rackmonkey faq

know your racks

NB. This file is being updated for the release of v1.2.4

General

Is RackMonkey really free?
Yes. RackMonkey is licenced under the GNU Public Licence. You may use it for commercial and non-commercial purposes without payment and the full source code is available.

When will there be a production release of RackMonkey?
The current plan is for v1.2.5 of RackMonkey to be a production release. There isn't a release date for v1.2.5 yet, you can see the roadmap for further details. The current beta release (v1.2.3) is very stable and in use by many people.

Please can you add <foo> to RackMonkey?
I welcome feature requests, but take a look at the roadmap first to see what's forthcoming.

How do I get support for RackMonkey?
You can submit support requests via SourceForge. You should also join the RackMonkey announce list. Further support options are being considered at present.

Which languages is RackMonkey available in?
RackMonkey is currently available in English only.

How can I help with RackMonkey Development?

Features

Can I produce a report summarising all the stuff in my racks?
Yes you can. The report view allows you to see how much total rack space you're using, biggest customers and types of hardware. Additional reporting is being adding in forthcoming releases.

Does RackMonkey support devices of sizes less than a whole rack unit?
At present RackMonkey is limited to devices and positions within racks being an integral number of rack units (U). The current plan is that v2.0 will support 1/2 and 1/3 U fractions.

Does RackMonkey export to PDF, I want to make high quality prints?
Not yet, but experiemental PDF export support is currently being worked on (see roadmap).

Does RackMonkey export to Microsoft Excel?
Not yet in a released version, but experiemental Excel export support is in the current svn version. See (see roadmap) for more information on forthcoming releases.

Does RackMonkey support authentication/authorisation?
Yes, using web server authentication (.htaccess). However, there is no fine-grained authorisation control: all logged in users (apart from the guest account) can read and update all records. A log is kept of all updates and who performed them; more information on this can be found in the documentation included in RackMonkey. RackMonkey v2.0 will have more fine-grained authorisation.

Can RackMonkey pages be bookmarked?
Yes. URLs can be freely cut and pasted and the back button works.

Source Code

How is RackMonkey source code managed?
Using a Subversion (svn) repository on Sourceforge.net.

How do I check out the current trunk?
To check out the current trunk release of the main RackMonkey application use:

svn co https://rackmonkey.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/rackmonkey/rackmonkey/trunk

Can I browse the RackMonkey svn repository via the web?
Yes. Browse RackMonkey Repository

How is your Subversion repository laid out?
The RackMonkey svn repository lives at https://rackmonkey.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot

The reason for the second rackmonkey directory is that I wanted to allow for other RackMonkey related projects: for example a command line interface.

Which programming language is RackMonkey written in?
Perl.

Does RackMonkey work with Perl 5.10?
RackMonkey has not been tested with Perl 5.10, but I have no reason to expect any problems. Testing is planned.

How do I contribute bug fixes or changes?
Please open a support request with the details of the change and attach the relevant code.

Server/Database

Which operating systems can I use as a server?
Any modern Unix or Unix-like operating system should work including FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X, NetBSD and Solaris.

Can I use Windows to run the RackMonkey server?
While it should be possible to get RackMonkey running on Windows, e.g. by installing Cygwin, I haven't tested and cannot provide support for such a configuration at present. Windows is fully supported as a client OS (see supported browsers: below).

Which databases does RackMonkey support?
RackMonkey gives you the choice of all three major open source database engines. MySQL support is still experimental, but full support is expected by RackMonkey v1.2.5. The Minimum Supported Version shown below is the oldest release of the database engine that RackMonkey has been tested with. It may work on older releases, but is not officially supported.

Database SQLite Postgres MySQL
RackMonkey v1.2 Support Full Full From v1.2.4
Minimum Supported Version 3.2.2 7.4 5.0.21
All RackMonkey Features Yes Yes Yes

Does RackMonkey support migrating data between different database software?
Not automatically. If you wish to move between SQLite, Postgres or MySQL you need to manually manage the data export/import. Improved import/export functionality is planned for a subsequent release.

Are there any plans to support IBM DB2, Oracle or other database engines?
There are no plans to add support for other database engines at present.

Client/Browser

Which browsers does RackMonkey support?
The following table illustrates which browsers are officially supported by RackMonkey. Other modern browsers should work, but are not tested against.

Browser Firefox 2 Firefox 3 IE6 IE7 Safari 2 Safari 3
RackMonkey v1.2 Yes v1.2.4+ Yes v1.2.3+ Yes v1.2.4+
RackMonkey v2.0 Yes Yes No Yes No Yes


Support for the following browsers is planned for future releases:

Does RackMonkey work with text browser like Lynx?
RackMonkey v1.2 can be used for simple tasks via text browsers, however it hasn't been designed to support them. A text-based client (RackShell) is being designed to allow access to RackMonkey from a terminal or shell window.

Does RackMonkey work with Safari on the iPhone?
No testing has been carried out as yet, but it is planned for v1.2.5.