Spy-o-Matic

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Spy-O-Matic

Spy-O-Matic is a network program for system administrators.

To run the application Spy, it is necessary to also start the server application spyd (/boot/beos/system/servers/) on the remote machines in the local network that you want to administrate. An idea could be to make spyd automatically start when the computer boots.

Spy-O-Matic can also be used as a remote (and local) system information gathering and data transferral program for developers. Developers can also use it to remotely debug applications with it, if they have the debug symbols on their local machine.

When the system administrator opens Spy, he will se a list over computers running spyd in SpyD-Sense. He can can choose what computer he would like to work with, by double-clicking that computer's entry in SpyD-Sense:

The computer that you last took control over, is marked with the Spy icon. The other computers are marked with the spyd server icon. Once you double click on an entry in the SpyD-Sense window, the entry's background will change to white.

You can also choose the Target computer by entering it's IP address. This is the only way to take controll over a machine that is not on the local network.

In the Pulse window you can choose between monitoring All Teams and Selected Teams. You can even extend the view of the teams you want to monitor speficly, so that each thread to the kernel get shown:

This window shows the Pulse - CPU load for each team (often a application) and their threads in a graphical way. To monitor this activity on your local machine, you would be using ProcessController. The Update Interval can be manually set, adjust to how long you want to monitor the computers. By default the interval is set to 2.0 seconds.

In the Memory window you get the same graphical view over that computer's memory usage:

File Transfer lets the administrator transfer files from his machine to the remote machines. As most applications in Zeta only excists of one file, this is a way to add software to the remote machines. Click on the button Local File to add the file you would like to transfer to the remote machine, or drag and drop the file to the path field for Local File.

AppLauncher is another great tool for system administrators as it lets the administrator execute applications or scripts. Examples could be backup and cleanup scripts. Be careful with executing applications on remote machine as it can make the user jump in his seat!

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