Pegasus Enhancement Proposal (PEP)

PEP #: 098

Title: Release Notes Pegasus 2.3

Version: 1.1

Created: 10 October 2003

Authors: Karl Schopmeyer

Status:  Approved

Version History:

Abstract: This document defines the release notes that support release 2.3.0 of the Pegasus platform

Availability of the Release

The Pegasus 2.3 release is available as a source release in both ZIP and TAR formats. The release can be downloaded from the OpenPegaus Web site at www.openpegasus.org.

In addition, the release is available through Pegasus CVS as the branch tag RELEASE_2_3_0-branch. This defines the current released version of Pegasus 2.3 . In addition, the following tags exist for the release. RELEASE_2_3_0-root which defines the initial release point of Pegasus 2.3 and the point at which it branched from the trunk.. Other tags may exist to mark release candidate snapshots, etc. These will be announced on the web site and the Pegasus mailing list.

The instructions for acquiring the released code are on the WEB site. Installation instructions are part of the readme in the root of the source tree.

The OpenPegasus project is currently not providing binary releases. However, binary releases may be available of selected ports and are documented on the OpenPegasus web site.

There may be point releases to the Pegasus 2.3 release and these will be announced on the Pegasus web site.

Functionality of This Release

The overall level of functionality in the Pegasus environment effective with this release is as follows:

CIM Server

CIM Operations over HTTP

1.     Class Operations (getClass, deleteClass, modifyClass, enumerateClass, enuerateClassNames) - Operational
2.     Qualifier Operations - Operational
3.     Instance Operations (getInstance, deleteInstance, modifyInstance, enumerateInstance, enumerateInstanceNames, getProperty, setProperty) - Operational
4.     Association Operations (references, referencenames, associators, associatornames - Operational
5.     Methods- Operational
6.     Query operation (Not Operational)

Indications

Process indications are operational in the Server.  This includes support for subscriptions, filters, and indication handlers, the provider API for indications and the CIMXML indication handler. The Pegasus sever can be used as an Indication client.  The Client indication  API support is complete but the interfaces are marked experimental for version 2.3 because this is the first version of Pegasus in which these APIs were available.

Query Language

The query language today is based on WQL and is implemented and used for filters.  However, the executeQuery operation has not been implemented pending the availability of a standard DMTF Query language.

Class Repository

XML based file/directory Class repository.

Instance Repository

XML based file/directory Instance repository.  The instance repository is used as the default repository unless a flag is set disabling this repository for client operations.

Security

1. Basic Security (Note that Digest based security is not implemented)
2. SSL support - SSL is implemented in Pegasus using the OpenSSL libraries. Pegasus does not provide the OpenSSL libraries but SSL can be used on any platform supported by OpenSSL.

Platform Management Functions

1. Configuration through the defined configuration parameters.
2. Daemon operation on all supported platforms
3. User management utilities
4. Provider management. The CIM Server provides dynamic registration of providers and automatic load and unload functionality.

SLP Discovery

SLP support is enabled in the platform but is conditionally compiled with the default to not compile it today pending further testing.

 Providers

 There are a number of standard providers available in Pegasus release. This includes providers in the following categories:

Internal Providers

• __Namespace provider - Serves the __Namespace class to allow manipulation of namespaces.
• Subscription Classes Providers - These provide subscription, filter, and indication handler processing.
• Provider registration Providers - This provide registration of providers using the PG_Provider classes.
• ConfigProvider - Manages Pegasus configuraton information.
• UserAuthProvider - Manages password, etc.
• ShutdownProvider - Provides support for Pegasus shutdown.
• Interop Provider - Supports many of the DMTF Interop Schema Classes including CIM_Namespace, CIM_ObjectManager, etc. (Note that this provider is part of the SLP work package so is not compiled as part of the default compile)

Generic Providers

Generic OperatingSystem provider. See the directory src/Providers/generic.

Test/Sample Providers

See the directories src/Providers/TestProviders and src/Sample for more information about test and sample providers.

Managed System Providers

ComputerSystem, DNSAdmin, DNSService, Operating System, Process, Processor. For more information on these providers see the documentation for each provider in the directory src/Providers/ManagedSystem

CIMOM Statistics Providers

IBMStatisticalData - This is an early version of the work that became CIM_StatisticalData. It is similar to CIM_StatisticalData and provides the same data but the structure of the Classes is slightly different.

        Linux Specific Providers

There are a number of providers in this category including DiskDrive, CDROMDrive, Interrupt, IOPOrt, IPROute, NetworkAdapter, Operating System, PCI Controller, Processor, ProviderData, ProviderSupport, SoftwareElement.  For more information about these providers see the documentation in the directory src/Providers/linux

CIM_Schema

The default CIM_Schema loaded with the Pegasus 2.2 release is the DMTF CIM 2.7 Final release.  In addition, Pegasus includes a number of local classes defined for Pegasus.  These are visible in the Schemas directory.

Pegasus MOF Compiler

Pegasus implements a MOF compiler that can operate either at the client interface (cimmof) or directly interfacing with a CIM repository (cimmofl).

The direct interface compiler is used primarily to provide an initial class/instance repository. Note that use of cimmofl to manipulate instances in the repository bypasses any provider that is registered to serve the instances and simply installs the instances in the instance repository; this may result in corruption if providers are using the repository.  Use of cimmofl to manipulate instances served by a registered providers is therefore discouraged. Use of cimmof rather that cimmofl is encouraged.

Client Tools

    Pegasus CIM Server Adminstration

1. cimuser - Manage Pegasus CIM server Users
2. cimconfig - Manage the Pegasus CIM Server configuration parameters
3. cimauth - Manage the CIM Server authorization characteristics. Today this is authorizing users to namespaces.
4. cimprovider - Manage information about the providers.

    Information client tools

   These tools provide information on the objects managed by the server.

1. tomof - output Classes and/or instance information in MOF or XML format.
2. dnsinfo -
3. ipinfo - Generates a set of standard information from the Network Schema.  Information generated varies by system because of the level of provider support.
4. osinfo - Generate a set of standard information on the Operating System from CIM Classes. Note that the information generated is dependent on the information available from providers and differes from system to system

     Test support Tools

1. Pegasus Unit tests (available through the "tests" option on the Pegasus make files       
2. The Pegasus Test Suite (see the tests directory and the Pegasus/TestBuildMakeFile)
3. TestClient - Basic client for overall platform operation testing.
4. CGICLient - This client has not been completely update to version 2.2.
5. wbemexec - Test tool that sends/receives XML from XML input.
6. CLI - Command line interface for Client commands.
7. Benchmark Test - Introduced with Pegasus 2.3, a benchmark test environment is not provided which includes both a client and provider component. See src/clients/benchmarkTest for more information.

Pegasus Interface APIs

Details of the Pegasus public interfaces for release 2.3 is listed in PEP 96 available from the web site(www.openpegasus.org). This document is the authorative source for the list of publicly supported Pegasus APIs.   The Client and Provider API were originally frozen at the  Pegasus version 2.1 release. The interfaces in the release of Pegasus 2.1 are forward compatible to release 2.3 (clients and providers compiled to the Pegasus 2.1 or 2.2 interfaces should be compatible with Pegasus 2.3 without compilation)  but there have been extensions and new interfaces added for release 2.3   The public interfaces includes the following major functions

1. Client APIs
2. Provider APIs
3. CIM Objects
4. CIM Listener (experimental for Pegasus 2.3). These are compiled only if the PEGASUS_USE_EXPERIMENTAL_INTERFACES flag is set.
5. SLP Client (experimental for Pegasus 2.3). These are compiled only if the PEGASUS_USE_EXPERIMENTAL_INTERFACES flag is set.

The functions are documented in their respective header files and HTML documentation based on the information in the header files extracted with the doc++ tool will be available on the OpenPegasus web site.

WMI Mapper

A version of of the Pegasus platform that specifically communicates with Microsoft WMI implementations and interfaces with WMI object is provided as a separately compilable code set in the CVS.

Supported Platforms

Each Pegasus release lists as supported platforms those hardware/software platforms that have recognized ports for the Pegasus code base including a maintainer for the platform that will be willing to regularly assure that the port is maintained as the Pegasus code base is changed.  Pegasus may be operable on other platforms (ex. Windows 98) but without a group to provide the role of test and maintenance, the Pegasus project cannot assure operation. The supported platforms for current release are:

Further information regarding Pegasus support on IBM platforms can be found at: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/eserver/v1r1/en_US/info/ciminf o/eicahkickoff.htm. This site is expected to have information available starting in December.

Further information regarding Pegasus support on HP platforms can be found at: http://www.hp.com/large/infrastructure/management/wbem/.

Conformance with DMTF Specifications

Pegasus tries to conform to the CIM specifications.  It is a major goal of the OpenPegasus project to both drive and utilize the DMTF CIM/WBEM specifications.  However, today there are a number of differences.  As of Pegasus 2.3, some of the differences include the following:

1. Provider Registration - Pegasus supports registration through a set of Provider registration classes  similar to the CIM Classes defined as experimental in the CIM 2.8 preliminary Schema release and does not support the Provider Qualifier. Note that there are differences that must still be worked out between the Pegasus PG provider registration classes and the CIM classes as part of the move to release of the CIM classes.

2. Indications -Pegasus supports process indications but does not include any specific support for lifecycle indications.

3. Interop Schema - Today Pegasus provides alternatives to some of the classes in the Interop Schema including CIM_StatisticalData.

4. execQuery operaiton - Today Pegasus does not support the execQuery pending the availability of a standard for the query language.

5. Pegasus differs from some other implementations in the delivery of instance and class qualifiers on some operations.

6. Pegasus has not implemented the alias functions defined in the CIM specification in the MOF compiler.

Changes in this Release

The development and release of each version of Pegasus is defined and controlled through Pegasus PEP documents.  PEP 57 is the controlling document this release and lists the original set of changes proposed and the status of each of those changes. Note that not all of the originally defined functionality was completed for this release.

In general, the changes implemented for this release were:

1. Introduction of platform globalization.
2. Introduction of a listener API
3. Introduction of SLP (still experimental and by default not compiled in the 2.3.0 release)
4. Introduction of a new pluggable Provider Manager (still experimental and by default not compiled in the 2.3.0 release)
5. Introduction of extensive changes to the HTTP monitor (still experimental and not compiled in the 2.3.0 release)
6. Incorporation of a Java Client based on the SNIA code base.
7. Additional Indication Handlers (SNMP)
8. Improvements to indication handling.

Note that there were a number of objectives that were not completely achieved including:

1. SLP integration - This code is in place but is compiled only with a conditional compile flag. This code can be enabled by setting the environment variables PEGASUS_ENABLE_SLP and recompiling Pegasus.
2. Pluggable provider manager - This was a major objective but because the code changes were extensive and released very late in the developement cycle of 2.3, both the old and the new provider managers are maintained in the release AND the old provider manager is defined as the default compile.  To compile and run with the new pluggable provider manager functions the user must set a compile flag (ENABLE_PROVIDER_MANAGER2).  NOTE: It is the intention of the Pegasus project to move to the new provider manager as soon as possible.
3. HTTP Monitor enhancements - As with the Pluggable Provider Manager, it was the intention to incorporate a number of enhancements to the HTTP monitor.  Again because the time in the development phase when they were submitted, the project team elected to release 2.3 with the existing monitor as the default compile but with the code for both monitors. It is the intention to move to the new monitor as soon as possible and users are free to work with either implementation.  To compile and run with the new monitor use the flag PEGASUS_MONITOR2.

The set of PEPs defined for this release is summarized below along with the final implementation status because not all of the PEPs originally defined for this version were implemented:

List of Bugs Corrected

The current bug list for Pegasus is openly available on the OpenPegasus web site.  As of the release of 2.3.0, the open bug list was as follows:

138 bugs found.

Documentation

The following documentation is available for the this Pegasus release:

• Build and Installation - Readme in the Pegasus Root Directory
• Operation - Readme in the Pegasus Root Directory
• APIs - See the header files and the HTML documentation that is on the web site.
• Utilities - A combination of help generally available with the -h option for the command and HTML documentation for most of the tools.
• API usage documentation - The best API usage documentation is the existing utilities and test programs.  In particular the Common/tests unit tests contain extensive examples of the use of the Common APIs.

Copyright (c) 2003 BMC Software; Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.; IBM Corp.; The Open Group

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy  of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

THE ABOVE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AND THIS PERMISSION NOTICE SHALL BE INCLUDED IN ALL COPIES OR SUBSTANTIAL PORTIONS OF THE SOFTWARE. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED  "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.