magnify feature only works for Oracle/UX databases. If you click on the magnifying glass that is next to each instance on the WWW Instance Summary page, you will see a menu of possible commands that you can run. The first type is orastat commands which can be used to display most Oracle DB metrics. Most of the more commonly used orastat commands are displayed on this menu. The second type of command on the menu is 'oraadmin' commands. These commands allow you to:
      • Start Oracle
      • Stop Oracle
      • Change archivelog Mode
      • etc.
      all from the WWW (you don't have to logon to the server).
    • 4. (Oracle/NT) - Another Major Enhancement The "Magnifying Glass Feature" now also works for Oracle/NT. Same functionality.
    • 5. (Oracle/NT) - Fixed bug where the Listener status would always be checked, even if Oracle is down.
    • 6. (Informix/UX) - Changed dbamon_arc_ontape to remove references to 'xd'. DBAmon no longer requires xd.
    • 7. (All) - Cleaned up some error messages; got rid of a few duplicates. Enabled Filecheck code - events.
    • 8. (Informix/UX) - An error in the logic of infLocks prevented backup age checking from work for Informix V5. Fixed.
    • 9. (All) - There was a bug whereby some critical events had a message text which contained a newline. This caused some events to be treated as duplicates erroneously. Fixed.
    3.31
    C Bill Border 06Nov01
    • 0. (Oracle/UX) - The Oracle SGA is now checked for being full. If it is >= 90% full, an INFO event will occur; if it is >=95% a WARNING event will occur. At some time in the future, I will change these severities to CRITICAL and WARNING.
    B Bill Border 19Oct01
    • 0. (Oracle/UX) - New code which will automatically attempt to restart broken archive log destinations. If a destination is in error status, DBAmon will automatically find the appropriate "log_archive_dest_?" parameter and issue the alter system command to reactive the destination.
    • 1. (Oracle/UX) - There was a bug in the logic which automatically alter tables and indices to MAXEXTENTS UNLIMITED. If the object name contains a $, it would fail. Fixed now.
    A Bill Border 21Jun01
    • 1. (OracleApps/UX) - Rewritten. Added many new parameters; see DBC Configuration for Oracle/Apps. Also see What DBAmon Monitors for what is now checked for OracleApps.
    • 2. (All) - It was noticed that if a DBC file was removed during DBAmon execution, under some circumstances, the software would not be downloaded for the remaining instances. Now, if a DBC file changes, the software will be downloaded always on the next iteration.
    • 3. (All) - New dbamonrc parameter: Id1_Breakout:. This causes DBAmon to create a separate WWW page with all DBC ID1: values. Submit a support request for more information.
    • 4. (Oracle/UX) - Previously, if an archive destination was ever in ERROR status, a critical event would occur. Now, if the destination in ERROR status is OPTIONAL and the REOPEN value is non-zero, then the event will only be a WARNING.
    • 5. (All) - Under some circumstances, the software download software was not correctly be reloaded when is should have been. Fixed.
    • 6. (All) - New condensed Instance Summary which has pointers to other pages with the actual instance details. For example, if you view this page, all of the instances on servers whose names begin with A are listed, and so on. This change only applies to users who use the Oracle repository.
    • 7. (All) - New ID1_Breakout: and ID2_Breakout: dbamonrc parameters. If specified as Y, then instances will be additionaly summarized by their ID1: and ID2: DBC values.
    • 8. (Oracle/UX) - New T_Arclog_Command: DBC Configuration for Oracle/UX parameter. When and Oracle archivelog filesystem reaches either the warning or critical threshold (defaults to 80/90), the command that you specify here will be invoked with "at now". Also, the default warning and critical threshold were changed from 90/95 to 80/90.
    • 9. (Oracle/UX) - New N Backup_Age: DBC Configuration Value. You can now enter an N in the DBC Configuration for Oracle/UX for the Backup_Age: parameter. This informs DBAmon that you will not be backing up this DB. The Backup Type that will display on the WWW Instance Summary will be bkDBCOff.
    • 10. (Oracle/UX) - The Status/Flags column of the instance summary will now show if T_Arclog_Cmd: is specified.
    • 11. (Informix/UX) - There was a problem when comparing the number of V shared memory segments to the critical and warning thresholds. The comparison was character instead of numeric. Fixed.
    • 12. (Oracle/UX) - Change in the behavior of Oracle extent monitoring. There used to be a parameter "Fix" which you could specify which would instruct DBAmon to attempt to ALTER TABLE ... MAXEXTENTS UNLIMITED when the T_Extents: threshold was exceeded. Now, this ALTER TABLE is always attempted UNLESS you specify NOFIX. The reason for this change is that there is no good reason to not alter the table.
    • 13. (All) - DBAmon no longer pre-deletes all /tmp/dbamon* files before downloading.
    3.30
    I Bill Border 30May01
    • 1. (Oracle/UX) - New check for Online Redo Logs in exception status. Creates critical event if any are encountered.
    • 2. (Oracle/UX) - New check for the number of processes versus the configured init.ora "processes" parameter. This will proactively prevent outages caused by procecesses being exceeding by notifying before it reaches 100%.
    • 3. (Informix/UX) - DBAmon now collects the concurrent sessions HWM. It is displayed on the "D" Details WWW page and is saved as STA history data.
    • 4. (Oracle/UX) - Significant performance improvement in the Oracle Tablespace Full checking logic. In one case, elapsed time went from 10.5 minutes to 2 seconds.
    • 5. (Oracle/UX) - Extent checking is now only done every 10th iteration, to improve throughput.
    • 6. (Informix/UX) - The former "zero divide #5" in infDBS.pl is now an event. I was too easily overlooked before. It also now will detect if dbaccess did not run because TEMP dbspace is full.
    • 7. (All) - Whenever a Server NOT-Pingable error is detected, the download_software flag will be turned off causing DBAmon to reload the software during the next attempted communication. before.
    H Bill Border 16May01
    • (All) - New dbamonrc parameter: . Should only be if suggested by DBAmon support. Prints diagnostic data to the Day log.
    • (All) - The Day log files (/opt/dbamon/log/Mon,Tue, ...) now show detailed text for all events.
    • (All) - There are now stdout messages written when every code section starts.
    • (All) - The Local_Or_Remote: DBC parameter is now obsolete. All monitored servers are treated as remote.
    • (Oracle/UX) - The Oracle DBID is now captured. It is displayed on the "D" WWW page and in the MISC3 column of the dbamon.instances table.
    G Bill Border 22Apr01
    • (SAP-R3/UX) - DBAmon now monitors SAP/R3 on Unix. See What DBAmon Monitors for details on what is monitored. New SAP DBC Parameter: SAPSYSTEMNAME .
    • (All) - New userexit: Ticket that in onvoked in order to create Call Tracking System tickets. See: DBAmon Userexits for details. Module dbamon_make_ticket.pl is now obsolete.
    • (Oracle/UX) - There was a bug where if the include= init.ora parm contained a ? (short for ORACLE_HOME), it could not be opened properly. Fixed.
    • (Oracle/UX) - There was another bug if you are extent checking and you have partitioned tables, the wrong column was being read. Fixed.
    • (Oracle/UX) - There was yet another bug in the expansion of the * DBC value for ORACLE_HOME. If it changed during DBAmon execution, it was not being re-read properly.
    • (Oracle/UX) - There string 'corrupt' is now looked for in the alert log.
    • (Oracle/UX) - Some customization to detect different backup types.
    • (Oracle/UX) - New Alerts: init.ora Parameter Errors:
      • If large_pool_size > 0 and backup_tape_io_slaves is FALSE and dbwr_io_slave is 0, then create EVENT
      The event severity is Warning.
    • (All) - Previously, the requirements for Perl were that there be a link in /usr/local/bin/perl on monitored servers and /usr/bin on the Master. Hmmm... It is now consistent in that there must be a symlink which invokes Perl V5 called /usr/local/bin/perl on both the Master and the Monitored server.
    • (All) - Fixed major problem in reading the dbamonrc file when you are not using the repository. Thanks to Eric at Worldcom.
    • (All) - Solved problem where gzip was not found on non-HPUX OS's. Also, converted all bdf's to df -kPl. Also converted all ll's to ls -l. Thanks again to Eric at Worldcom.
    F Bill Border 10Apr01
    • (Oracle/UX) - When tablespace full checking occurs, DBAmon will automatically coalesce any tablespace which contains 'TEMP' before reporting that it is full.
    • (Oracle/UX) - When tablespace full checking occurs, DBAmon will automatically SHRINK all active rollback segments if the tablespace name contains 'RBS', before reporting that it is full.
    E Bill Border 18Mar01
    • (Informix/UX) - New check: INFORMIXDIR Filesystem Full . If the filesystem containing the INFORMIXDIR directory is >= 99% full, a critical event will occur.
    • (Informix/UX) - There are now 4 new Informix DBC Parameters that are easier to remember than the old names:
      Old ParameterNew Parameter
      Informix_Dir: INFORMIXDIR:
      Inf_Server: INFORMIXSERVER:
      SQL_Hosts: INFORMIXSQLHOSTS:
      ON_Config: ONCONFIG:
      Note that the old parameters will still work, but new DBC files should use the new parameters.
    D Bill Border 13Mar01
    • (Oracle/UX) - New Oracle Automatic Crash Restart. For most common Oracle crashes, DBAmon will automatically startup the instance, drastically reducing downtime. See: What DBAmon Monitors for details on when this will occur and under what circumstances.
    • (MSSQL) - If the automatic rerun of a backup (DBC Backup_Command: parm) in foreground fails, then DBAmon will now make a critical event.
    • (All) - There was a bug where DBAmon Program Errors did not attach diagnostic data. Fixed.
    C Bill Border 07Mar01
    • (All) - The syntax of the DBC files are now checked (I don't know why I didn't do this long ago). If a bogus parm is specified, an error message will be EMail'ed to the Admin_EMail: (dbamonrc) email address.
    • (MSSQL) - New Backup_Command: DBC parameters allows you to automatically invoke and NT command any time that backup age is exceeded for any DB listed in the Backup_Check_DBs: DBC parameter. This can be used to automatically invoke an MSSQL backup. Note that you have to provide the backup command to be invoked. See MSSQL DBC File Configuration Reference .
    • (All) - New dbamonrc parameter Paging which controls whether to activate the paging logic. The default is Y. We would only specify this in our DBAmon test instance as N, to prevent paging while running DBAmon in test mode.
    • (All) - New Download_Every: DBC Configuration Parameter to instruct DBAmon to re-download the DBAmon probe software on every iteration. Only use this if asked to by DBAmon support.
    • (Oracle/UX) - New Oracle/UX feature where DBAmon will automatically save the init.ora file on your DBAmon Master. It will be stored in: /opt/dbamon/dat/config_save/config.{ServerName_{DBC_Title1}. This feature could Save Your Bacon if you have a catastropic server failure and need a copy of the init.ora file.
    B Bill Border 28Feb01
    • (Oracle/NT) - New logic to Monitor Tablespace Capacity for Oracle/NT. This works a little different than on UX in that if *ANY* datafile of a tablespace has AUTOEXTEND=ON, then no events will occur for that tablespace. Setting AUTOEXTEND on is a more common practice on NT.
    • (All) - New DBAmon History Repository Database data: SPC DB Space Utilization Data. Note that for now this data is also written to /opt/dbamon/dat/history/dbspaces. At some future date, this data will only be written database and not to the dbspaces directory.
    • (All) - Some minor cosmetic improvements to the Instance Summary WWW Page: The Event short text indicators now appear in a smaller font and they are "click-able" to get you to the Events Page for an instance (previously only the E URL for an instance would get you there).
    • (All) - The T_TS_Full: (Oracle) and T_DBSpace_Full: parms now work slightly differently. If they are not specified for any instance, then TBLSpace/DBSpace monitoring will not occur.
    • (All) - New Iter_Min_Secs: dbamonrc parameter. If specified, tells DBAmon that no single iteration should run for less than this number of seconds. If an iteration completes in less than the number of seconds specified here, DBAmon will sleep the difference between the the iteration duration and this number before starting the next iteration. For example, if this number is set to 600 (10 minutes) and an iteration completes in just 6 minutes, then DBAmon will sleep for 4 minutes before starting the next iteration. This feature prevents DBAmon from "beating up" a DB server. This parameter is similar to the Sleeptime: parameter, but is more sophisticated in the the sleep only occurs if the iteration ran quickly.
    A Bill Border 26Feb01
    • (All) - Major Enhancement
      The main module dbamon.awk which was about 8500 lines long has been rewritten in Perl. It was also modularized and broken down into many independant modules. This will give DBAmon much better flexibility and will greatly improve performance. I will now be able to run all Oracle DBI calls from the main program which will eliminate expensive context switching to invoke external programs to perform DB access. DBAmon now connects to the Oracle repository DB once at the beginning and stays connected for the entire time that DBAmon is active, again saving the overhead of constantly connecting and disconnecting. When DBAmon was first written in 1993, awk was the scripting language of choice and Perl was in its infancy.
    3.25
    E Bill Border 06Feb01
    • (All) - All dbamonrc SYSTEM section parms that begin with HTTP or HTML are now obsolete. Always, ALL WWW output is written to /opt/dbamon/htm without exception. All URL on pages that are create there are relative to /opt/dbamon/htm . If these are specified, then DBAmon admin will receive a warning EMail.
    • (All) - New module dbamon_mailer is used to send all mail. dbamon_mailer uses sendmail, not mailx which used to be used.
    D Bill Border 01Feb01
    • Oracle/UX - An event now occurs if any archive destination is in ERROR status.
    • Oracle/UX - If an archive log dest ended in "/", the archive log FS full check did not work. Now it does!
    • Informix/UX - DBSpace full events will not occur for HDR-Secondary instances.
    • (All) - Remsh Retry. A new dbamonrc parameter. This parameter controls how many times DBAmon will retry a failed connection. Every communication from the DBAmon Master uses the "remsh" UX service. If this parameter is set to > 0, then if a remsh connection fails for any reason (most probably due to network problems), then the connection will be retried Remsh_Retries: number of times after sleeping 30 seconds.
    • (All) - New dbamon_checker utility which runs from cron which replaces the old dbamon_mgr. Its job is to:
      1. Kill any hung connection to a DB server that has been running for > 10 minutes.
      2. See if all DBAmon tasks are running (from /opt/dbamon/adm/processes_prod.txt). If any tasks listed there are not running, dbamon_stop is invoked to kill all DBAmon tasks, and DBAmon is restarted.
      Change your cron entries which currently invoke dbamon_mgr to look like: Software Installation Instructions.
    • (All) - STA/sessionshwm being recorded.
    • (All) - STA/buf/dict/lib-hitratio being recorded.
    • (All) - New static DBAmon Historical Graphs link on the instance summary page. This link points to a new directory /opt/dbamon/htm/graphs. These graphs are created by optional SAS programs which I can provide.
    • (All) - New DBAmon functionality: DBAmon History Repository Database. This is new logic where historical data is written to a repository table. Measures being recorded now are:
      • STA/sessionshwm - Oracle concurrent sessions HWM
      • STA/buf/dict/lib-hitratio - Oracle shared pool hit ratios
    C Bill Border 05Jan01
    • Oracle/NT - DBAmon will now check the log_archive_dest disk to ensure that it is not full. The Warning/Critical thresholds are 90/95. The DBC T_Arclog_Full parameter controls these thresholds.
    B Bill Border 28Dec00
    • MSSQL/NT - The report that is created in the (E)vents WWW page when the Backup_Age: is exceeded will not display all registered MSSQL backups for the DB in question. This will aid in troubleshooting the event.
    • (All) - If you are using the Oracle Repository, then the new Instance Summary now has a URL when you can click to see only the Instances of that DBMS. For example, in the "Scoreboard" section under the heading "DBMS/Application" you see Informix, Oracle etc.. Those strings are now URL's to the page that contains the Instance Detail only for that DBMS.
    • Informix/UX - Version 5 of Informix is now fully supported.
    A Bill Border 02Dec00
    • MSSQL/NT - Enabled logic where you can now specify DBC parameter Perl_Path: if the ActivePerl(R) bin dir is not in the default path.
    • Oracle/UX - DBAmon will now detect if the Oracle database is running in Standby mode. If it is, then the Instance Summary will indicate so. Also, there is a bug in Oracle (8.1.6?) where tablespaces sometimes will show RECOVER mode, when they are really ONLINE. The DBAmon code that checks for offline datafiles will now not report on datafiles that are in RECOVER mode on a Standby DB.
    • (All) - Major Enhancement:
      Due to numerous problems that we have experienced with MySql which had been used for years as the DBAmon data repository, the decision has been made to switch from using MySql as the DBAmon repository to Oracle. Coding begins in this release for this change. Stay tuned.
    • (All) - Another Major Enhancement:
      Coding has started to allow DBAmon to run Multi-Task mode. This will allow monitoring to occur in parallel, versus the syncronous mode that it previously ran in. This will help very large shops to reduce the lag time between the times that metrics are checked on DB servers. Again, stay tuned.
    3.24
    E Bill Border 04Nov00
    • Oracle/NT - Official initial support of Oracle on NT. New dbc DBMS: value of OracleNT. For now, DBAmon will monitor:
      • Oracle is up
      • SQL will run
      • OracleServiceSID is active
      • Check for offline datafiles
      • TNSListener Service Active
      Monitoring of Oracle/NT will only work for version 8 of Oracle.
    • Instance Summary - New format of table where instance counts are displayed. New Hi/Lo version by DBMS column.
    • Parameters - Now, invalid DBMS: values will create an error that will be sent to Admin_EMail:.
    D Bill Border 02Nov00
    • Oracle/Linux - Officially support of Oracle on Linux. Configuration and operation is identical to Oracle/Unix.
    • MSSQL - Now there is Backup Age Monitoring. See MSSQL DBC Configuration for details on configuration.
    • Informix - Support for version 9 of Informix.
    C Bill Border 28Oct00
    • Instance Summary - Consolidated SAP version and disks columns to "Misc." column.
    • Oracle - For Oracle instances that run in OPS mode, the node number now displays on the instance summary.
    • Instance Summary - There is now a column on the far right which dislays the number of seconds spent monitoring each instance. This will simplify the debugging of communications problems which cause one instance to monopolize monitoring.
    B Bill Border 09Oct00
    • Oracle - DBAmon now checks to see if the filesystem where $ORACLE_HOME resides is >= 99% full. If it is, a critical event occurs.
    • Oracle - DBAmon now checks to see if the DB is in RESTRICTED SESSION. If it is, a critical event occurs.
    • Oracle - If an Oracle DB is running in OPS mode, then the service name in SQLNet is not predictable. DBAmon now detects if the DB is running in OPS mode; if it is, then we just run lsnrctl status to verify that SQLNet is running.
    A Bill Border 14Sep00
    • MSSQL Monitoring - DBAmon now monitors MSSQL. There is a new download dbamon_mssql.pl. It checks:
      • MSSQL Running (SQL will run, can see Master DB)
      • Alerts (If there are any alerts since the last time checked with SEV >= 17)
    3.23
    F Bill Border 26Aug00
    • MSSQL Monitoring (Well Kind Of ...) - The DBMS: .dbc parm now allows the value MSSQL. For now this can only be used for Monitor: N (documentation purposes). During the next few months, I will add some simple MSSQL monitoring.
    • SSH "Through The Firewall" Support - If you specify Comm_Method: ssh in the .dbc file, DBAmon will use ssh instead of remsh for communication. Instructions on how to configure ssh can be found at SSH Configuration. This feature allows us to monitor DB's that are outside of the firewall from inside the firewall.
    E Bill Border 11Aug00
    • MAJOR ENHANCEMENT - DBAmon now can automatically add datafiles to Oracle tablespaces (I can also do this for Informix if anyone wants). There is a new DBC parameter: T_TS_Command: where you can specify a shell command to be invoked when a tablespace reaches its WARNING threshold. See DBC Configuration for further details. This parameter is used properly can fully automate expansion of Oracle tablespaces.
    • When an Oracle instance is running OPS (Oracle Parallel Server) this is now recognized. An "OPS" indicator will appear under FLAGS on the Instance Summary. Future versions will check OPS status.
    • Perl V5.6 is now recognized as valid.
    D Bill Border 13Jul00
    • New WWW interface from the Instance Summary to View AND EDIT the inhibit file for an instance. No more need to vi Inhibit Files. Changes were made to CGI dbamon_inhibit.pl.
    • Added new Backup_Command: dbc parameter to facilitate automatic restarting of Oracle backups (I will do Informix shortly). If this parameter is present for an instance, when a backup age exceeded event would have occured, DBAmon will automatically issue this command instead of the critical event. The command is issued by dbamon_ora at an at now command. This will save MUCH TIME in our issuing backup rerun commands. If on the iteration following the issuing of this command a backup is not running and the age is still exceeding the threshold, then a critical event will occur.
    • Software download errors are now critical events. We had a case where there was a disable Oracle account causing the download to fail and we never noticed it.
    • On the Instance Summary the DBMS values are now color coded (easier to read).
    • Added the same Backup_Command: code for Informix. It works the
    • Fixed bug where the comparison to see if a Tablespace/DBSpace was full was not numeric but character. It now works to set the critical threshold to 100 (I wonder how we went all of those years with this bug?). same as for Oracle.
    C Bill Border 23Jun00
    • Added new dbamonrc parameter Remsh_Sev: which determined the severity of remsh errors. It can be set to W or C (warning or critical). The default is W. This can eliminate pages (and tickets) for bogus remsh errors.
    B Bill Border 01Jun00
    • Added code to the Informix Logical Log Full check to better diagnose dbaccess errors.
    • Changed all mailx statements to specify the -m option which prevents the MIME headers from being included. We were getting some MIME messages on our pager
    • Fixed problem with pager notification. If you had specifed Pager_EMail: and not a subject it was not working. It now fills in a default subject if one is not supplied.
    • The Oracle DB up check was missing the DB not being OPEN. It now tried to run SQL against a non-existent table which will fail if the DB is not open and will create a critical event.
    A Bill Border 17May00
    • Fixed some Oracle monitoring problems in download dbamon_ora.pl. If a DB server has > 1 instance and the name of instance A is part of the name of instance B it became very confused. Also, there is an Oracle bug which prevents svrmgrl from reading data from a here document. I added code to dbamon_ora.pl to put an obvious message in the Event Log if this happens indicating which patch to apply.
    • New monitoring mode Backup-Only Monitoring. This was coded for a need to just monitor backup age. There is a new value for Monitor: DBC parameter: B. See DBC Configuration for details.
    • Downloads: Added code to prevent multiple downloads to one host. This was previously a common occurance where there were multiple DB's on one host. Now a flag is set to prevent >1 download per host.
    • Fixed bug in Oracle download monitor where if a filesystem name was long then the Archive Log Dir % full was incorrectly retrieved.
    • Added code to detect an Oracle bug in Oracle 7.3.4. There is a bug 622943 which prevents svrmgrl from reading from STDIN. Without a fix for this bug, nothing will work from DBAmon. I added a message that displays with the DB DOWN message instructing the user to apply this patch.
    3.22
    Q Bill Border 15May00
    • Added Oracle Backup Aging. At the present time, it only works with ora_backup which employs the RMAN/Veritas interface. It works the same way as with Informix (Backup_Age: .dbc parameter).
    • Minor change to Instance Summary to display the backup method in the backup age column (why didn't I do it that way in the first place?).
    • Addition of new DBAmon logo in the Instance Summary page. This new logo (a jpg file) is supplied in the /opt/dbamon/images directory.
    • Changed all mailx command to use the "-m" switch to disable MIME encoding. The problem was that DBAmon messages that were sent to Outlook produced a message about being unable to decode.
    • Cleaned up the .dbc parameters that control paging. Now, if you specify Paging_EMail: an email will be sent to that address (assumed to be a pager) unconditionally. I added Custom Code to allow the DUMMY Pager_Subject: parameter to work only for ???.
    P Bill Border 01May00
    • I encountered a server where Perl5 was not installed. This naturally prevented all monitoring from working since the downloaded .pl modules are coded in Perl5. I added a check to the download section where it checks the version of Perl by running /usr/local/bin/perl -v. Thus, a prerequisite to running DBAmon is also that /usr/local/bin/perl points to the Perl 5 executable.
    • DBAmon will now recognize a backup type of RMAN by looking in cron.
    N Bill Border 24Mar00
    • A new check for Oracle: Archive Log Dir Full. There is a new Configuration parameter T_Arclog_Full: for Oracle.
    • The Instance Summary Now Displays the Oracle Backup Type and whether Archive Logging is ON.
    M Bill Border 25Feb00
    • A new check for Oracle: Object Extent Checking. There is a new Configuration parameter T_Extents: for Oracle.
    • There is a new MYSql table: instance which is recreated at the end of each iteration with information about all DB's being monitored. The table looks like: 
      Field   Type    Null    Key     Default Extra
status  char(1)
system  char(16)
instance        char(16)
model   char(16)
os      char(8)
dbms    char(8)
dbmsver char(12)
dbmssn  char(16)        YES             NULL
alloc   int(11)                 0
used    int(11)                 0
ts      timestamp(14)   YES             NULL
    L Bill Border 07Feb00
    • New Oracle monitoring routine: oraAlerts. This new alert checks the Oracle alert log for words that you can configure (error, full, ...). See Configuration for additional details.
    • New System Parameter: Use_MySQL:. This parm should be specified as Y if you are going to use MySQL DBMS calls.
    • New Host Parameters: Monitor_Hours:, Monitor_Days: and Monitor_Exclude:. These parms will tell DBAmon to only monitor during certain Hours and Days of the week. See Configuration for details.
    • Ontape backup aging Y2K fix. If a backup timestamp read from the reserved page is in the future, it is discarded. We were having a problem where L1's taken after the date on a server was returned to normal were not overwriting backup dates recorded during Y2K testing (future date). Changed module dbamon_arc_ontape.
    K Bill Border 25Jan00
    • There was a bug in Informix ontape backup age checking where if the dbamon_time script failed that an event would be created because a time value of 0 was used. Added code to dbamon_arc_ontape to ensure that a valid time value was retreived.
    • Fixed a problem where the tablespace size (Oracle) was not calculated correctly for large tablespaces.
    • Changes to dbamon_ora to tolerate Oracle 7.*. See DBAmon Home Page for Oracle version compatibility.
    • There is a report at the top of the System Summary stating how many Informix and Oracle instances are being monitored.
    J Bill Border 10Jan00
    • The Oracle oraLsnr check (listener active) will now restart the listener if it is not active.
    • The Oracle oraUp check now will check for the presence of the database name in /opt/oracle/adm/config/ora_chk_instance.excl. This was done to accomodate the tools being used by our colleagues in Roseville to stop and start Oracle for offline backups.
    • There is a new Informix check for the number of used NFILE's. The routine is called infNFile. The data is gathered by the check_locks routine.
    • I renamed the old download pgm dbamon_locks.pl to dbamon_inf.pl. All new Informix routines will go into this module. At some point in the future, I want to have only 2 downloads, one for Informix and one for Oracle.
    I Bill Border 29Dec99
    • To improve performance, the check for LTAPEDEV value (Informix logical log archiving) is done by the DBSpaces function.
    H Bill Border 20Dec99
    • More Oracle Montoring. Now monitors the Listener and Tablespaces. See What Is Monitored for more details.
    G Bill Border 15Dec99
    • DBAmon now monitors Oracle instances. The first check (more is to come) is whether the instance is active (able to run SQL and the required daemons active).
    F Bill Border 08Dec99
    • New dbamonc instance config parm: Monitor: - If this parm is set to N no monitoring will occur. This is useful for customer who do not purchase our monitoring service. In that case, we want to track the instance with DBAmon, but we do not want to monitor anything. Instances in that state will show up white on the System Summary. Details are on the configuration WWW page of the DBAmon home page.
    • Recoded the code where the color or the Backup Age value is on the System summary.
    E Bill Border 22Nov99
    • MAJOR CHANGE! - A new event type: USER EVENT. User events will create an entry in the HTML event log for an instance and will send email to the distribution list for that instance. This will be used for checks where we want the info only to be sent to the customer (longtx. extents, ...).
    • A new check: Long Transaction Proactive Checking. This check will not be turned on by default, but when a server has a LONGTX problem. This new check will create a User Event which sends email, but does not create a BLT ticket. For how to configure and other information, see Long Transaction Detection.
    • Thanks to Jean-Francois Le Carre Petit for suggesting these changes:
      • New dbamonrc SYSTEM section parameter: Make_Tickets:. If this is specified as Y, dbamon_make_tickets.pl will be invoked for critical event. The default is N.
      • Postnote event notification messages now display the instance name, date and error message identifier.
      • Previously, DBAmon always tried to use rsql to insert rows into mysql tables. I have now changed the code so that rsql is only invoked here in Colorado Springs. If you wish to use the mysql interface, change all occurances of our server name to your server in dbamon.awk.
    D Bill Border 17Nov99
    • DBAmon now checks the number of days since the last LEVEL=0 backup. There is a new .dbc parameter: L0_Age: where you can specify a number of days. The default is 30 days. If the threshold is exceeded, a critical event occurs.
    • There is now support for Oracle. There is no monitoring yet, but there are new .dbc file parameters (See guide below on .dbc file). In future releases there will be some simple checks for Oracle instances.
    • I noticed that during the first iteration of DBAmon that the routine which counted the number of the tables performed poortly. Since this data is rarely used by us, this routine is now "optional". There is a new dbamonrc file parameter called "Count_Tables:" which specifies whether table_counting should occur. The default is "Y". See the "Configuration" section of the DBAmon Home Page for details.
    C Bill Border 04Nov99
    • The System Summary now displays the Backup_Age: threshold for instances where it has been specified.
    B Bill Border 26Oct99
    • It is now possible to inhibit all DBAmon checking for all instances. There is a new (optional) file in the /opt/dbamon/adm/inhibit directory called ALL. The dates in this file are the same as for individual instances. This feature may be handy during time zone changes when many or all instances will be down.
    • There is a bug in Informix where the "locks" column of the sysesprof SMI table has invalid data. DBAmon was changed to ignore the condition where the total number of locks (from the syssesprof table) exceeds the LOCKS onconfig parm.
    • On an instance where the total amount of V shared memory is > 1gb, there will be no recommended SHM values recommended and no events created.
    A Bill Border 11Oct99
    • Introduction of Backup Age Inhibit . This capability will inhibit backup age checking for a user-specified amount of time. There is a new option "B" on the System Summary that will access the data entry panel where you specify the inhibit period. NOTE: This option uses mysql. If non-Colorado-Springs users want this capability, contact me.
    • When one instance has > 1 DBSpace critical or warning messages, only one colored message will now appear on the System Summary.
    3.21
    H Bill Border 20Sep99
    • The error message text for remsh errors now shows the cause of the error.
    • The number of maximum concurrent users is now tracked and reported at the end of the text instances report (in the /opt/dbamon/dat/reports directory).
    G Bill Border 29Jul99
    • The DBSPACE critial message now contains information about how full the dbspace and how much free space remains.
    F Bill Border 12Jul99
    • If a backup is currently executing on the server (ontape or onarchive) then a critical BACKUP AGE event will be reduced in severity to a warning.
    E Bill Border 01Jul99
    • If the box is running HP-UX 11.0, an indication was added to the system summary to indicate whether it is running in 32 or 64-bit mode.
    D Bill Border 25May99
    • Support for HP-UX Memory Windowing. This new feature of HP-UX allows memory to be partitioned. DBAmon was changed to prefix all commands with the setmemwindow command. See DBAmon Configuration for details. The new .dbc parameter is called Mem_Window:.
    C Bill Border 21May99
    • Support for Informix 7.30.FC (64 bit). The only necessary change was to the chunks_down routine to look at a different record offset due to long address field.
    • We found a problem with Informix 7.31 where certain sessions have garbage in their SMI table entries. Changed dbamon_locks.pl to ignore sessions where the number of locks exceeds the total configured for the entire instance.
    • The System Summary now displays the time that DBAmon was started.
    B Bill Border 23Apr99
    • Enhancements to Informix Version Management process. We have discovered that we need 3 colors to track defective versions of Informix.
      • Red: Version has critical bug(s). Upgrade is imperative
      • Yellow: Version had bug(s) with workaround
      • Green: No known significant bugs
      So, there are now 3 files to list versions. The old good and bad file and a new "soso" file. Red and Yellow designations will be included in the bad instance report. There is also a new pointer on the System Summary on the Informix Version column heading which takes you to our Informix Version Management page.
    • Removed Informix SN, DB Count, DBSpaces Count and Table Count from System Summary for performance reasons (our page was 120k). These values still appear on the /opt/dbamon/dat/reports/instances.txt report.
    A Bill Border 22Apr99 Added 3 new Actions to System Summary:
    • C: View the current dbamonrc (or *.dbc) settings for that instance. Note that the current settings, not the current contents of the .dbc file will be shown.
    • H: View Event History for that instance. Code has been added to insert a row into a mysql table any time there is an event (any severity). If I find that there is too much data, maybe at some point in the future I will only save W and C events.
    • N: View/Edit "Notes" for this instance. On clicking this URL, you will see a screen with any prior Note entries for this instance and a form to allow you to enter new Notes. This data comes from another mysql table.
    These new functions use the MYSQL relational database. You ask, why didn't you use Informix, because MYSQL is free! DBAmon now has code to manipulate MYSQL tables. There will be more to come as I convert all historical data storage to MYSQL. If you want to implement DBAmon with MYSQL, give me a call.
    3.20
    J Bill Border 17Mar99
    • MAJOR BUG FIX: The routine which measured the number of hours since the last successful ONArchive backup was not correct when the most recent backup occured more than 0 days ago.
    • HDR Change: There is a bug in Informix which forces us to run a dbspaceset=* backup when we have to do the HDR turn-on restore. We have found that it is difficult to remember to change our backup tool back to parallel backups after performing one of these special backups. A new check has been added to the CheckHDR() routine which will create a warning event if:
      1. The most recent level-0 backup is a dbspaceset=* backup -and-
      2. HDR is active
    I Bill Border 20Feb99
    • Added a column to the System Summary which displays the SAP kernel and backend version, if it is determined that the instance is SAP.
    H Bill Border 11Jan99
    • There was a problem where the 3rd column was wrapping on the System Summary. Also, I changed the appearance of the PGR and MBUN indicators.
    • The CLEANERS check previously recommended values above 127 which is the max CLEANERS ONCONFIG value. The max recommended value is now 127.
    • New code to check for an appropriate number of AIO VP's. Code was added to the downloaded dbamon_dbs.pl to capture the number of TOTALOPS (from onstat -g iov) for the first and last AIO VP. Then a ration of the last to the first is captured and expressed as a percentage. If this percentage is > 10, then we need more AIO VP's (we could adjust this threshold over time). A new INFO event will be then generated accordingly. The situation that this should prevent is when we configure ONCONFIG to have 1 AIO VP because we are turning on KAIO, but somehow the KAIOON env var is not set at Informix startup. The EVENT message will indicate the recommended number of AIOVP's and will also print a suggested onmode command to dynamically add AIO VP's to bring the instance to the recommended value.
    • Fix to System Summary so that the 4th column always has a color of black.
    G Bill Border 06Jan99
    • There is a new column on the System Summary "Events" which lists a short summary of what events currently exists for that instance.
    • The System Summary now scrolls horizontally without word-wrapping enabling you to set the width of your browser to something less than the whole screen.
    F Bill Border 21Dec98
    • Change the severity of extent warning from WARNING to INFO. Also added code for future check which will verify correctness of NUMAIOVPS.
    E Bill Border 11Dec98
    • Fixed bug where the was occaisionally duplicate DBSpace history data. This problem occured when there were dbamonrc system definition changes.
    D Bill Border 07Dec98
    • Fixed alignment problem with totals line at the bottom of the System Summary
    • Removed Non-Sys-DB column from System Summary
    C Bill Border 29Oct98
    • Added new WSTATS flag. For the time being, it will appear red on the System Summary page because we have recently fount that WSTATS=1 can cause significant performance degradation.
    B Bill Border 09Oct98
    • Our DBAmon->SMS interface to create Helpdesk tickets when an event occurs had previously truncated the test of the message on the problem summary for remsh errors. Message text was changed to not include a colon (:) which fixes the problem.
    • The archive age checking routine has been re-coded. Now, even for onarchive backed-up instances the number of hours since the last backup is measured (it wasn't before - it was only tested). A new column has been added to the System Summary which displays the number of hours since the last good backup which is color coded according to the Backup_Age: threshold for that instance.
    • When a remsh error has previously occured the report on the (E)vent page contained garbage. This has been fixed (I think).
    A Bill Border 01Oct98
    • Extent checking has been re-implemented. It had been disabled last fall because it didn't work correctly for instances with fragmented tables. It now works at the fragment level. A warning event happens if Max_Extents: (from dbamonrc) is reached and a critical event happens if the number of extents in a table reaches 200.
    • Performance enhancement to dbamon_table_count.sql:
    • The Test Mode of DBAmon now does not interfere with an instance of DBAmon running production. This was done by ensuring that work files when in test mode are different than those of non-test mode.
      • It now counts tables by running "select count(*) from systabnames".
      • A PDQPRIORITY of 25 is now used.
      These changes will improve the performance of the first iteration.
    3.19
    I Bill Border 15Sep98
    • Bug Fix: Stephan Reichart of BBN (thanks for the good feedback) found a problem where under certain conditions if a system is rebooted while in a download failed condition that DBAmon will not again reattempt to redownload the software making it necessary to restart DBAmon. The fix is to force a re-download any time that the "No software download" is issued.
    H Bill Border 14Sep98
    • Added code to allow the test version of DBAmon to run concurrently with the production version of DBAmon. That is, if you need to test a config change it is now not necessary to stop DBAmon to run dbamon test.
    G Bill Border 08Sep98
    • Another Y2K testing fix. A negative value for the hours since last backup is now a critical event. This has happened when a system that has been used for Y2K testing reverts back to the current datetime. There is now a new error message [DBA216C] which explains how to solve this problem.
    F Bill Border 03Sep98
    • Changed to a smaller font for the System Summary. The PAGER and HDR-P/S indicators now appear in the 3rd column.
    E Bill Border 02Sep98
    • The dbamon_install script had some problems with the names of directories. These problems have been fixed.
    • Migrated DBAmon from the mike server to a new server. This meant that I had to migrate it from UX 9.x to UX 10.x. There were no issues.
    • Y2K fix (well not really). An Informix instance was running on a system where its date was set to March something, 2000. The problem was that the logic which calculated the number of hours since the last successful backup came up with a negative number (that's actually correct). So I changed the logic so that the date to which the backup time is compared is now the time on the system where Informix is running; not the DBAmon server. The dbamon_arc_ontape program was changed and a new download dbamon_time.ksh was added.
    D Bill Border 02Sep98
    • Addition of Title3 config parameter. At AIT-ASO(CS) we will use this for the hours of support for that Informix instance.
    C Bill Border 02Sep98
    • Asthetic changes to the WWW System Summary (smaller font, colors).
    B Bill Border 02Sep98
    • The CLEANERS routine now will also ensure that the number of cleaners is >= the number of LRUS (something that we've recently learned about).
    A Bill Border 02Sep98
    • There is a new check: CheckpointDur. This check will use information gathered by check_locks and issue (for the time being) an INFO event if the current average checkpoint duration is > 120 seconds. At some future date, if this number does not create excessive events, this will become a critical event. There have been a few occasions recently where due to bugs in Informix we have seen checkpoints in the 2000-3000 second range.

    Version Programmer Date Description of Changes
    3.18
    		Bill Border 17Jul98
    • The DBSpace full warning and critical messages now specify the name of offending DBSpace.
    • Code changes to support Informix 7.30.
    • Removed comments on dbamonrc parameters from the supplied dbamonrc and created new Configuration WWW page below.
    • DBAmon will now log to mike any time that DBAmon starts anywhere. This will enable me to better track who is using DBAmon.
    • Changes made at the request of Singapore users:
      • An instance that is inhibited now triggers an INFO event rather than a WARNING event.
      • Added concept of userexits. At key points in the code, dbamon.awk will invoke (if they exist and are executable) user written scripts. This will prevent users from having to modify dbamon.awk after every new release. See User Exits URL below.
      • Added new dbamonrc parameter OpC_Trailer. For any OpC message issued, the string supplied here will be appended to the text of the OpC message.
      • Previously users were changing the names of the colored "balls" for the WWW pages because the ones that I was using were not standard. I now supply all known images in /opt/dbamon/img. After every new installation you should now copy the contents of this directory to the location that you specify with the dbamonrc Images_Dir: parameter.
    3.17 Bill Border 29Jun98
    • Duplicate ONCONFIG checker. If a un-commented duplicate ONCONFIG parameter is found, an Info event will be generated with the parm that is duplicate.
    • Read/Write hit ratios will only be checked for instances where BUFREADS are > 10,000,000. This will eliminate events for instances that have recently been started or are not busy.
    • Cosmetic change: System Summary now displays DBAmon logo (new). It is supplied in /opt/dbamon/img.
    • Due to popular demand, moved the Related Documents section to the top of the system summary.
    • Fixed a bug discovered by a user in Singapore: If a monitored system does not have a link from /usr/local/bin/perl5 then the check_locks function did not work including the Average Checkpoint column of the System Summary. The fix invokes all downloaded Perl programs with the "perl" executable instead of the #! string at the front of the script.
    3.16 Bill Border 08Jun98
    • Inhibit viewer.
    • New experimental code to insert a row into an Informix/NT DB on my PC for every critical event. This is coded so that it only occurs for my instance of DBAmon running Colorado Springs.
    3.15 Bill Border 26May98
    • Added new feature which will verify that you are running the most current version of DBAmon. Every time that you start DBAmon, it will check to see what the latest version of DBAmon is (from mike.cs.itc). If you are running an old version, it will generate an EMail for the DBAmon administrator.
    • There is a new possible value on the Flags column of the system summary. If an instance is using HP-UX SHMEM "Magic" an M will be displayed. SHMEM Magic enables Informix to use > 2GB of SHMEM.
    • The backup method used for and Instance (A:ONArchive or T:ONTape) now displays as a Flag.
    3.14 Bill Border 22May98
    • Added the "M" value to the "Flags" column to system summary to indicate that SHARED MEMORY MAGIC is enabled.
    3.13 Bill Border 20May98
    • Added "Flags" column to system summary. At the present time it will indicate:
      • K: KAIO Enabled
      • S: Shared SHM Segments being used
    • Added code to display the current average checkpoint duration. At this time, no events are generated from values displayed here.
    • I changed the Informix Version Mgmt. section to NOT generate events. The reason being that it takes so long for some instances to arrange the upgrade that it seems counterproductive to have an instance in exception status for long periods of time.
    • Moved part of the legend that we previously at the top of the System summary to the bottom.
    • Reduced font size of instance detail so that browser window is not so wide. Since this made the page seem busier, I changed the bgcolor from gray to white.
    • Rearranged the columns of the System Summary so that less important columns appear on the right side.
    • The SHMVIRTSIZE section now check the current coded ONCONFIG value so that if the change has already been made from the event recommendation that an additional event will not be generated.
    3.12 Bill Border 02Feb98 We here in CS are going to need to track the total number of non-system Informix DB's. So, a new history data file: /opt/dbamon/dat/history/appldb/{DATE} has been created. The online_up subroutine now will check to see if this number has yet been captured today for every instance. If it has not, it will write a record in the format: 
    1998.02.02 13:08:23 boi97:DW-Prod 12
    (date, time, instance, number of non-system DB's). I will later write SAS programs to create graphs from this data.
    3.11 Bill Border 29Jan98
    • Informix Version Management - This new feature compares the Informix version of every instance to a list of known good and bad Informix versions. If the version is found in /opt/dbamon/adm/informix_ver/good.txt the version is made green on the System Summary. If the version is found in the bad.txt file, it is flagged red and an INFO event is generated. If the version is not found in either, it is flagged yellow and an INFO event is generated.
    • Cleaners Check - The number of ONCONFIG CLEANERS is compared to the number of DB disks. If CLEANERS is < 75% of disks, an Info event is generated.
    • SHM Check Change - It no longer creates a WARNING event, only an INFO event.
    3.10 Bill Border 12Dec97 More major changes:
    • Performance (These changes have cut our iteration time (101 instances) in half:
      • DBSpace fullness measure; recoded to gather all info in 1 remote call (vs. 3 before in 1/3 the time.
      • Serial Number / OS version now is gathered with the table count. This eliminates 2 remote calls.
      • All software downloads are now done only once per instance, in the 1st iteration. This will save 6 remove calls per instance per iteration.
    • New Checks (2):
      • Virtual Shared Memory check. If total number of V segments >= 4 warning; if >= 10 critical.
      • HDR Check. If an instance has HDR turned on, the check will verify that HDR is On or Read-Only.
    • Asthestic:
      • System Summary Detail Section not as wide
      • System Summary Scoreboard not as tall
      • Any instance which runs HDR will have a P or S following the instance name to denote Primary or Secondary.
    3.00 Bill Border 24Nov97 Major changes:
    • dbamonrc File: The System: definitions for each instance now reside in a seperate file in /opt/dbamon/adm/instances. There is a new Include: line in dbamonrc which points to this new directory. In the directory /opt/dbamon/adm/instances, any file which has the suffix .dbc at DBAmon start time will be compiled.
    • System Summary WWW Page: The Scoreboard section now reports which checks have been performed during the most recent iteration including the execution time for each check.
    • New check_locks Check: A new check has been added to check the number of locked used vs. the number configured in the Informix ONCONFIG file. If the amount is >= 80% of the maximum, a critical event will be generated.
    • online_up Performance Enhancement: The dbamon_table_count.sql module which runs as part of the online_up subroutine now counts the number of tables in an instance by checking sysextents (it used to look at systabnames). This is much faster.
    • Log Files: The stdout output from DBAmon, which used to go to /tmp/dbamon.out now is written to /opt/dbamon/log/DOW where DOW is the day of the week (Sun, Mon, ...). Also, all messages now have a date and time stamp.
    2.30 Bill Border 28Oct97 Logical log checking works now for Informix V7. Also moved scoreboard to the top of the WWW System Summary page.
    2.28-
    2.29         		Bill Border 03Sep97 Added scoreboard to show how many of each type of event. Other asthestic changes to WWW page.
    2.27 Bill Border 05Jul97 New dbamonrc parameter: T_DBSpace_Free: (MB) This parm serves as an override to the T_Disk_Full dbspace critical thresholds. A dbspace will be critical if it is > T_Disk_Full % full -AND- the amount of freespace is less than T_DBSpace_Free.
    2.24-
    2.26         		Bill Border 03Jun97 dbamonrc cleanup: Informix_Version and Local_Or_Remote now have defaults 7/R. Added new parms Title1_URL, Title2_URL and Host_URL to specify URL to be associated with those fields of the System Summary.
    2.23 Bill Border 16Oct96 New dbamonrc parms "Title1/Title2" were added. The values are displayed on the System Summary page.
    2.22 Bill Border 01Oct96 The UX box type is now displayed on the System Summary page.
    2.21 Bill Border 23Sep96 Cosmetic - The HP-UX version is now displayed on the System Summary page. Also, the amount of output in the log should be reduced; I stopped displaying diagnostic info for archive age checking.
    2.20 Bill Border 26Apr96 Performance improvements (each iteration has been taking 1-1.5 hours!). DB object counting and extent checking will not be done every 10th iteration. Added auto-refresh code to the system summary HTML doc.
    2.19 Bill Border 25Mar96 Added logic to exclude "bogus" Informix messages that appear on the Informix message log. The example is a -27001 error that appears during an incorrect user connection attempt. This should not trigger a critical event. There is a new file in the /adm/ directory called dbamon.msg_critical_bogus which lists strings that appear in bogus critical error messages. These messages no longer appear as critical events.
    2.18 Bill Border 06Mar96 Creation of "inhibition" logic. It often becomes necessary to turn off monitoring of an Informix instance for scheduled down time. During those times, we need to turn off messages and paging. Logic was added to dbamon to check for the presence and read the contents of an "inhibit" file that can be set up for any Informix instance. This file contains dates and time for which DBAmon monitoring is NOT to take place. See the "Inhibition" section of the DBAmon Home Page for more info.
    2.17 Bill Border 01Mar96 A "-P" now appears next to the instance name for systems with paging enabled (usually production instances). Also, OV* (onstat -p) conditions are now critical events (were warning).
    2.16 Bill Border 14Dec95 Major enhancements to the System Summary WWW page, Missed DB backup messages are now critical (they were warning).
    2.14-
    2.15         		Bill Border 31Oct95 Various HTML asthetic changes. Event log is now created for each system, in addition to globally. HTML System Summary now has URL for the individual files. I also rearranged our local HTML files. Links found below have been fixed.
    2.13 Bill Border 30Aug95 DBAmon now has error messages. The HTML event log now has URL pointer to the correct message ID. In future releases I will further identify all messages. Look at my event log for sample output.
    2.12 Bill Border 18Aug95 Table extents are now monitored. There is a new SYSTEMS section parm called "Max_Extents" which specifies the maxiumun tolerable number of extents per table.
    2.11 Bill Border 16Aug95 DBAmon now creates (once a day) a dbspace size history file. It's in /opt/dbamon/dat/history/dbspace/*. This file contains one line for each dbspace of each system monitored. This file can then be used as input to SAS (my package of choice) to create data growth reports/graphs.
    2.10 Bill Border 18Jul95 Support for Informix 7.10. Minor bug fixes. Informix version now prints on log file.
    2.09 Bill Border 06Jul95 Reworked all files to facilitate install into /opt/dbamon making it a "real" software product.
    <2.09 Bill Border 01Jan94-06Jul95 Old README File.
    DBAmon.com
    This Document: http://www.dbamon.com/misc/change_history.shtml