Installation and Configuration

1.0 Quick and Dirty Install for Big Brother

    1.1 Installing Big Brother
    1.2 Configuring BBNTD
    1.3 Upgrading BBNTD
    1.4 Support
    1.5 Debugging

2.0 Customizing your Big Brother display

    2.1 HTMLized status logs
    2.2 Customizing headers / footers
    2.3 Creating skins
    2.4 Inserting notes about your hosts

Section 1: Quick and Dirty Install for Big Brother

1.1 Installing Big Brother

From the directory you saved the BBNTD archive:

Execute the self-executable installation archive
Enter the target directory
Enter the target data directory

BBNTD is installed as a service. It is *NOT* defined to start automatically.
If you want to start it automatically, (under NT: in Setting->Control Panel->Services, under W2K: Administrative Tools->Services) choose the "Big Brother SNM Server" service and change its startup status from manual to automatic.

Configure BBNTD

Start the BBNTD service

**IMPORTANT NOTE** If during the install you specified directory names that are longer than 8.3 format then you'll have to expand the directory names to their proper long names as InstallShield converts those long names to 8.3 format. Using regedit, you'll have to modify the BBHOME and BBVAR subkeys for the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\BigBrother\bbntd registry key. You'll also have to modify the virtual directory locations for /bb and /bb/cgi-bin.

BBNTD does not currently have a GUI (windows/web based) configuration editor (but there's one on it's way). You must edit the files using a simple text editor.

cd {INSTALL DIR}\etc

edit the etc/bbdef.cfg file to configure BBNTD

edit the etc/bb-hosts.cfg file.

edit the etc/security.cfg file. This file enables you to accept Big Brother status logs only from the defined set of hosts. ***By default it accepts connections from any hosts***

edit the etc/bbwarnsetup.cfg and etc/bbwarnrules.cfg to configure the notification feature. NOTE: only e-mail notifications are currently supported on BBNTD.

edit the bbskin-{skin name}.cfg file to change some of the display settings. {skin name} is defined by the BBSKIN value in etc/bbdef.cfg


to monitor local host resources for NT/W2K, you must install the BBNT client available at the Big Brother web site web site if you haven't already downloaded it. Note that local tests do not need to be specified in the etc/bb-hosts.cfg file. So don't put "disk", "cpu", "msgs" and "procs" in the etc/bb-hosts.cfg file. The BBNT client must be installed on each NT/W2K host that you wish to monitor local resources.

Please consult the support page at BB4.COM for all available options including free mailing list based support.

Section 2: Customizing your Big Brother display

2.1 Customizing the HTMLized status logs

You can change the header/footer for the HTMLized status pages. The files are located in the /www/skins/{skin name}/headfoot directory. Note that your customized version can contain special tags which can be replaced by the following values:


&BBDATE: current date/time
&BBBACKGROUND: current background color (red/green/yellow/clear/purple/blue)
&BBRELDATE: Release date of the current version
&BBREL: Current version number
&BBCOLOR: Color of this status file
&BBHOST: Name of host of current status file
&BBSVC: Service name of current status file.
&BBIPNAME: IP address of host, if 0.0.0.0 then use hostname
&BBIP: IP address of host, always return IP address unless not found


If you create your own tests (that are executed by the BBNT client software), every time a status log is received by BBNTD, an HTML version of the status log is created (either statically in www/html/ or dynamically using the hostsvc.exe CGI by prefixing the status with the header file and suffixing with the footer file. And you can include the following tags in your status report to display the colored dots in your status log:


&red
&green
&yellow
&clear
&purple
&blue


These tags are replaced with a corresponding image source tag for the HTMLized version.

2.2 Customizing headers / footers

bb.html/bb2.html and various HTML page generation can be customized by modifying their respective headers/footers. These are located in the /www/skins/{skin name}/headfoot directory.

NOTE: The link to bb4.com MUST be kept in the footer page as per your agreement of the license agreement.

2.3 Creating skins

You can create your own look and feel by customizing various HTML aspects of Big Brother.

You can use your own gifs by creating a new directory under www/skins. As an example, a directory 'psy' could be created with more psychedelic colored dots It would be located in www/skins/psy. The images would be saved under www/skins/psy/images. To use those images then set the BBSKIN variable in bbdef to "psy". Remember, you must have the same directory structure with the same filenames as in the default skin.

To further modify the appearance of your display, modify the header/footer files found in www/skins/{skin name}/headfoot.

You also have some control over the bb.html/bb2.html and the status logs HTML pages by modifying the following variables in etc/bbskin-{skin name}.cfg:


MKBBLOCAL
MKBBREMOTE
MKBBTITLE
MKBBROWFONT
MKBBCOLFONT
MKBBMANAGE
DAYS
HOURS
MINS
STATUNCHNMSG
RECVFROMMSG
DOTHEIGHT
DOTWIDTH

2.4 Inserting notes about your hosts

You can setup HTML links on the host name in the bb.html/bb2.html pages to point to an information page for that particular host.

If a file exists in the www/notes directory that matches the system name as displayed on the bb pages, then they are linked into both the bb.html page and the bb2.html summary page.

These files can end in .htm, .html, .shtml, .php3 or nothing :)

You can create these files manually or you can use the "notes" messages type:

notes {name of file} {data to write to the file}

e.g. notes somewhere.overtherainbow.imlost 123 234 345 456

This message will create a file containing "123 234 345 456" to a file named somewhere.overtherainbow.imlost on the BBDISPLAY host in the www/notes directory