What's new in InterMapper 4.1?
InterMapper 4.1.3 was released on 12 January 2004, the original InterMapper 4.1 was released on 4 August 2003. Its new features are listed below. Download Page.
- Command-line probes allow users to create their own programs (written in C, Perl, etc.) that test a networked device and respond with a status. InterMapper will reflect the device's state on the map based on the information the program returns.
- Nagios plugins are a special case of command-line probes. Nagios is a popular monitoring program that runs external programs ("plugins") to test networked devices.
- Command-line Notifiers let you to create programs to perform a notification function beyond InterMapper's built-in sounds, paging, and e-mail. These might include programs that issue commands to reboot a hung server, sending instant messages, processing SNMP traps, etc.
- Host Resources probe. InterMapper can now monitor several important variables regarding CPU, disk, and memory utilization of computers and workstations that support the Host Resources MIB. This allows people to track how busy their critical servers are, or how much memory or disk space is left.
- Big Brother Server. Administrators can install Big Brother clients on their systems to report back to InterMapper, which acts as a Big Brother server. As with Nagios, there's a big community of people creating Big Brother scripts that will work nicely with InterMapper.
- Strip Charts allow you to see historical data on the network performance. They work much like the current "traditional" strip charts: tear off a popup status window and click on an underlined value to create a new strip chart. If the map is editable, you can also drag other underlined values to a strip chart to add them to the chart.
- Easier creation of sub-maps. You can add an icon for a submap by dragging the map's name from the InterMapper Servers (or InterMapper Console) window to a map.
- Layout tools. InterMapper Remote/Console now have the same tools for laying out maps that were available in the Traditional version of InterMapper.
- Device and Traffic Thresholds. You can set device and traffic thresholds for a map.
- Separate Web, Remote, and Telnet server panes make it easier to configure each server, and let you see more information about the server in a single window.
- SSL Certificates pane makes it easier to create and install signed certificates for the SSL encryption. The certificate is used for all encrypted connections.
- Pasting "traceroute" output into the Add devices window will add the IP address of all the devices in the list. InterMapper will ignore hop counts, times, and other irrelevant information in the pasted text.
- Changing multiple notifiers at once. You can change the notifiers for a number of devices at one time with a single window.
- Status Icons. There's a green/yellow/orange/red status icon for each map in the InterMapper Servers/Console window.
- Set Link Speed. Ctl/right-clicking on a link allows you to set its link speed.
- Less processor intensive. InterMapper Remote/Console consumes far less of the processor resource on all platforms.
New features in Version 4.1.3 - 12 January 2004
- [FEATURE] Updated Xserve probe to work with MacOS X 10.3 (Panther)
- [FEATURE] Map names in the Map List web server are now alphabetized.
- [BUG FIXES] Many bugs were fixed: changed popup menu width to show full probe names, window sizes when changing monitors, saving map files on MacOS X Panther, saving and exporting chart data, changing notification text on Traditional, improved handling of SNMP packets with unknown data types, and many others.
New features in Version 4.1.2 - 24 November 2003
- [FEATURE] Custom icons can be created from PNG or JPEG files, and will be colored based on the device status. You can create groups of icons by placing them in a sub-directory of the Custom Icons folder.
- [FEATURE] The Map Status probe will attempt to establish an SSL connection, and if not available, then use an unencrypted connection.
- [FEATURE] A double-clickable StartConsole utility will always launch the InterMapper Console program on Windows computers to avoid problems with mis-associated JAR files. In addition, it increases the memory allocation above the default to make Console run well, even with many or large maps.
- [FEATURE] All SNMP Community strings will be concealed when they are being entered or displayed.
- [BUG FIXES] Many bug fixes in display of Host Resources Probe, XML escaping, Solaris ping timings, RedHat and Solaris installers, window positioning on multiple monitors, and others.
New features in Version 4.1.1 - 18 September 2003
- [FEATURE] Added an "Apple Airport (Extreme)" probe type.
- [FEATURE] InterMapper is now supported on SuSE Linux 8.2.
- [FEATURE] Added a "Select DOWN interfaces" command to the "Select Other..." menu.
- [FEATURE] Host Resources MIB probe: processor loads and storage device usage may now be charted; users may now elect to suppress processing of some mount points.
- [FEATURE] Group custom icons (iconsets) by placing them in a folder in the Custom Icons folder.
- [FEATURE] InterMapper Remote supports the following commands and functions:
- A 'Find Again' menu command.
- A Network > Scan... command that will initiate a network scan on an individual subnet or network.
- A 'Print Single Page' command that will scale the map to fit on a single page.
- Tints color icons to have the proper color for the status of the device they represent.
- Prompts a user to save changes when closing if the map has ever been modified.
- Exports a map as PNG, Tab-delimited text file, or EtherPeek Name Table.
- When the user acknowledges an outage, notifications may be suppressed for a short time.
- Pasting a list of hosts into the "Add Device..." dialog box adds them to the map in the same order.
- New layout for the System Information section of the Server Settings window to make it easier to navigate.
- [BUG FIXES] In Strip Charts, DNS monitoring, escaping file and other names, printing, and other areas.