

-------------------------------
ABOUT THE OWL MONITORING SYSTEM
-------------------------------

The Owl Monitoring System uses timed Domain Name System (DNS) queries to
monitor basic network functionality.  The system consists of a manager host
and a set of sensor hosts.  The Owl sensors perform periodic DNS queries and
report to the Owl manager the time taken for each query.  Over time, this
shows the responsiveness of the DNS infrastructure.

The Owl Monitoring System was designed such that the Owl sensor hosts need
not be under the same administrative control as the Owl manager host.  In
fact, each sensor in a set of Owl sensors may be under administrative control
of different organizations and still report to a single Owl manager.

Besides the code written specifically for Owl, some third-party software is
also used.  The manager and sensor require Perl modules that must be installed
(via CPAN or your local system's repository.  The manager also relies on
several software packages (e.g., Nagios and rrdtool) for displaying the
collected Owl sensor data.  The third-party software is not included in the
Owl distribution.

The "Owl Monitoring System Installation Guide" provides information on
installing and configuring the Owl software and the supporting third-party
software.


------------------
DIRECTORY CONTENTS
------------------

This directory contains the Owl Monitoring System files.  These are divided
into functional groups -- manager files, sensor files, documentation, and
files common to both manager and sensor.  Brief descriptions of these files
are given below.

	common
		This directory contains the Perl modules and manual pages that
		are shared by the Owl manager and the Owl sensor.

	docs
		This directory contains the Owl Monitoring System Installation
		Guide.  This document provides an operational overview of the
		Owl system, installation instructions for Owl and supporting
		third-party software.  Configuration instructions for the Owl
		software are also provided, along with configuration
		information for the required third-party software.  This guide
		is in HTML format and should be viewable with any web browser.

	manager
		This directory contains the software that implements the Owl
		manager.  There are also fragments of files that are needed
		for configuring some of the required third-party software.

	sensor
		This directory contains the software that implements the Owl
		sensor.  There is also a sample Owl configuration file.


---------------
GETTING STARTED
---------------

To get started, please see the "docs/install-guide.html" file.

