[monit] [Announce] monit 5.0 beta

[Jan-Henrik Haukeland]

Monit 5.0 beta is available:

Download from:   http://tildeslash.com/monit/dist/beta/monit-5.0-beta1.tar.gz

MD5 checksum:    afd3beb99cd421ada8e90c5affc9b106
SHA256 checksum:  
de2a7d3fa93b1214215fdf51469c127ecd487a3fc0c68fdd18db1f07d5bb89e9
Change log:      http://www.tildeslash.com/monit/dist/beta/CHANGES.txt

This is a new features and bugfix release which has been tested on the
following platforms:

 Debian 4.0             [x86]
 FreeBSD 6.3            [x86]
 FreeBSD 7.0            [x86]
 Mac OS X 10.5.2        [ppc]
 NetBSD 4.0             [x86]
 OpenBSD 4.1            [x86]
 CentOS 4.6             [x86]
 CentOS 5.1             [x86]
 Fedora 8               [x86]


We are also pleased to announce that we have reached a point where we  
can release the first version of m/monit 2.0. M/monit is an  
application for managing monit instances and a server which monit  
instances can post events to for statistical and historical purposes.

You can download m/monit from, http://tildeslash.com/mmonit/ and watch  
a screen cast demonstrating m/monit here, http://tildeslash.com/mmonit/screencast/mmonit.mov


Version 5.0 beta:
-----------------

NEW FEATNEW FEATURES AND FUNCTIONS:
* M/Monit support added.

* Added a protocol test for testing the SIP protocol which is
  used by popular communication servers such as Asterisk and
  FreeSWITCH. We received two patches for this protocol and have
  taken code from both and merged them. Many thanks to Bret
  McDanel and to Pierrick Grasland for supplying the patches.

* Added MONIT_DESCRIPTION to the list of environment variables
  available to programs started by monit. Thanks to Morten
  Bressendorff Schmidt for patch.

* If a service group is specified for monit CLI action,
  monit no longer requires the "all" verb, so the following
  command is possible:
    monit -g web stop
  If group is not specified (-g option omitted), the
  service name or "all" is still required as a safeguard.

* Add the option for the 'set mailserver' statement which
  allows to override the hostname used in in SMTP transaction
  EHLO/HELO and Message-ID header when sending mail. Monit
  defaults to the hostname which matches the 'uname -n'
  output - in the case that it doesn't match the DNS and
  that the mailserver is using the DNS verification as spam
  protection the message can be rejected. The new option
  allows to override the hostname:
    set mailserver foo.bar.baz using hostname "my.monit.host"

* New EVENT_ACTION type was added which reports the actions
  performed on monit's administrator request (either via web
  interface or CLI). If you don't want to received these events,
  you can set the mail-filter for "action" event type.

* Monit start action is synchronous now. This improves the
  startup sequence for dependant services, since monit will
  wait for parent service to start before trying to start the
  child.

* It is now possible to define the execution timeout for start
  and stop commands. If the timeout option is omitted, by
  default the timeout is 30 seconds. You can thus override
  the timeout for example for services which are starting slower.
  Example syntax:
    start program = "/bin/foo start" with timeout 60 seconds

* The event passed state is renamed to succeeded as this name
  more reflects the state of things.

* The device service test is renamed to filesystem.

BUGFIXES:
* Fixed #21989: Monit may start two instances of the process
  when service restart is performed and the process is starting
  slowly. Thanks to Nick Upson, Aaron Scamehorn and David Greaves
  for report.

* Fixed #21550: Fix crash when monit event queue contained an
  empty file. Thanks to Douglas J Hunley for report.

* Fixed possible crash when the 'if changed checksum' test was
  used along with restart action. Thanks to Brian Candler for
  report.

* Fixed #22075: Allow using a mail address as username when using
  SMTP authentication.

* Fixed #22191 and #19823: If the file content test does not match
  anymore, reset the service error state. (Previous versions did
  not clear the error state and kept showing a match in the status
  listing and in the http interface).

* The 'if changed size ...' test can now be used even when monitored
  file doesn't exist on monit's start.

* If the htpasswd file is used to control monit http interface
  access and the hash type is set to MD5 whereas the file
  contains wrong format (non-MD5), report the error and keep
  running. Formerly monit exited on assert exception. Thanks to
  Adrian Bridgett for report.

BACKWARD INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES:
* The current CPU usage test which checked the cpu usage of
  the process itself plus the cpu usage of child processes
  was renamed to TOTALCPU (otherwise it works the same).
  The new CPU usage test checks the CPU usage of the process
  itself only. This change was introduced to allign the
  syntax with MEMORY and TOTALMEMORY tests and to allow to
  test the CPU usage of processes which fork child processes
  but the user don't want to include childs (such as Mythtv).
  Users who are using the CPU check for services like Apache
  webserver to watch total cpu utilization (including childs)
  should rename the CPU statement in their configuration to
  TOTALCPU.


Finally, a big thanks to ALL who have contributed work and time to
create this release.