This Week in OpenNMS: Season 1.6, Episode 22: Indeterminate Schematic Determinism

It's time for This Week in OpenNMS. This week, we've continued work on
what will become OpenNMS 1.8.


Project Updates
---------------

- Stable: Current Release is 1.6.5

1.6.5 is the current stable release, released May 16th.  It fixes a
number of bugs, and adds a few features.  For a full list, see the
bugzilla 1.6.5 milestone.  This is a non-critical but recommended
upgrade for anyone on OpenNMS versions older than 1.6.5.

   http://tinyurl.com/opennms-165

- Unstable: Current Release is 1.7.4

1.7.4 is the current unstable release, released May 3rd.  Since 1.7.3,
more work has gone on in the Provisiond code, as well as ACLs, RANCID
reports, thresholding fixes, enabling maps by default, and an entirely
new way of creating the OpenNMS database under the covers.  A 1.7.x
overview is available in the release notes on the site.

   http://tinyurl.com/opennms-17x

- Unstable: ACL UI Work

Massimiliano Dessì has continued working on the ACL/Custom View UI
webapp.  Hopefully this will be finished up before 1.8 goes final, but
if not, it will probably be included in a later 1.8.x release.

- Unstable: Unified Groups

Daniele Piras has been working (in a branch) on some code to unify the
way we handle grouping of resources in OpenNMS, in an attempt to resolve
the schizophrenic way we deal with surveillance categories, groups, and
other stuff.

- Unstable: RANCID Updates

Rocco committed some more changes to the RANCID integration, and shortly
afterwards I released the 0.94 version of the RANCID pack on SourceForge.

- Unstable: Database Schema Management

Thanks to some great feedback from a few users on the LiquiBase
transition, I made a few bugfixes, which made it into the 1.7.4 release.

- Unstable: Thresholding Fixes

Alejandro did more work on fixing up thresholding.  A few more bugs were
fixed and his work is in the 1.7.4 release.

- Unstable: Map Updates

Antonio did a few updates to the maps, and also as of 1.7.4, they are
enabled by default!  Yay!

- Unstable: Memcached Monitor

I added a MemcachedMonitor which will check if it is able to run the
"stats" command, and store some of the numeric results in RRDs for
thresholding and so on.  (See $OPENNMS_HOME/etc/examples/ for samples on
how to configure it.)


OpenNMS 1.7.4 Released
----------------------

OpenNMS 1.7.4 is out as of today (June 8th).  It includes a number of
bugfixes, and a few updates and new features, most notably maps are now
enabled by default in the UI.

The biggest change under the covers is the switch to using LiquiBase for
managing our database schema.  Previously we'd been using some very
crazy cobbled-together code which compares raw SQL to the current
runtime schema, and transitions the data accordingly.  This was
occasionally error-prone (especially in large databases, where we could
run out of memory creating temporary tables) and definitely not as,
let's say, deterministic as it should have been.  ;)

HOWEVER, if you are upgrading from an existing OpenNMS release, you are
encouraged even more than you usually are to back up your database
before upgrading to 1.7.4.  I've tested plenty of combinations of source
schemas, but this is still very new and not all possible upgrade paths
have been tested.

Also, on the first upgrade to a LiquiBase-controlled schema, the OpenNMS
`install` command will take longer than usual, and spit out some errors
that may look a little strange, like so:

Jun 8, 2009 11:55:32 AM liquibase.database.template.JdbcTemplate comment
INFO: Changeset
1.6.0/tables/service.xml::1.6.0-service::rangerrick::(MD5Sum:
e2513f723746da99580f1dc60ee8559)
Jun 8, 2009 11:55:34 AM liquibase.ChangeSet execute
INFO: Marking ChangeSet:
1.6.0/tables/service.xml::1.6.0-service::rangerrick::(MD5Sum:
e2513f723746da99580f1dc60ee8559) ran due to precondition failure:
          Not precondition failed

These are NORMAL and part of the upgrade process.  LiquiBase expects
your schema to have been created by LiquiBase.  For upgrade purposes, I
created a LiquiBase change set that basically works like this:

1. I want to create the table "events"
2. As a precondition, before creating the table, make sure the table
   does not exist
3. If the precondition fails ("Not precondition failed" -- ie, the
   table does exist), then pretend the change set has already been
   run by LiquiBase
4. If the precondition passes (the table does not exist), then run
   the change set, which creates the table

As long as `install` does not kick you out, you are fine. :)

Once this has been done, and LiquiBase "owns" the schema, future
upgrades will go much faster, and only do new changes.


Upcoming Events
---------------

August 12, 2009: Tarus will be giving a talk at OpenSourceWorld: DM4:
The Open Source Management Stack.

   http://tinyurl.com/open-source-network-stack

September 21st-25th, 2009: OpenNMS training will be available through
The OpenNMS Group at the OpenNMS training facility in Pittsboro, NC.

For more information on training, go to:
   http://www.opennms.com/training.html

If you have anything to add to the events list, please let me know.


Until Next Week
---------------

As always, if there's anything you'd like me to talk about in a future
TWiO, or you just have a comment, criticism, or pirated RRD files you'd
like to share, don't hesitiate to say hi.  Also, we've still got room
for more Order of the Blue Polo members if you'd like to send your own
testimonial. (Of course you would!)

   http://www.opennms.org/index.php/OBP


-- 
Benjamin Reed
The OpenNMS Group
http://www.opennms.org/

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