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Help for Foxhound 4.0.4740a
Table of Contents [RisingRoad]
The Foxhound Options page lets you change a variety of Foxhound settings and perform a variety of Foxhound-specific tasks.Settings in this page are global in nature: any changes you make will apply to all Foxhound users and sessions running on this copy of the Foxhound engine.
The Foxhound Options Menu 6.6 Purge
The New Menu link opens the Foxhound Menu page in a new browser window or tab. This link appears on every Foxhound page to make it easy to look at multiple databases at the same time.
The Monitor Options link opens the Monitor Criteria page in a new browser window or tab. That page lets you enable and disable different alerts, change the conditions under which alerts are issued and manage multiple Monitor sessions using a tab-delimited file of connection strings.
The
button is a context-sensitive link to this Help topic.
This button appears in many locations, each of them a link to a different Help topic in this frame.
Tip: To hide the Help for every new page, see the Show Help section on this page.
The About link opens the About Foxhound page in a new browser window or tab.
This section lets you quickly (and temporarily) turn off certain features without changing (or affecting) the dozens of other settings that otherwise control how those features work.
The Enable Emails checkbox lets you turn off the Alert email facility for all target databases being monitored by Foxhound. This checkbox does not affect any other email settings (for example, that you normally want Alert emails for database A but not database B, and you have set that up using the Monitor Options page), but it does override their effect when you uncheck this checkbox. When you check this checkbox again, all the other email settings take effect.
The Enable Schedules checkbox lets you turn off all the Schedule facilities for all target databases being monitored by Foxhound. This checkbox does not affect any other Schedule settings (for example, that you normally want to turn Alert emails on and off at certain times of the day for database A but not database B, and you have set that up using the Monitor Options page), but it does override their effect when you uncheck this checkbox. When you check this checkbox again, all the other Schedule settings take effect.
The Enable AutoDrop checkbox lets you turn off the AutoDrop facility for all target databases being monitored by Foxhound. This checkbox does not affect any other AutoDrop settings (for example, that you normally want to drop connections that are blocking other connections to database A but not database B, and you have set that up using the Monitor Options page), but it does override their effect when you uncheck this checkbox. When you check this checkbox again, all the other AutoDrop settings take effect.
You must click if you want your changes saved. Any one the Save buttons will save all the changes you have made anywhere on this page.
(For other fields required to complete the setup for Alert and AutoDrop Notice emails, see Monitor Options - 7. Email Setup.)
Check Use SMTP to send emails to specify that SMTP will be used to send all alert emails, instead of MAPI.
The SMTP Sender: holds the email address of the sender;
e.g., your.name@gmail.com will appear in the email "from" field as "Foxhound Alert
The SMTP Server: is a server domain name or IP address of the SMTP server;
e.g., smtp.gmail.com for sending emails via Gmail.
In other words, specify smtp.gmail.com in the SMTP Sender: field here, but over on the
Monitor Options - 7. Email Setup
page specify ymail.com in the Email address(es) for Alerts: field.
The SMTP Port: specifies the TCP/IP port to use for SMTP messages.
Use 25 for standard SMTP servers and 587 for sending emails via Gmail.
The SMTP Timeout: specifies how long to wait, in seconds, before giving up
on an attempt to send an email. The Foxhound Database Monitor sends email alerts
asynchronously so a long timeout doesn't adversely affect the monitoring process.
However, the Send Test Email button does work synchronously; i.e., it waits until the email is send,
so you can use it to determine how long the timeout should be.
The SMTP Authorization User Name: holds the user name when the
SMTP server requires authentication;
e.g., your.name@gmail.com
The SMTP Authorization Password: holds the password when the
SMTP server requires authentication.
Strong encryption is used to
store this value in the Foxhound database, and the value is not redisplayed on this page.
In other words, this field is input-only; just because no value is displayed doesn't necessarily mean
there's no password stored.
The SMTP Certificate Filespec: is required when the SMTP server requires an SSL certificate;
for example:
Check Use MAPI to send emails to specify that MAPI will be
used to send all alert emails, instead of SMTP.
The MAPI User Name: holds the MAPI login name; e.g., postmaster@xyz.com
The MAPI Password: holds the MAPI login password.
Strong encryption is used to
store this value in the Foxhound database, and the value is not redisplayed on this page.
In other words, this field is input-only; just because it's empty doesn't necessarily mean
there's no password stored.
You must click if you want your changes saved.
Any one the Save buttons will save all the changes you have made anywhere on this page.
The button may be used to erase
the values currently stored in SMTP Authorization User Name and the SMTP Authorization Password.
This button is necessary if you switch from using an SMTP server that requires authorization to one
that doesn't; Foxhound doesn't redisplay the values entered in those fields so you can't just
"blank them out" to erase them, you have to press this button.
The Erase Authorization button takes effect immediately; you don't have to press the Save Values button.
Note: More information is required to complete the setup for Alert and AutoDrop Notice emails:
The Connection Sampling Threshold radio buttons let you specify when (and if)
Foxhound will stop recording detail information about individual connections. Here
are your choices:
The new value takes effect immediately, for all sampling sessions, as soon as you save it.
Here are the main reasons you might want to set a threshold other than All:
The threshold is an "all or nothing" setting. I.e., if you set a threshold other
than zero or All, Foxhound will stop gathering any detail information about any
connections when the ConnCount database property exceeds the threshold. When
ConnCount drops back to the threshold or lower, Foxhound will start gathering
detail information about all the connections again.
Note that ConnCount is retrieved before the detail connection information so there may be a
change in the number of connections by the time the detail information is retrieved. For example, if
you set the threshold to 100, you may see detail information about more than 100 connections for a
short period if new connections are being created.
You must click if you want your changes saved.
Any one the Save buttons will save all the changes you have made anywhere on this page.
Foxhound's internal purge process frees up space
in the Foxhound database by deleting old data. The purge process
is automatically launched every 20 minutes, 24 hours a day, starting at 00:00,
and can also be launched manually via the Start Purge button. The purge process
runs independently from all other Foxhound processes, including the Foxhound Monitor
processes and the web service that displays this Foxhound Options page.
Note that the Foxhound database will not shrink in size when data is deleted; the freed space
is simply made available for future needs. In fact, the Foxhound database file may temporarily
grow in size during the purge process to accommodate growth in the checkpoint log as
rows are deleted. This checkpoint log space will be released when the Foxhound database is stopped and
restarted, but the space freed up by the purge process will not be released. This behavior is
a characteristic of all SQL Anywhere databases.
When the Enable automatic purge schedule: checkbox is checked, the purge process
that is automatically launched every 20 minutes will proceed to delete old data. When
this checkbox is unchecked, the purge process will still be launched every 20 minutes
but it won't do anything; in effect, the scheduled purge is disabled.
The Purge all sample data: checkbox enables the deletion of database and connection-level sample data,
and the after [xx] days field lets you specify how long before samples are deleted.
The after [xx] days calculation for Purge all sample data: is based on the most recent successful sample,
not the current timestamp.
That means the most recent [xx] days worth of successful samples will be preserved
if sampling is turned off or stops for some other reason. It also means that if there are
no successful samples, nothing is purged.
Note that when a sample associated with a Peak is deleted, the associated entry on the
Peak line will lose its hyperlink attribute.
The Purge speed: radio buttons specify how aggressively the purge process will pursue its goal of deleting old data.
Choosing a higher number may ensure that the purge process will keep up with the workload and
prevent the Foxhound database from growing in size at all or too quickly. It's up to you to determine the right setting, and that depends primarily on the performance of
the computer running Foxhound and the number of connections to the target databases being monitored;
i.e., a faster computer will support a higher Purge speed: setting, and a large number of
connections to target databases will require a higher Purge speed: setting to keep the
Foxhound database under control. If the purge process has fallen behind, possibly because it was turned off for a while,
it may take many runs for it to catch up to the specified after [xx] days settings. During this
catch-up period the purge process may delete very few rows or no rows at all during some individual runs.
One workaround for this is to repeatedly use the Start Purge Now button to force the catch-up process to hurry up.
You must click if you want your changes saved.
Any one the Save buttons will save all the changes you have made anywhere on this page.
The button starts the purge process immediately. Only one purge process at a time will run; a duplicate process will simply stop by itself.
The button will stop a purge process that is currently running. It may take a moment for your request to take effect; the purge process will continue running until it reaches a commit point and then stop.
The button forces the Foxhound engine to perform a checkpoint so that all of the purge-related statistics (row counts, etcetera) shown on this page are up to date. This checkpoint is executed on the Foxhound database, not any of the target databases.
The button forces the data on this page to be recalculated and redisplayed, in particular the Purge Run and Foxhound DBSPACE reports.
The Purge Run report shows the last 10 runs of the purge process, in reverse order with the most recent run at the top.
The Foxhound DBSPACE report shows information about the files comprising the Foxhound database.
If Foxhound encounters a run-time exception, it may store
diagnostic information in an internal table. Foxhound also
stores some informational messages in this table.
The button
lets you display the most recent diagnostic data in reverse
order by timestamp.
The Export diagnostics to file: field lets you specify the file that will be written when you press the
button.
You must click if you want your changes saved.
Any one the Save buttons will save all the changes you have made anywhere on this page.
The button will
write all the diagnostic data, sorted by timestamp, to the file
specified in the Export diagnostics to file: field.
If the file exists, it will be overwritten.
The button
lets you delete the diagnostic data from the Foxhound database.
If all three of the above buttons are disabled, it means there is no diagnostic data to display.
Press the button to see if any diagnostic data is now available.
Note: If you upgrade Foxhound to a new build, the data upgrade process will copy all
the existing diagnostic data from the old database to the new one.
The
button will stop the Foxhound database engine.
Tip: Gmail works well as an SMTP server but the Alert emails look better in Ymail.
C:\ProgramData\RisingRoad\Foxhound4\Equifax_Secure_Certificate_Authority.cer
Email address(es): See Monitor Options - 7. Email Setup.
Use HTML in emails: ...ditto
Host[:port] for URLs in emails: ...ditto
Send Test Email: ...ditto
6.3 Connection Sampling Threshold
6.6 Purge
Tip: Safe Mode Startup
can be used to start an old Foxhound database without losing any old data to the purge process:
Note: New settings won't affect a purge process that's
already running, just the next one to start.
6.7 Diagnostics
6.8 Stop Foxhound
The Stop Foxhound Engine button is disabled when the Foxhound database is running on a
computer that is separate from the one running the browser.