GNU Awacs was decommissioned in 2007, since other free software projects have already implemented similar ideas. (Mailing lists have been disabled, etc.) This web page remains purely for historical purposes.

GNU Advanced Monitoring And Control Structure

GNU AWACS - The Advanced Monitoring And Control Structure
Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2001 Georg C. F. Greve <greve@gnu.org>

             
     Release Version:     none available            ()     
     Development Version:     GNU AWACS 0.1.1       [gz| bz2]      (2-Jan-2000)     
             

Abstract

GNU AWACS is a project aimed at giving you complete knowledge and control over anything that happens on your machine or within a network. By collecting information from logfiles, devices, programs and binary plugins it can gather anything you ever wanted to know about your system. This information can then be processed, evaluated and interlinked in virtually any way the user can imagine. The processed data can then be used for output backends into logfiles, programs, databases and much more. Of course the data can also be viewed in a comfortable way with the help of multiple clients.

In a certain way, GNU AWACS provides a kind of data-oriented programming language for your system. Possible uses are:

The effectiveness of GNU AWACS is only limited by your imagination, but you do not need to have a complex configuration - if all you want is a simple tool to monitor some logfiles and devices like the GNU AWACS predecessor, the GNU Xlogmaster, it can also do this for you. The command language provides certain shortcuts for this use that make configuration as easy as it was for the Xlogmaster. Other than the Xlogmaster though, the Advanced Monitoring And Control Structure does provide background daemons, networking and pure ascii clients for terminal connections. The configuration is split into control language and client-specific files which means you can use one configuration for all clients.

Current State

At the moment, GNU AWACS is in a transition phase between the old layout and a new structure - so there is a lot of duplicate code right now which is the reason why I cannot supply a newer version at the moment (noone would be able to really work with the code). For that reason I only have the old structure pre-alpha stage online here: the library does contain the basic structure plus several elements and commands already, but there is only one client, the micro daemon, implemented right now. Nothing is yet completely fixed and things can vary a lot between releases - so please donīt expect things to work or be stable. You are very welcome to check it out and tell me what you think should be changed or what you miss most.

As my work on the FSF Europe leaves me little spare time, I'm currently looking for sponsors that would enable me to work on GNU AWACS.

Documentation

Since GNU AWACS is in alpha stage there is only pretty minimal documentation available. I am trying to provide the most important parts, though.

Bug Reports

If you believe to have found a bug in GNU AWACS, please send a detailed bug report to <bug-awacs@gnu.org>. A good bug report should at least contain the version of GNU AWACS you are using, the name and version of your operating system and a detailed description of the problem. If possible, please also include any output, configuration file or whatever may be helpful.

Mailing Lists

There are two mailinglists for GNU AWACS

Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to gnu@gnu.org. There are also other ways to contact the FSF. Please send comments on these web pages to webmasters@gnu.org, send other questions to gnu@gnu.org. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2001, 2007 Georg C. F. Greve <greve@gnu.org>

Last modified: Mon Feb 19 00:28:51 CET 2001

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