Version 4.1 User's Guide
Process Watch Sentry	Previous | Next Contents

With the help of a small seperate application called "ProcWatch", PageSentry can monitor any application on any Macintosh, anywhere on the Internet.

To test an application on any remote Mac, run ProcWatch on the remote machine. It must always be running, so we recommend that you put the application, or an alias to it, in your startup items folder. When you first launch ProcWatch, you will be asked to enter a password, which will authenticate every action it performs for PageSentry. Choose a non-obvious, confidential password. ProcWatch enables PageSentry to perform critical tasks on your server which, without proper authentication, could be used in various attacks on your server. The password can be changed later, if you wish, by selecting the "Password..." item from the "File" menu.

Once a password has been entered and ProcWatch is running, a simple window that lists the currently running applications and processes will be displayed. Basic statistics will be displayed for whichever application is selected in the list, but the applications will not otherwise be affected by running ProcWatch.

With ProcWatch running on the Macintosh you wish to test, enter the machine's IP address into the Machine name field of the PageSentry Process Watch Sentry window. Next, enter the password exactly as you entered it into ProcWatch earlier. Click the Update button, and the Process pop-up menu will be automatically populated with the application list from the remote Macintosh. Finally, choose the process to be tested from the pop-up menu, and set the minimum amount of memory that should always be available to the application.

The Sentry will report an error and trigger the assigned Notifiers if the remote Mac's networking fails, the Mac crashes, the application being tested crashes, or if the application's available RAM drops below the minimum specified.

Figure 22: Configuring a new Process Watch Sentry.

To configure the Sentry, fill in the appropriate fields. In addition to the common configuration options, the Process Watch Sentry has the following options:

Machine Name

Enter the name or IP address of the remote Macintosh, which should already have a copy of the ProcWatch application running on it.

Password

Enter the ProcWatch password, exactly as entered into the ProcWatch application running on the Macintosh being tested.

Process

Once the Machine Name field has been filled in with the address of the remote Mac to be tested, click the Update button to populate the Process pop-up menu. Then select the process you would like to monitor from the supplied list.

Signature

The 4 character Mac OS "Signature" of the application being monitored will be displayed here, and can be changed only by changing the selection in the Process pop-up described above. The Signature is not something you need to be directly concerned about, but it is used to uniquely identify each process running on the remote Mac, and so is displayed for informational purposes.

Minimum RAM

If you would like to ensure that the remote application maintains a minimum amount of free memory, set the amount here. If the available RAM in the remote application's heap space drops below the minimum specified, the Sentry will consider it an error and trigger the associated Notifier(s). If you don't want to require a RAM minimum, leave the value at 0.

Copyright © 1995-2002 Maxum Development Corporation http://www.maxum.com/ Rev. 7/10/02	Previous | Next Contents