I've been doing some reading on SNMP and its applications to monitoring and have made some useful discoveries.

SNMP (Wikipedia entry here, pretty good, and there's a good SNMP tutorial here) is an old protocol based on command/response and async alerts called 'traps.' Its insecure (based on a secret string called a 'community') up until version 3, but inside a firewall its simple, fast and very well suited to network monitoring.

At the workshop I presented statistical analyses of the subversion commit logs. Those are now online at http://niagara.sdsc.edu/svn-stats-workshop/ for your amusement.

Yesterday NI visited, as they periodically do. Items of note:
# Zack fixed an error in my code caused by the 8.6 upgrade where I was no longer able to read chassis data due to a bad FPGA bitfile. Visible consequence - as of yesterday we have chassis temp and barometer readings back. Nice.
# Long discussion on low-power cRIO hardware, discussed the fact that many of our planned deployments are Campbell-based for various reasons and that'd we'd really prefer NI if possible. Zack went over NI's options and will also talk to their staff to see if more watt reductions are feasible.

http://dataturbine.org/content/live-web-only-demonstration

Nice, eh? Bill Finger's new code, very useful. The dropdown channel selection is magnificent.

Thanks to Jeff Avila in systems, httpd is up and running as before.

I've now deployed Smokeping on iguassu. This is a bandwidth/latency monitoring tool that we can use to keep an eye on network links and measure latency. Quite nice graphs.

Check it out at http://iguassu.sdsc.edu/cgi-bin/smokeping.cgi

Just pinged SDSC support, after filling out a sudo request and httpd request last week. Status pending.

Over the weekend, I found Markmail via Farber's IP list, and they agreed to index our rbnb-dev mailing list. Check it out at http://markmail.org/search/?q=list%3Arbnb

Yesterday, Jeff Avila and I moved niagara and its RAID chassis from Atkinson to the SDSC machine room. (This is part of the process where we outsource sysadmin to them, for which I am quite grateful and should result in better uptime for all).

No problems, now installed in a CAIDA isle, coordinates A1 or so. I took a few snaps of the room, other machines and such for your amusement.

Album is at http://dataturbine.org/content/niagara-moves-sdsc-machine-room

Just got first clean square wave off of our Campbell CS-505 sensor, using a USB DAQ device from the shelf in the lab. I need to create and solder a BNC connector, but I'm getting 1120 Hz, which seems about right.

Tomorrow - solder, see if I can get it running on cRIO. Also need to setup the thermistor as well, then the UV FireScout.

Fun stuff, more later.

PS First light is terminology from Fermilab and the accelerator there.