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In March 14, 1999 Ethan Galstad released the first version of Nagios. Then, nearly exactly 10 years later (May 2009), Icinga (a fork of Nagios) was born. What happened there? Why a fork? In this article, I will shed some light about what made the Icinga developers decide to fork (although they still send patches to Nagios). In this article, I will talk to both Ethan Galstad himself, and Michael Lübben (one of the founding Icinga team members and Nagios addon developer). I will quote Michael and Ethan in the article. You get to read their points of view here.
The beginning: Netsaint/Nagios, debugging, features
Nagios, like many other free software projects, started as a hobby. In Ethan's own words, "I first started developing Nagios in the fall of 1998 under its original name of 'NetSaint'. Development started because I was looking for a hobby project to work on in my spare time and because I thought it would be useful for offering commercial monitoring services in the future. When I surveyed the other monitoring solutions that existed at the time I didn't think they were flexible enough to meet my future needs, so I started my own project. I decided to release NetSaint as an Open Source project because I wanted to contribute something back to the community and I knew that community involvement would help improve its capabilities quickly."
Ethan talks about "Nagios Core" as Nagios is divided into two main parts: Nagios Core itself, and its plugins. Nagios real strength is in its ability to be enhanced with add-ons. Ethan talks about how he opened up Nagios to plugin developers from early on: "It wasn't more than a few months after the initial release of NetSaint when the first contributors came onboard to help. I remained the 'gatekeeper' of the core code for many years afterwards, but I made an early decision to spin the plugins off as their own project to bring in more people.". As the gatekeeper, Ethan had to deal with every maintainer's dilemma: accepting features and patches and feature-creep. He says "For many years I wrote the majority of the core code myself and reviewed patches by contributors before either rejecting or incorporating them. Keeping a balance between never-ending feature creep and maintaining the scope of having a focused monitoring engine has always been a challenge, but I think its one of the reasons that Nagios has become the most widely deployed monitoring solution out there." What was it like, accepting code from third party developers? He says "Opening up the development team isn't always easy, nor is it always appropriate. You have to build trust with the contributors who are submitting patches -- both in terms of code quality and their understanding of architectural issues that affect the long-term viability of a project. Some projects are more suited to multiple developers, whereas others are not. I've been quite happy with how the Nagios development team has grown over time and how community members have stepped up and offered to contribute in whatever way they can".
From the very beginning, Ethan was very serious about trademarks. He told me "I took steps to protect the Nagios trademark immediately in early 2002 when I had to change the project's name from 'NetSaint' to 'Nagios'. The name change was the result of 'NetSaint' being too close to another party's trademark, so I thought a name change was the best way to go. It also made me aware of the importance of trademarks, how trademark law worked, the importance of protecting your brand name, and striking a balance with the community's use of a mark. Beginning with the first release of Nagios in 2002 I published guidelines on how to use (and not use) the Nagios trademark, as well as how to provide attribution of the mark's ownership. Community members (including core contributors, plugins developers, and add-on developers) by in large understood the need for the rules and honored the trademark usage and attribution requirements. We later adopted a modified version of the Ubuntu trademark policy for use with Nagios, as we felt it served as a good example of balancing trademark protection requirements with community advocacy and usage."
Six months before the split
According to Michael, Some developers, especially towards the end, grew displeased with Ethan's management of Nagios Core. Michael, who was there at the time, says "Six months before the fork, there was a bit of unrest among Nagios' extension developers: Nagios Core was maintained just by Ethan Galstad (this was in contrast with Nagios plugins and add ons, developed by several programmers). Up until that point, Ethan hadn't action the request of the community to get more developers. Community patches went unapplied for a long time, and so did their requests to support more databases." So, Ethan was keeping what he considered a balance, whereas other developers didn't feel that balance was strong enough.
When I asked Michael what bug was bugging him especially before the fork, he answered "No one bug, to see community patches be more regularly integrated was more important for me. Beyond the bugs, it was also the fact that much needed to be improved in the core that none of our patches or addons could resolve. PostgreSQL and Oracle database support for instance, enabling data to be retrieved for reporting addons, an API to ease addon integration, and the list goes on. These were not simply superfluous feature requests – their absence in the core was hindering the community's ability to develop extensions for Nagios. At that point there was a 2-year standstill on Nagios Core releases. So when we decided to fork, we set our priorities to offer the database flexibility the community had been asking for, introduce a PHP based interface as was promised by Nagios, and some way of making addon developers lives easier – at first this was the Icinga API. All while maintaining configuration and plugin compatibility to Nagios, as well as improving our version of the CGIs. Not only that, since forking, we've also sent back bug-fixes to the new Nagios Core team for their re-integration into the Nagios Core. There is an overview of this flow of fixes to and fro between the two Nagios and Icinga development groups. You can also find them scattered in the Nagios change logs."
Ethan's stance on the "pre-fork" era is different. He says "It's not clear what specific bugs/features they were unhappy with when they decided to fork. Plus, none of the members on the original Icinga team offered to become a core contributor or help with bug fixes or core feature enhancements before they made a decision to fork. That's not how a true community effort should work.". Ethan then adds that "The Icinga bug and feature comparison tables are misleading, in that they show "feature enhancements" alongside of bugs. This makes the bug list appear skewed, as the Nagios Core development team has chosen to not implement certain things in Nagios Core due to negative side effects with key Nagios addons.".
Ethan's take on the matter will sound familiar to many programmers: "Bugs weren't as much the issue as was a few people's expectations that more be done with the core project. The challenge with Nagios Core is that, for the most part, it already does what it was scoped to do and some features that users want shouldn't be added to the core engine. Keeping the core engine lean and architecturally separate from external addons has been a major factor in Nagios' success. Additional features and functionality that users often want do not belong in the core monitoring engine, but rather in plugins and addons to the core. Examples of such functions/features are web interfaces, additional APIs, reporting, distributed monitoring, etc. A good architectural understanding of what Nagios is and how things are designed to fit together as separate components, rather than allowing Nagios to become a monolithic solution, is essential for anyone who wants to develop for Nagios."
His plan worked: to have an idea of the sheer amount of code we are talking about, just have a look at Nagios exchange: there are hundreds and hundreds of extensions, plugins, and information documents. It's all comunity-driven, so the occasional "File not found" error might pop up. However, they are quickly caught internally -- and if not, the community works towards fixing them.
Just before the fork
Two years ago, more or less when the split happened, Ethan was having problems resolving issues with a company called "Netways". Nagios had tried to solve the issue amicably with them for over two years -- but didn't manage. Ethan writes: "Over four years ago we discovered serious, intentional trademark violations by a commercial company in Germany by the name of Netways. These violations included a Nagios trademark registration in Germany that the company's founder - Julian Hein - had initiated with the purpose of subverting the Nagios brand for his own company's commercial benefit. We attempted to first resolve the violations amicably with Netways and Julian Hein, but we had no choice other than to get our attorneys involved when they refused to work with us."
Which is when things got interesting. The battle was on several fronts: there was also a PR issue. According to Ethan, "after more than two years of ignoring requests from us and our attorneys, and refusing to resolve the matter as they should have, Netways was able to convince a few members of the Nagios community that we were attacking the entire community with our trademark policy. Netways then planned and launched the Icinga fork of Nagios using a variety of FUD tactics that included references to our trademark policy and trademark protection."
While talking to Michael about Nagios' trademark protection attacks, Michael's says that he wasn't personally approached by them, but then he says "I know of others that Nagios Enterprises (Ethan / Mary) spoke to and emailed, requesting domain names to be transferred. It was covered in an IT journal (http://www.zdnet.de/news/41527909/nagios-kluft-zwischen-autor-und-community-vertieft-sich.htm) which is unfortunately in German, but you can use Google Translate!". (Note: the article is considered inaccurate by the Nagios team: according to them, it contains "inaccurate information and opinion delivered as if it is fact").
Ethan's stance on the alleged "attacks" is that Nagios never attacked the community. He says "Talking about 'Nagios trademark protection attacks' is very misleading here. The community was untouched. We simply took steps to protect the Nagios trademark from commercial misuse. The only steps we took was to email trademark violators that appeared to be commercial entities -- not community members. So, the entities Michael is referring to were some of the commercial trademark violators."
Michael wasn't personally asked to surrender any domains. However, he points out that "if you look online, nagios-fr.org now is monitoring-fr.org, the first nagiosexchange.org is now monitoringexchange.org and nagiosplugins.org now belongs to Nagios Enterprises.".
Ethan's take on this is simple: "The nagios-fr.org domain was in direct violation of our policy. At the time we asked the domain owner to stop using the domain and transfer it to us, he was attempting to setup a commercial "Nagios" entity in France. We attempted to work with him on solving the issue amicably (even to the point of helping with the commercial entity), but he refused to work with us. The nagiosexchange.org domain was one of the over 60 "nagios" domains that Netways owned in violation of our trademark policy. It was only after we exposed (on social media) what they were doing that they transferred the domains to us."
The fork
So, Icinga was born. After these events, Nagios was forked into Icinga. The new Icinga team included:
- Some members of the community advisory board (the ones with stronger ties to Netways)
- Six developers of Nagios extensions (which had a pool of hundreds of developers)
- Members of Netways
Five days after the fork (on the 6th of May 2009), Ethan finally got two more programmers on board, in order to stop being "the" developer and sole gatekeeper of Nagios' codebase; Andreas Ericsson and Ton Voon became part of the Nagios development team:
The announcement of a Nagios fork has brought to light several weaknesses in the Nagios project that have hampered its evolution. Two of these being the fact that I have been "the" developer and sole gatekeeper of the codebase.
The time I can commit to Nagios development has decreased in recent times. It will continue to decrease further as time goes by. I need to transition my role away from that of "the" Nagios developer. To do that, I'm empowering others to take over development, and moving into an architectural/mentor role. And eventually, when the time is right, I'll pass that role on to someone else.
About people joining the core team, Ethan today points out that "Despite the Icinga team claiming otherwise, I've been quite open to others getting involved and helping out with the project. All it would have taken for the Icinga developers to have joined was for them to have offered their help. Andreas and Ton both volunteered to help out and I gladly accepted their offer. That's how community should work."
What about copyrights and trademark issues?
About the fork, Ethan also points out some interesting facts about Netways registering the Icinga trademark. Ethan says "While unnoticed by the people that initially supported Icinga, it did not surprise us to see that Netways was quick to register the Icinga trademark. We thought that was pretty interesting, given the fact that they didn't want to honor the Nagios trademark policy, and on several occasions acted as though they weren't aware of trademark laws. It was only after the details of what Netways and Julian Hein had done was publicly exposed on social media networks that they finally transferred dozens of Nagios domains and the German trademark filing to us. I personally, and we as a company, have had to defend the Nagios trademark against misuse (especially commercial misuse) for over a decade, and will continue to do so to ensure the longevity of the project. We've found that most of the people who complain about trademark issues are usually exploiting the trademark themselves or work for companies that are exploiting the trademark for their own benefit. Our experience serves as a great example of why every Open Source project needs to have a trademark policy and defend its mark from the onset."
When I asked Michael who actually "owns Icinga" as such, he says "Good question! In terms of copyright, it's owned by whoever contributed code to it. A big portion is owned by Ethan Galstad himself, as well as anybody else who contributed to Nagios' code." So, the owners are all those individuals who have contributed code - their snippets belong to them and each new Icinga version is the result of this collective effort over time.
According to Ethan, however, the real issue is not in the copyright, but in the Trademark: the Iginca trademark (which is probably the most valuable asset, since the code is open source) is owned by Netways. Michael disagrees: "In representing the Icinga Team here, I don't see the Icinga trademark to be the most valuable asset - that is its community of developers, contributors and users. Netways contributes much by way of administrative assistance such as hosting the website and offering a physical postal address for formalities. That has included helping in the current legal transition to a foundation, or what we call here a registered association. Their stewardship over the legalities of the Icinga name does not conflict with the development of our code. This trademark stuff does not interest us -- we choose to focus our time on improving Icinga's functionality. That is the addition of PostgreSQL and Oracle database support that was long desired in the community, improvements to the user interface, in-built reporting capabilities and simply development that users can count on. These results speak for themselves. And our users (http://www.icinga.org/users/) speak their minds too".
The aftermaths: Icinga and Nagios
One year after releasing Icinga, they celebrated their 10,000th (ten thousandth) downloads. They proudly said so in their press release, where they pointed out the success the project was enjoying: a reliable roadmap, support for PostgreSQL and Oracle, 16 active contributors, availability of Icinga in several languages, corporate endorsement, 1000 twitter followers, and so on. So, a year on, the project was doing fine although they were releasing separate versions of Core, API and Web.
About 8 months ago, Icinga turned 2. In their announcement, they celebrated: Core, API and Web was unified and included dual IPv6 / IPv4 support, optimized database connectivity and a new look web interface. Plus, integrated addons (PNP, LConf, Heatmap and Business Process Addon), more than 70,000 downloads, and 23 members.
The Icinga team told me that Icinga is not Nagios plus a custom web interface, but rather it's a framework. Actually most of Icinga's component parts are optional, because Icinga is rather like a toolkit. You take: Icinga Core + a database (MySQL/PostgreSLQ/Oracle) and can add:
- UI (Web or Classic, or a 3rd party interface)
- optional Icinga Reporting
- add ons (popular are: NagVis, Business Process Addons, PNP4Nagios, etc)
- plugins as necessary (all Nagios plugins are compatible)
- optional Icinga Mobile ( web interface for iPhone & Android)
So really, there is a lot of flexibility offered in using Icinga.
What about Nagios? Ethan writes "We've brought additional developers on to the core development team in recent years to help with bug fixes and new developments with Nagios Core, NSCA, NRPE, and other new Nagios projects we've released. For example, we've developed a new PHP interface for Nagios (Nagios V-Shell), new business intelligence addon (Nagios BPI), a new mobile interface (Nagios Mobile), and a new SNMP trap interface (NSTI). We are also working on a new web-based configuration interface for Nagios. These are all Open Source projects that have been developed by our company for use by both our commercial customers and the greater Nagios community". Ethan continues: "The development pace with Nagios has grown steadily since the first release in 1999, and has certainly improved further since we began our commercial operations and were able to start hiring additional developers. Last year (in 2011) there were over six hundred (600) new Nagios projects that were developed and released to the community. There are now thousands of free and Open Source addons for Nagios that extend its functionality and help make it fit the needs of a large variety of end users. The flexibility of Nagios and what it can do (both natively and through the use of optional addons) has been a major factor in Nagios becoming the industry standard in monitoring."
What about plugins? Are plugins developed for Icinga compatible to the ones developed for Nagios? Things are pretty bright, luckily; about this, Michael says "All plugins that have been developed for Nagios also work in Icinga and vice-versa. The Nagios Plugins Development Team is an independent team that develops and supports plugins for Nagios. Like configurations for Nagios, these are always compatible with Icinga - so migration is very simple. The majority of Nagios addons work with Icinga Classic UI but for Icinga Web they need to be modified. This can be done as a kind of widget window to the external add-on with a simple xml snippet, though for full functionality more coding is required. That being said, a couple add ons have been comprehensively integrated -- including Business Process Monitoring by Bernd Strössenreuther, Jörg Linge's PNP4Nagios, LConf by Jannis Mosshammer and my own Nagtrap is in the works. These can be considered pretty much "native". We'd like to see more so we're working on making the process easier for add-on developers with Icinga Web development guides that also explain what is needed to work with the database and REST API. On the smartphone front, a few Android and iOS developers have created apps for, or made compatible to Icinga too. As more people use Icinga, we expect more add-on developers will do the same."
Ethan points out however that compatibility is not always easy and explains: "Plugins may work with both Nagios Core and Icinga Core, but not all Nagios addons will with with Icinga. There are several addons and extensions that will only work with Nagios."
Today, Icinga is definitely a reality.
This brings us to today: Icinga developers have a nice bug and feature comparison between Icinga and Nagios, which gives you a good idea about where each project is.
Ethan's comment about the wiki page above is quite critical: "This comparison on the wiki is both inaccurate and skewed, as it contains incorrect bug data and mixes new features that have not yet been implemented. This has apparently been done with the intention of trying to make Nagios look bad in comparison to Icinga."
In terms of code, things are interesting. Michael writes about the source code ownership: "The original code comes from Ethan Galstad. But the code falls under GPL. That means anyone can take the code, modify and redistribute it. In this case, the Icinga Team did so with the fork. My knowledge of law is limited so I cannot judge if there could be any copyright problems, but I doubt it." What about making money with Icinga? Michael says "I personally do not make any money with Icinga, and there are currently no such plans. Some in the Icinga Team provide fee-based service and support for Icinga. This is also important, as many companies use Icinga or in general open source software, and like to have a point of contact for problems. There are no intentions to make Icinga or any of its components fee-based at any time."
About code, Ethan writes "While I own the majority of the code in the core engine, a portion of the ownership belongs to contributors. We don't have any plans of dual-licensing the core code, as we're quite happy with it remaining a free, community-developed Open Source project. Our commercial efforts focus on other offerings. Nagios XI - our commercial version of Nagios - builds on top of the core monitoring engine and provides features that many long-time Nagios users and newcomers are looking for - including integrated performance graphs, dashboards, advanced reports, configuration wizards, web configuration GUIs, visualization tools, fine-grain control of user settings, and more. We also offer support contracts, training, and will shortly be offering official certifications."
When I asked Ethan about how he felt about the split, he was very straightforward: "It was disappointing to see a few community members join with Netways to launch the Icinga project. Despite outwardly saying that they forked because of slow development with Nagios, they never offered to help improve the Nagios project before making the decision to fork. In my opinion that's not how things should work in Open Source, but you sometimes get the bad with the good when it comes to situations like this. Most of the original Icinga developers (aside from Netways employees) have left the project, which, when combined with discussions I've had with various community members, seems to indicate they started to have misgivings about the methodologies the project and its parent company Netways have employed. There are dozens of Nagios forks in the wild. A few have survived, but most were abandoned after a short time. What makes Nagios stand apart from its forks is that people know Nagios, they build for Nagios, and they trust in Nagios. We haven't seen any fork come close to having the same strength in numbers in terms of community members and addons that Nagios has. That's what keeps bringing people to Nagios. Its a name they trust."
Ethan is obviously very proud of what he achieved. He says "Our statistics show that there are now well over one million active Nagios installations worldwide. While there are dozens of Nagios forks like Icinga that exist, people continue to choose Nagios over its competitors due to its long track record of proven stability and development."
Michael and the rest of the Icinga team still get in touch with the Nagios Core development team at times: "We have some contact and exchange ideas. Some more than others, though Ethan is fairly quiet -- it's mostly on the mailing lists between developers. Especially when it comes to bugs, etc. You can see this from the bug and feature comparison list where we've exchanged patches. From my own feelings, the attitude is positive as it is about making progress in the code."
The future
When I asked Ethan about the future of Nagios, he wrote "There are a number of exciting things that are just on the horizon for Nagios. We're currently working on a new web configuration utility which will make managing a Nagios setup much easier. We're also close to launching official certification tests for Nagios. There will be both Nagios Professional and Nagios Administrator certification levels available for community members to choose from. Our office whiteboards are full of new projects (over 40) that are on our development agenda for 2012. The projects cover a wide variety of technical needs that we've seen from our commercial customers and the Open Source community, including SNMP, Netflow, log file monitoring, incident management, visualization, and virtualization. We place a high level of importance on customer-driven innovation and the things we work on directly reflect what people are asking for. Generally speaking, half of what we work on is for our commercial customers, and half is devoted to Open Source projects that benefit the entire community. We think its a great way to operate our company. Based on the continued growth we see happening worldwide, we expect 2012 to be another record year for Nagios development, with several hundred new projects being released before year's end. Users can watch how new projects shape up by visiting our development blog (http://labs.nagios.com) or by checking Nagios Exchange (http://exchange.nagios.org) for new and updated projects that are released each week. Nagios remains the industry standard in monitoring due to its long history, flexible architecture, its active community, widespread support, and the thousands of free addons that are available for it. That's what makes Nagios a great product and a great community."
Regarding Icinga, Michael had this to say. "Coming up to version 1.7, our Icinga team continues to roll out an exciting roadmap for Icinga. We're working on major new features like IcingaMQ, a messaging queue for high performance distributed monitoring, improved reporting, graphing and business monitoring capabilities. These will reinforce the existing modular architecture of Icinga Core, database, Web / Classic UI, Reporting and Mobile, which combined with community extensions form a tailored, enterprise grade monitoring solution that is 100% open and free. And when we look at the 128,000+ downloads thus far, next to the growing community of contributors and users who share their appreciation for our project – we are certain that we're headed in the right direction as a leading open source monitoring project."
What about Ethan's thought on Icinga's development? He says "Although Icinga is still putting out new releases, it has had an extremely high developer turnover rate in its relatively short history. I believe this could cause problems for the project in the long term. Both Netways and the Icinga team have also violated international IP laws (including trademark and copyright) on multiple occasions, which has hurt them substantially in terms of adoption. Many companies have stayed away from the fork due to potential liability issues. More information on some of the trademark and IP problems can be found in my blog article at: http://community.nagios.org/2010/09/28/nagios-trademark-truth/
About the high turnover, Michael says "Upon forking, our team had a settling-in phase where we had to find our feet in working together. Many people wanted to join and contribute to the project and till today many still do. There are always people who find they no longer have time to contribute and step down from the official team for a break. That's why we've introduced an "6 month induction program" to give new contributors time to learn the ropes before they are announced as new official team members. We called it the "Icinga Jedi Apprenticeship" to make sure it doesn't get too serious. Our two latest graduates and official team members have since released our new Icinga Virtual Appliances, so we think we're making much progress here.
Final words
Writing this article was a huge challenge. It took weeks of communication with Michael and Ethan. It fails at providing a clear-cut explanation of what happened, but in some cases clear-cut explanations just don't cut it.
Sometimes, as they say, "it's complicated". And it actually is so!
some thoughts
First of all - thanks for your hard work, keeping up with this story as well as showing both sides.
Second of all - what I am writing here is my sole personal opinion. It does not reflect $work or $team Icinga's opinion on the happenings. So if you wanna blame someone, welcome, I am here and I will stay listening. Unless you take things to the personal level, then feel yourself ignored.
Just some things about myself, before I'll add my personal thoughts on the article.
My name is Michael Friedrich, spending my life in Austria, and have been working on NDOUtils Oracle since April 2009. Before that I got in touch with Nagios as well, but not affiliated with any special development in this area. Though, i'm a coder & hacker - still learning in various areas.
Big fat remark: I do NOT sell Icinga affiliated products and generate money out of the project.
When I heard about the fork named Icinga around start of May, I was investigating how to bring NDOUtils Oracle back to upstream (predecessor left the project). So I took my chance and wrote them, asking if it would be possible to develop on the Oracle support with team Icinga. For the time being, I was not one of the original forkers, but joined team Icinga on 15.5.2009 - while things were crazy about the fork and such.
Reading the Nagios mailinglists at that time already indicated that patches would have to last long, bug discussions lead to /dev/null and so on. So working independently on the code while following Nagios in the change was a pretty good idea from that past point of view.
When Nagios opened up a bit, asking for developers, it was a rather logical idea to join their efforts. The very least I told Hendrik Baecker (who got NDOUtils lead developer later on - but sadly left the monitoring community after a while) that I would appreciate joining the NDOUtils team side by side with Icinga IDOUtils development. Keeping things the same would have opened the way for both worlds supporting Oracle in the very beginning.
That stayed "would" because my offer was denied as Hendrik told me, not having sent a patch to Nagios nor having proven my capabilities of coding. That is truly a good answer - as it was true at that time - but well, seemed they did not want it. So yeah, Nagios could have gotten Oracle support as well. And later in September 2009, Postgresql too. But things did happen differently. Though never say that I did not offer help in the Nagios space as well, I will get to that later on a bit more.
Regarding the topic on changing team members, and not having a stable basis. I've now read that in various interviews with Ethan, and right on i think it's time to explain some parts on that.
I don't see a problem with a large team of open source enthusiasts, sharing the work load. Of course, project management starts to become a challenge but that's how successful projects work these days. The so-called "one man show" could be done, but once you fail to answer one, people will think differently about. I am not saying that organizing the core and addon code alone is a bad idea. Not at all - but such a project is more than just code.
When users ask me what I want for the project, it's normally that I get "... but I cannot program C or Perl". Well tbh it's not really a language matter anymore. Icinga has evolved in so many different parts, that the actual coding is still important but does not add the last missing percents to the product Icinga users appreciate - for free, as we are a growing community.
The documentation has been reworked into docbook and fully translated into German - other languages are pending. While this adds a little more effort in actually writing XML than HTML, it value-adds the possibily to generate man pages and so on. The docs themselves are the knowledge backend of a project - so keep it updated.
Generating new ideas is not so easy when you are not actively diving through users support. So amongst the team there are various individuals working on the social media channels - to keep the twitter channel lively, actively read the mailinglists, filter feedback.icinga.org for new ideas, idle on IRC and help over there, organize development on the dev tracker, add entries to the wiki, write fancy blog post about interesting topics - in short: work with the community.
This work generates not only better docs and wiki entries. Ideas strive through the net, sometimes driven by Nagios users sharing their patches to the wild, or Icinga users having a patch around as well. All of this is taken into account side by side to personal demands - as well as work and friends.
So basically you will learn while reading on the dev tracker's history, that developers help each other as well as appreciate users reporting bugs, discussing about features and bugs and working it out. Every single release we've done so far. I know it - since 0.8.3 I'm the so-called "Release Manager" for the core parts. And I will take care about 1.7 as well - as I already did this week.
While things were working pretty good, Nagios did get awake, true. The fork was not that bad at all, as two new valuable and much appreciated developers joined the core team - Ton Voon and Andreas Ericsson. Both did and do great work on the core. As Ethan did back in the days were it was not all about business and trademark guardianship. Lately Nagios releases became buggy and untested and it made me quite unhappy. As I am still supporting Nagios users this came a bit more to mind (mainly to learn from their problems and share that with Nagios and Icinga users then in a wiki entry for free - or yet better docs).
I took the liberty to start digging around in the Nagios code again, thinking about the fact that Ethan and the project deserves sort of "give something back". It was not much that far, but yet I found my patches sometimes accepted. Some are still pending, especially those for NDOUtils, as you will see remarked on the bug and feature comparison.
Oh yes, I wrote that. You may ask why? Well mostly for the reason that the fancy comparisons mostly suck, each side wants to be better than the other, and that just because people demand a comparison. I'm not really a fan of such things, and when Nagios Enterprises decided to throw their comparison charts with the infamous OpenNMS FUD ...
... I thought about doing something else than summarizing what the history got. The article does not really touch everything what happen. Some things happen apart from the public, only letting insiders recognize childish behaviour the most.
E.g. threatening Olivier Jan for talking about Icinga on nagios-fr.org and demanding the domain to be transferred - well done, that's how the French Nagios community died.
Of course after denying Shinken as Nagios rewrite, deleting it as official 1st ranked idea on ideas.nagios.org threatening Jean Gabes on license purposes.
One might recall the wikipedia edit orgy done by someone from Nagios Enterprises which led into a sockpuppet ban. Mostly it was for removing the mention of Icinga and Shinken as Nagios forks, while adding links to the commercial Nagios XI product (which is not free).
Why I am adding this? Because I think people should know the truth about the stories that have happened. The article is also referring to the so-called "trademark truth". That topic is pretty hard, and emotional, as Nagios already got the issues back in 2002 with Netsaint. But, as a matter of fact, I do believe Julian when telling to protect misbehaviour in taking the Nagios trademark in Germany. Still, I think it was more a political affair to put pressure on the owner of a company participating in the same sector - selling Nagios consulting and being therefore competitor. What has happened in the background will (and should!) remain closed. Thing is, I do trust people I like, in this case the attacked side of the story. So i asked myself why this head to come to public.
http://community.nagios.org/2010/09/28/nagios-trademark-truth/ http://community.nagios.org/2010/10/25/nagios-trademark-victor/
Even selling that as "trademark win for the community". As a community member, it was a "wtf do i need a trademark for?". But anyways, they got their trademark back and nagiosexchange.org died. And the business process addon died as well as it was hosted on nagiosforge.org - that domain was also transferred back to Nagios Enterprises. So thanks for nothing in that case - google's url ranking is a bitch. The new url is btw here
Anyhow. I was enlightened lately, that Nagiosql is not listed as "featured" on nagiosexchange anymore because it supports Icinga as well. Same happened to pnp4nagios a while back too. So adding censorship to possible unwanted addons? Nice try.
Speaking of censorship, I cannot send mails to their lists anymore. Possibly I've talked too much about Icinga myself there. Though, such a limitation prevents me from investing my spare time into porting patches from Icinga to Nagios. I understand a lot of things in this hell area, but that - hell no.
The funny part about telling that forks are evil - creating their own open software license which forbid to fork their code - is more or less that the so-called Nagios Core Config Manager is a fork of the popular NagiosQL config addon. Freely available and developed. Or the Nagios SNMP Trap Receiver - a fork of NagTrap. Developed my Michael Luebben - see article above. Or Nagios Mobile - a fork of Teeny Nagios.
So you'll see - the real truth about forks is somewhere else. Possibly more with the feeling that someone else has success with things you did.
Back to the comparison matrix. I did not want to tell people the above all over, why a fork and so on. I wanted to show them what we actually did. And yeah, the comparison only mentions the Nagios bug ids which I found. Much of it happened either on the famous nagios-portal.org or ideas.nagios.org or found on the net. And truly, Icinga looks better there than Nagios. Sure. But it was also my idea to share it for both sides. Recent Nagios SVN commits show that this idea was not lost as Eric Stanley is taking Icinga patches into Nagios Core (keep in mind that dnsmichi/Michael Friedrich stands for Icinga).
For what it's worth, I have to add - if Andreas Ericsson would not be such an heroic and enthusiastic programmer, the Nagios core code would be dead. I opt to call "Nagios Core" now "op5 Core" given the commits and time happened in the past year. So maybe I will change my opinion again and send an Icinga patch back to Nagios after 1.7 has been released. Overall, I might have missed all the Nagios story happening from 1999 - 2009 therefore having a different opinion on things that have happened.
So don't get me wrong - I appreciate what happened when things were "normal". But recent behaviour especially of Nagios Enterprises does not make me believe that Nagios is about community anymore. At least not the OSS community.
Either way - I'm hoping that this reflection of the happenings will be the last one. History now closed for all those interested in it.
And while the comparison matrix is updated once in a while, we focus on the real stuff. See those entries showing the activity
I have to admit, I pretty much like ohloh and gource to visualize activity.
For gods sake, there's an active Icinga community, and the most famous plugins and addons are Icinga compatible. Sometimes directly in touch with the developers, and for what it's worth, also with the packagers, spreading the love into the package managers out there. Probably there are some addons which do not work with Icinga out-of-the-box. But that's not a problem - just get in touch with the Icinga community. I'm pretty sure we can find a solution - together.
For those not liking Icinga, and preferring other Nagios forks - Shinken, Centreon-Engine, Opsview, ... - go for it! Competition is always good, but keep the information exchange flowing - as I do with Jean from time to time, regardless of C vs Python.
Last but not least - Netways is sponsoring our servers and invests man power into the project. As do other companies and Icinga supporters. That's how open source works today. I am happy that it is like that and not somewhat chaotic tool collection, failing to organize.
All available tools and subdomains are bound together as one and are dedicated to make devs and users life easy - to focus on the important things. And when we meet again - have time for some beers.
So, Icinga is alive and kicking. I am - still after 3 years. Are you?
regarding nagios patches...
I have to add one more thing.
Recently, I've sent a patch in the name of "Icinga Development Team" to the nagios developer lists. This time as team, because we did the patch together.
http:[email protected]/msg37118....
It got applied after a while.
Then Ethan Galstad "clarifies" on the Changelog.
I've no more to say - just: This is not the OSS spirit i wanna be part of anymore. Bye Nagios.
I can't really comment on that. But, what it _could_ be, is that they might well have a policy that states that external contributions need to have a "name" attached to it so that they can do code attribution without being vague!
Sure. It's everyone's personal opinion and decision to get an idea about the happenings. I am touched in many ways, so please forgive my attempt to shed some more light into that mess.
I'm shocked with the nagios-portal.org threat so no further explainations from my side. Thanks for your platform and allowing my comments to be shared to the public!
the infamous end
Please note that the well known nagios-portal.org is being threatened by Nagios LLC claiming the trademark on the domain.
This portal is the largest Nagios & Monitoring Tools Community Platform in the world with more than 10.000 registered users, and an active community amongst users and also developers - plugins, addons, cores.
The success of Nagios lives in the history of this portal ...
Due to that threat the new domain is now moved to http://www.monitoring-portal.org - make sure to update your bookmarks!
Keep this community alive!
All the best,


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What kind of maintenance should I do before putting my bike into storage for the winter? Are there any special considerations for storing it? Does temperature matter? If it's hanging on the wall from the rim all winter long, will that affect the shape of my rims? Any other winter storage advice would be nice to hear.
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Store your bike in a warm place and check the tire inflation periodically. If they deflate and it's cold your sidewalls are likely to crack when you pump them back up in the spring.
If hung, you may want to periodically take it down and spin the wheels (and the crank) and then hang it again. While it's unlikely that hanging the bike will result in pitting on your hub cones, spinning them a couple of times over the months can't hurt.
I store my bikes in my unheated garage and hang them from the ceiling. I hang them from the frame and not the wheels to make sure that there are no issues with the rims deforming over that time. Otherwise, I don't do much else to them. I don't go out of my way to clean them up as I'm never quite sure when I put them up if it's just for a week or the whole season. I've never had an issue come spring with any parts corroding or not working properly.
I have always stored my bike hanging from a beam in my attic. I remove my wheels, deflate the tyres and remove all items attached to the bike that are not integral (bike bag, lights, bottles, etc.). I hang the weels from seperate hooks.
I always leave a tray of dehumidifier near the location to make sure that any stray moisture in the air is soaked up.
I always remove my seat post and apply some form of a carbon paste/grease to the post before popping it back in.
Below taken from Calfee
"Thankfully! An opportunity to dispel the myth that one shouldn't grease a carbon post! I don't know where the myth started, but carbon composites are not affected by grease. Our advice is simple: If the seatpost fits tight, grease it. If it slips, de-grease it. As has been known for many years, when aluminum and carbon fiber contact each other, galvanic corrosion can start. That is why Calfee uses a fiberglass sleeve as a seat tube shim. Aluminum seat tube (or sleeve) and a carbon post will result in corrosion of the frame and possible seizure of the post within the frame. A carbon sleeve on an aluminum post will result in corrosion of the post. Salty environments accelerate this corrosion. Anodizing merely slows it down. About the only common chemical that will hurt carbon fiber is paint remover (which attacks the resin between the fibers). But there are many solvents that will dull a nice paint job. Craig Calfee"

subset: commoncrawl


text:
I am referring to a set of words that wouldn't make sense if one word or the other was omitted. Like barbershop quartet, or Cyber Security. What do you exactly call this set of words?
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A collocation is also an option, though the meaning is broader than requested.
A phrase.
This phenomenon is called a
which is both the name of the kind of bird and the name of the linguistic phenomenon because there is no such thing as a petrel of any other kind other than 'stormy'.
There are a number of examples here
It is also mentioned here at ELU.
The phenomenon could also be seen in single words which are formed from multiple morphemes, such as 'disgruntled', for which one of them never appears alone. Here is a Language log posting that is a quote of a passage intentionally filled with examples of these uncommonly exposed roots (mostly negatively prefixed words that have had the prefix removed).
From either of these lists, I don't see any examples where -neither- part stands alone.
The label for the concept that you are looking for is a
a phrase, collocation, locution (a sequence of words) that has more meaning to it than the combination of meanings of its constituents. That is, the literal meaning of its parts does not give the meaning of the entire phrase. There is a discussion here of the difference between a plain old expression and an idiom , and on set phrase.


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NCAT Event Dates Coming Soon!
Check back often for the latest details on all NCAT camps and events.
A&T Earns First-Ever NCAA Tourney Win
Tear up the record book. The North Carolina A&T men's basketball team ended the longest losing streak in NCAA tournament history with a 73-72 win over the Liberty Flames in front of 12,027 in a first round First Four contest at UD Arena


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expert advice MORE
Homeschooling vs. a Small Classroom Environment
Q: Our six-year-old grandson is having social problems at school. My daughter feels he would benefit from a smaller class in a specialized environment (10 kids, 4 teachers). Joseph's dad wants to have him homeschooled. We feel this will not help him in any way to develop his much needed social skills as well as keep him up to his peers in school grades.
A: It sounds like your family is going through a difficult time right now. Perhaps family counseling would help Joseph's mom and dad sort out their priorities. Have you done any reading on homeschooling? It appears you have many misconceptions about children who are homeschooled. Linda Dobson's The Homeschooling Book of Answers is an excellent book that will help put your fears to rest. The idea that homeschooled children have socialization problems is a fallacy. Homeschooled children interact with their family, their peers, and the community on a daily basis. They are free to learn at their own pace and study those subjects that interest them for as long as they like. They grow and develop according to their own inner timetable, rather than being ruled by peer pressure and outside influences. Studies have shown homeschooled children's social skills to be at or above their schooled peers. In addition, homeschooled children consistently outperform traditionally schooled children on standardized tests. Your grandson learned firsthand that the school environment did not provide the socialization he needed. He is not alone. Many children, for a variety of reasons, do not adapt well to a school setting. I have seen this with the families in my homeschool group. There are six boys and one girl who all did poorly in school. They were labeled, put in specialized classes, and, in three cases, medicated. After three months of homeschooling, each child showed remarkable changes. Within a year, they no longer needed medication, and were performing at or above grade level. These aren't isolated cases -- I hear similar stories from grateful parents around the country every day. These parents are grateful they took the first step and chose to homeschool -- their only regret is that they didn't do it sooner! Your grandson's father is very courageous to decide to try homeschooling. Why not support him in his efforts and see what happens? Remember, Joseph always has the option to return to school at a later date. At six years old, Joseph needs to regain his self-esteem and discover that learning can be fun. I wouldn't worry about grades or memorization of facts right now. Good luck!
More on: Expert Advice
Isabel Shaw is a freelance writer and homeschooling mom of 15 years. She and her husband Ray homeschool their two daughters, Jessica and Amanda. Besides being a contributor to FamilyEducation.com, Shaw has written for Home Education Magazine, The Link, Homeschooling Horizons Magazine, The Homeschool Gazette, and other publications.


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Baseball Readies for Carson-Newman This WeekendFebruary 14, 2014
ANDERSON, S.C. – After Anderson University baseball's midweek home-and-home series with North Greenville was postponed due to inclement weather in the Upstate, the Trojans look to return to action on Saturday when they welcome South Atlantic Conference opponent Carson-Newman to Anderson Memorial Stadium. A single game will be played on Saturday at 5 p.m. and a doubleheader will conclude the weekend on Sunday beginning at 1 p.m.
The Trojans
As AU dropped the first two games in the three-game set against the Lions last weekend, the bats came alive in the final game as the Trojans avoided the sweep with a 12-run fourth inning en route to a 13-1 rout in a six-inning contest. Every Anderson batter in the lineup reached base at least once as second baseman Kyle Bailey and outfielder Paul Como each notched two hits apiece as the Trojans posted their highest run total since scoring 13 against then-Augusta State on Feb. 14, 2013.
Senior outfielder Nathan Galliford posted two hits for the weekend, highlighted by his third home run of the season, which is now tied for the conference lead with Newberry's Eric Barbieri. With his eight RBI on the season, Galliford ties for third in RBI, trailing just Barbieri (11) and Wingate's Eric Serra (9) and currently ranks second in slugging percentage (.810).
On the mound, senior right-hander Thomas Goodman ranks sixth among pitchers in the SAC with two starts in ERA (1.64). Goodman, who earned the victory in Saturday's 13-1 win, tossed five complete innings, giving up just one run on three hits, yet striking out five Lion hitters.
The Eagles
Carson-Newman enters the week in a tie for first-place in the SAC standings after sweeping Brevard last weekend. The Eagles and in-state rival Tusculum were the only teams in the league to post a 3-0 record on the opening weekend of conference action. Overall, C-N carries a 7-1 record with its lone blemish coming on the final game of a three-game series with GRU Augusta.
Defensively, the Eagles have given up just 22 runs in their eight contests, as senior right-hander Daniel Sharp is one of just five pitchers in the league with two wins on the season but is the only one without a start on the season. Classmate and fellow right-hander Dustin Dunagan is one of three pitchers with a complete game under his belt, despite being getting the no-decision against GRU Augusta.
On the offensive side, Carson-Newman leads the league in doubles as junior second baseman Bo Ausmus is tied for the league lead with four on the season, joining Mars Hill's Phillip Carroll. For the season, Ausmus is hitting .281 with four RBI and five runs scored. Leading the team in hits is junior outfielder Evan Kirkpatrick going 10-for-30 (.300) for the year with three runs scored and four RBI.
The Series
Last season, the Trojans captured 2-of-3 from the Eagles in Jefferson City in the final series of the regular season. The two victories by AU last season marked the first two wins over C-N since joining the SAC in 2011.


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BELLAIRE - Bellaire Village Administrator Dan Marling told village council Thursday that the village received its loan from the Environmental Protection Agency and work on the village's water system will soon be moving forward.
Back in January, council accepted a bid of nearly $1.9M from Layne Heavy Civil Inc. out of Orleans, Ind. that includes construction of a collector well.
It will consist of a 13-foot diameter concrete caisson, three horizontal laterals, a masonry pump station building and 12-feet of water line.
Former water superintendent Sue Bell, who resigned her position effective May 1, previously stated that the village's raw water supply has dwindled over the years and previous attempts to fix the problem failed to prove fruitful.
This project should rectify that issue.
Jeff Vaughn, from Vaughn, Coast and Vaughn, notified Marling that construction should begin the week of May 13. The area near the village's boat ramp may have some traffic interruptions from time to time according to Marling during construction.
"We desperately needed this and we're looking forward to having it completed," Marling noted.
Councilman Jim Williams inquired as to a potential estimate of how long the project will take to complete.
Marling stated that it will likely take close to a year, but hoped that by middle to late October, the village should be able to start utilizing some of the water. It won't be completed at that point, but the new intake may be able to be used at that point.
The reasons motioned and voted upon for entering the executive session were "personnel" and "property.
The Ohio Open Meetings Act stipulates that property may be used as a reason for an executive session, but that it is for either the purchase or sale of property.
It also states that "it is not sufficient to simply state "personnel" as a reason for executive session, though the motion does not need to specify by name the person who is to be discussed."
A citizen, who is neither a member of council nor an employee of the village, was invited in to speak during the executive session.
While official minutes of the executive session are not recorded, this individual, after exiting the session, stated that one of the topics discussed pertained to zoning.
Zoning was not listed as a reason for the executive session, nor, on its own, is a legal reason to call said session under the Ohio Open Meetings Act.
"We wish them well and after 34 plus years of employment, Mr. Kilgore deserves some hurrahs for his retirement," Marling said. "I'd also like to thank Sue for her help. She came in at a time when former superintendent Kirk Baker passed away and helped support the village. We wish her well."
Marling reported that Barry Edwards has taken over as water superintendent.
The Knights of Columbus, which is offering to collect any appliances or other metal items, will come to pick up said items if necessary. Tires are being collected but Williams asked that a limit of four tires per individual be observed.
Hughes may be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com


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I'm using Bradford City. All the pics were pre-loaded so were already in the game, that's why I don't understand why they have dissapeared..
I am using other facepacks for other teams and the flex skin but have used them fine for a while now not had any problems before, just when I turned it on last time they had gone. I have tried refreshing the skin but no joy.
Thanks for your help :-)
I have just bought a Laptop and decided to try and install FM09.
On my main PC no issues
This lap top is a nightmare.
When I get to the activation I put the code in and I get this certificate nonsense cannot connect to internet, however I have explorer 8 and none of the things happen that occur in the suggested fix. When I click on link (https://fm2009.sa01.softanchorinsight.com/) all i get is a screen asking me to sign into softanchor, but I have no username or password, I've tried deleting old certificates. I've installed and uninstalled about 5 times, I've even tried stream and get same issue. Any thoughts
These peeps have had the exact same problem as me.
I just reinstalled my OS again for this godforsaken game. I know my machine can run it because it worked before. Have installed the latest driver for my graphics card, DXSDK March '09 and Microsoft Dot.Net framework.
Really hacked off. Have spent the best part of the past four evenings trying to sort this out. I know my PC is **** but as I said, it worked before. Guess I'm just going to have to go out and buy a new PC tomorrow because I can't be arsed with this anymore.
It had better work on the new one.
I'm trying to load my game and it keeps telling me The Save Game Could Not Be Loaded. I have 2 other games on the same computer and they are working fine, but this one isn't loading. Any way I can get around this?
Needless to say...i have a valid DVD and have inserted it, alas. I've also tried reinstalling the program - although steam makes this hard; only deleted local content and reinstalled.
The program used to work fine...now it, obviously, doesn't work at all...any help would be greatly appreciated!
Skinning Hideout as someone in there may have had a similar issue. I would suggest removing all custom graphics/skins for now (obviously not deleting them, just placing them elsewhere for now), and trying to re-load again via the preferences.
Let me know how you get on. Thanks.
THIS thread, else look in the Known Issues thread.
Either way, the more information you give me, the more chance there is of me being able to help! Thanks.
First of all you need to turn on hidden files and folders. Go to My Computer and at the top select 'Tools' the 'Folder Options'. The go to the 'View' tab and select 'Show hidden files and folders'
Windows XP:
1. Open "My Computer"
2. Navigate to : "Documents and Settings\
\Application Data\
3. Go into the "Sports Interactive" Folder.
4. Go to the "Football Manager 2009" Folder.
5. Delete the 'cache' Folder found inside here.
Wndows Vista:
1. Click "Start"
2. Click your username on the start Menu
3. Click on "AppData" and then "Roaming"
4. Go into the "Sports Interactive" Folder
5. Go to the "Football Manager 2009" Folder.
6. Delete the 'cache' Folder found inside here.
Again keep me updated as to how you get on. Thanks.
Is there a thread for suggestions to implement on FM10?
I have tried searching for many fruitless hours but it seems I am alone in having this problem.
It's not able to deactivate the code. Better still, it tells me that the code is already in use, but then it adds an activation to my account. And gosh jolly gee, that activation code can't be deactivated either. And Steam is not letting me fully uninstall this wonderful game and if I do it through my computer, Steam still thinks it's there. If I delete the certificate, I can get one of the activations to go away. I cannot convince your lovely security program to get rid of all my activations completely, installed or uninstalled. I've uninstalled, deleted certificates, and then reinstalled to the point of sheer frustration.
On the bright side, least you and OOTP had that amicable split so that I didn't have to jump through hoops to get that game going. I probably would have broken my computer in half if I had had problems like this for two games and had gotten such wonderful responses from all the companies involved. (Well to be fair to Steam, they did get back to me. They said they didn't handle this and referred me to your FAQ, where it tells me to uninstall, delete the certificate, and reinstall. Useful that was. ) Please, I'm begging you, help, someone. This game is the biggest timesink and I don't mean it's addicting to play- I mean I've wasted days of my life trying to get my $35 purchase or whatever it was to work.
Thanks in advance.
Hi, Im not sure if this has been brought up already on the FAQ, but I was advised to get help form here
I have a problem with both Football Manager 2008 and 2009 on my new laptop
08- I have installed fm08 before on this laptop and it worked perfectly. However, yesterday, I started up football manager 08, and during the startup, it came up with an error box, whic said, 'Unable to change to full screen'. The game then shut down when it got to the main menu screen. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling, as well as shutting down the laptop. I think my screen resolution has changed, but Im not sure why or how I can rectify it, or even what to rectify it to.
09- I installed fm09 on my computer because I was unable to get fm08 working. I installed it with steam and downloaded the game. However, when I asked steam to launch the game, it said 'Launchign Football manager 2009', and then did nothing. I then looked in my processes in task manager, and it said fm09 was running, but it wasn't. I then uninstalled it and tried to install it with unicon, but this didnt work either. Once again, I uninstalled it, and tried to install it wiht steam, but this time, when trying to download upgrades for steam, it said there was an error, soemthing abotu a code i think. I have tried to install other manager games, such as the old championship managers, and they havent worked because of something to do with the screen resolution also.
Im actually getting quite desperate, and im already quite annoyed because i was doing briliantly on fm08 game.
Please help, any feedback would be most welcome.
hi, sorry if this has been asked/solved before but ive just bought an asus eee pc 1000h, but having troubles running fm 2009. i will try to explain as clearly as possible:
downloaded game from steam that i had already authorised on old computer
changed my screen resolution to 1024x768
when i try to run the shortcut on the desktop, game appears to be booting up, but never does, even though the process is hogging 200000mb of my virtual memory according to task manager
i then downloaded .net framework 3.0 on advice of someone on an eee forum, still no joy
then, changed the shortcut target to "C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe" -small_screen -windowed" -small_screen -windowed as advised, but the game is still loading the process, but no fm window actually opening. no error messages either.
basically, im lost does anyone know how i could solve this problem?
thanks in advance
Known Issues thread for help with this issue. Let us know how you get on, thanks.
First of all you need to turn on hidden files and folders. Go to My Computer and at the top select 'Tools' the 'Folder Options'. The go to the 'View' tab and select 'Show hidden files and folders'
Windows XP:
1. Open My Computer
2. Navigate to : Documents and Settings\
\Application Data\
3. Go into the Sports Interactive Folder.
4. Delete the Football Manager 2009 Folder.
Wndows Vista:
1. Click Start
2. Click your username on the start Menu
3. Click on AppData and then Roaming
4. Go into the Sports Interactive Folder
5. Delete the Football Manager 2009 Folder.
Again keep me updated as to how you get on. Thanks.
'The save game could not be loaded.'
This happened me a few times now on several games.
I am on FM 09 and play with only 3 league running and a large database.
Before I finish my game I save game and save game as to be careful so that I haven't lost everything.
Could someone please help , it's getting really frustrating !
Can't continue with my saved game and just having to start a new game everyday and play it only for 1 day which is no good !
Thanks guys. Much appreciated.
With the XML parsing error, the target path is "C:\Program Files\Steam\steam.exe" -applaunch 10540, which is different to the one posted. When I paste in the one you posted or just add --reset_preferences, it says it cant find the path.
Any help?
I have done the above steps countless times.... and I am still having problem with activating the game. I am still facing with error: -[703] .... this is getting frustrating. Have you guys be able to solve the problem yet? Should I just return the game and download the pirated version with the crack along with it? It'll definitely be less frustrating than to support fm... thanks
Let me know how you get on. Thanks.
Last edited by Neil Brock; 15-06-2009 at 13:06.
hi i just bought football manager 09 using steam
every time i try to launch the game fm.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. we are sorry for the inconvenience.
can you help?
Well essentially what a 'back-up' is is a save game from before the save your currently playing with. For example, I 'Save As' after every single match I play, that means I have many 'back-up' saves in case my latest one corrupts or breaks or anything.
Your dxdiag, you can find this by going to Start -> Run -> Type Dxdiag
Then click 'Save All Information' and you can save the information as a text file
Last edited by Neil Brock; 15-06-2009 at 13:06.
Apart from that problem I have which won't let me load up my saved game. I have one other problem.
Once I start up a new game I get this , 'not well formed (invalid token) at line of Profile1.xml.
Any idea what that is all about ?
Thanks mate.
'not well informed (invalid token) at line 1 of profile. '
It means one of your 'Profiles' has been corrupted. Shut down FM, delete the cache files and this should solve this issue (but you'll also lose stored profiles that are selectable from the drop down menu when you start a new game).
Details on how to delete your cache files:
First of all you need to turn on hidden files and folders. Go to My Computer and at the top select 'Tools' the 'Folder Options'. The go to the 'View' tab and select 'Show hidden files and folders'
Windows XP:
1. Open My Computer
2. Navigate to : Documents and Settings\
\Application Data\
3. Go into the Sports Interactive Folder.
4. Go to the Football Manager 2009 Folder.
5. Delete the 'cache' Folder found inside here.
Wndows Vista:
1. Click Start
2. Click your username on the start Menu
3. Click on AppData and then Roaming
4. Go into the Sports Interactive Folder
5. Go to the Football Manager 2009 Folder.
6. Delete the 'cache' Folder found inside here.
Let me know how you get on, thanks.
Neil - What exactly is the 'cache folder.' Is it just everything in the Sports Interactive folder ? And how do I delete all that completely off my computer so I can install the game again from scratch. Thanks.
Tried un installing the game and did everything you said. But I still get the same xml error thingy come up in a box when I have started my new game , and the 'save could not be loaded.' Thanks for your help anyway Neil. Think I'll just keep the game uninstalled because no matter what i try it still doesn't work , lol.
Did you uninstall all the folders, or just the cache folder? Let me know.
Hi guys
I've still the problem 'xml parsing error'. I've tried thing for a several hours, but nothing seems to work. First the game run without any problems. I got XML errors like 'syntax error at line 1 of channel unit testing output.xml', 'not wel-formed (invalid token) at line 1 of channel-unit testing.xml', 'not wel-formed (invalid token) at line 1 of channel-OPEN_FILE_CHANNEL.xml etc.. I tried the solution with reset preference, but it don't work (error that the name can't be that)
Please, HELP ME!
Whenever I load a game, the message comes up and it goes out of full-screen modeSorry could you be a bit clearer, what exactly is your issue? Is it when starting Steam or FM? What process do you go through to get the error message and where did you previously post an error?
Let me know, thanks.
First of all you need to turn on hidden files and folders. Go to My Computer and at the top select 'Tools' the 'Folder Options'. The go to the 'View' tab and select 'Show hidden files and folders'
Delete the following folder:
XP: C:\Documents and Settings\
\Application Data\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2009\settings
Vista: C:\Users\
\AppData\Roaming\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2009\settings
This may solve some issues regarding the XML Errors, let me know how you get on. Thanks.
First i want to appologize for my English, hope you can understand anyway, im Swedish.
I have a huge problem, i have read the "knows problems thread" but nowere is there an answer of this, if there is somewhere, please link it to me. I have searched the webb and asked in the Swedish forums but no answers were to be found.
I have bought every single game in the series and i have never had problems until now.
Now to the problem:
A few days ago when i was launching the game i get the message "FM 09" is already running every single time, when is claery wasn`t. I then disaded to reinstall the game but now i dont get it to start, every time "Football manager 09 has stopped work and windows are searching for a solution" comes up.
I have tried everything, installed via steam and not, tried to installed my friends Cd but it doesnt work, my cd does work on his computer thoe!
I noticed that the FM icon isnt the usuall when you click on it, noe it is a "tools icon".
The installation says that the installation is finished but have some failes, read the Log. When i read the log its 1 minor fail in the :
Ytterligare information:FEL - class com.sigames.InstallAnywhere.WindowsGameExplorer NonfatalInstallException RegisterWithGameExplorer() failed: Failed to add game to Game Explorer
I have Vista. Someone, please!
My football manager game seems to only work when I am at home. I am
currently abroad and gives the error of:
information regarding the condition of fm.exe when the problem
occured; the operating system version qnd computer hardware in use;
your digital product ID which could be used to identify your license
and the internet protocol (IP) address of your cmputer.
How do I go about fixing this?
is there any way i can download the 9.3.0 patch without the torrent as i tried to use bittorrent last night and it told me it would take over a day surely there is an easier way???????
did you leave it settle down as when using bittorrents they can fluctuate in the time required to wait for the download but if you dont want to use bittoorent they try http://rapidshare.de/files/45876435/..._Installer.exe as i get it from there and on my connection speed i can download it in about 5 minutes or less
Hi there,
I have just been trying to get FM09 working on my Samsung NC10 via Steam, having successfully installed and played the game on my desktop months ago. I managed to install and activate the product just fine, but when I click on Launch, the sandtimer briefly appears but then nothing happens and the game doesn't load. I have noticed also that fm.exe remains in the processes that a running, and actually to end the process before I can try launching again. Still no luck. Any ideas? My laptop runs XP.
Thanks in advance.
Hi I'm controlling growing anger here so bear with me...
In November I bought FM 2009 and got a refund after getting severely infuriated by the activation issues. However, this morning I decided to rebuy 2009 due to 2008 boredom. However, I am still having problems. I own a Compaq Presario with no internet access so I had no alternative but to activate by phone. I complete the installation period and I get the message "Installation Complete!" I then click on the FM09 game icon to open it up and begin playing. Guess what? I get the "SoftAnchor" screen and it is asking me to begin the whole process again.
What do I do? This is infuriating, I have just finished GCSE's and would really like to be able to play the game that I've spent good money on. Please help. And SI, for god's sake, please, please, please, please,please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please,please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please please, please, please, please,please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please,please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please don't have activation in FM 2010!!!!!!!!
Many thanks for your help.
Well, 30h later and still no reply, another day wasted trying to get this game running, i have searched on the SI Forum but no solution for my problem.
there is nothing wrong with my computer, bought it the same day FM was released, Bummer!
I have set Windows to a pevious point when FM was working, but now it doesnt. All other programs runs smoth as a newoiled engine, Estside Hochey manager and FIFA, but not FM.
I have tried to delete all the Cache and Documentsfiles. BUT IT STILL DONT WORK. same fail every single time i try to install. Its rubbsih! give me a tip of what to do, or else i will demand a full refund and boycott this game for all eternaty!
Last edited by Bolsson; 17-06-2009 at 17:38.
Could you send a copy of your dxdiag to neil.brock[at]sigames.com and I'll look into it for you?
You can get your dxdiag by doing the following:
You can find this by going to Start -> Run -> Type Dxdiag
Then click 'Save All Information' and you can save the information as a text file
Let me know, thanks.
If this doesn't work I would suggest completely uninstalling the game once again, then running it without the disc by downloading it from Steam and then activating the game:
You can download the game in Steam without using the disc using the game code you have from your purchased game.
Download Steam from here - http://store.steampowered.com/about/
Install Steam on your computer
Once installed, open up Steam
Go to My Games
Go to Activate a product on Steam
Enter your Activation Code found on the back of the manual. (Use http://keylookup.fm2009.softanchorinsight.com/ to see you got all the 0's and o's right)
Steam should now download your game.
Let me know how you get on. Thanks.
Okay, there is a way of doing this, if you can access a PC with internet access and have a USB stick or some other way of transferring files to your non-internet connected laptop:
Please download the fix here:
http://www.footballmanager.com/fixv3.zip this is v8.0 - we haven't changed the url as other posts are linking
To use the fix, please do the following:
1) Download the file to your desktop
2) Unzip the contents of the file - You must unzip ALL of the files... (ActivatorDLL.dll, FootballManager2009.jpg and RunMe.exe)
3) Click RunMe.exe
4) Enter your license key under the panel that reads "Step 1"
5) Press the "Save" button
6) Save the "Request.txt" file to your desktop
7) In Internet Explorer - go to http://keylookup.fm2009.softanchorin...eactivate.aspx - You may also click the link under the panel that says "Step 2"
8) In the web page that you have opened, please use the "Browse" button to upload "Request.txt" to the server
9) Press "Upload" and upload the file to the server
10) The server will then ask you to save a file called "Response.txt"
11) Save this file to your desktop
12) Next, go back to the fix program. Under the panel that says "Step 3" press the "Load" button and then find Response.txt on your desktop, or wherever you saved it to in step 11, for Vista users the default is the download folder in Users Documents, for XP users the default is typically the desktop.
13) Once you have loaded the file - the application will tell you if you have been successful.
14) If you are successful - Please start your game.
15) If you are not successful - please email us the error code at email@example.com and we will continue to try and help you.
If you can manage this your game should run, please let me know how you get on. Thanks.
By some magic FM now seems to be working again, after a week of trying, i havent done anything of that you writed Neill, when i restart the computer today, it just worked. Happy as a kid! thanks for replying thou! I notice that it runs very slow but i dont know if i dare to reinstall it again now.
Greetings from a sunny sweden!
Does anyone have a solution for the whole changing view thing during matches. It gets sort of frustrating.
The view keeps on changing from the 2D (the one I prefer) to TV view 3D at different times. Most times before the match but it happens at halftime in full time every now and then too.
You are receiving an Error [-1003]
Fix: You are entering the key incorrectly please visit the following URL to correctly identify your key - http://keylookup.fm2009.softanchorinsight.com/
Error: You are receiving the Error Product Key already Active message
Fix: You need to delete the certificates and re-activate the game
1) On receiving the error, please uninstall the game
2) Please navigate to the following directory:
XP users: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2009 Certificate
Vista users: C:\Program Data\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2009 Certificate
3) Please ensure that it is the \certificate directory you are located in
4) Delete all content
5) Reboot the machine
6) Re-run the installation program and retry activation - ensuring you have 'verified' your key using the following website: http://keylookup.fm2009.softanchorinsight.com/
7) You should now be activated
had this pop up a few times my computer is a lot over recommended specs for fm and not changed or addedd anything to it been playing it for ages now suddenly popping up any help please.
played FM for a while now but once a while my pc crashes for random reason. It happened last night again but while i was playing a match.
Now this morning i get this message.
"not well-formed (invalid token) at line 1 of database_location.xml"
i think thats cuz i didnt quit the game properly as my pc crashed so now i can click on "Ok" then the game loads up but theres no saved games anymore, i have to start new one and not really up for that... ill have to do that if theres no other choise but i thought maybe someone could help me first.
Hi, I don't know if anyone can help me. I am trying to play my saved games from my XP computer on my Vista laptop. I have FM09 and the 9.3.0 patch installed on both machines. but when I try to play the game, it freezes while loading. I have read somewhere that you can try to create the same name directory that my XP installation has, but Vista doesnt allow for the Documents and Settings directory. It uses Users instead. So anyway, I created the same username in the Users directory, and copied all Sports Interactive contents to it, but it still crashes. Even if I change the default directory in FM, it still crashes.
Can anyone help?
when i go to open my game i get a message saying E:\perforce_data\FM\dev\projects\games\fm\branches \fm2009\patch3\sios\generic\actions\render_action_ manager.ccp, 46 running action: 0x0551c058, class SIOS::INITIALISE_SIGFX
_SHADER_ACTION then my game wont open i have tryin uninstalling and still nothing can any1 help please?????????
I'm experiencing severe lag in menus. The selection highlight trails the cursor by half a second, the menus don't respond or do so with a delay. It doesn't happen all the time but quite often nonetheless.
Now my system specs (athlon 3000+, 2 gigs of ram) are nothing to write home about but I'd expect problems to occur during a match or while calculating things, not when simply browsing through the game.
Anyone else had this problem/knows a solution? I'd appreciate even a pointer in the right direction, keywords such as slowdown, lag or menu aren't exactly the greatest thing to feed the search function if one's looking for a specific answer.
Everytime I enter a game and hit play the view mode goes into tv mode, and I have to select for myself another screen (stats or 2D) 'cause I just don't like the 3D view...how can I un-default it?
Edit: my bad, solved it...forgot about the view match option
Last edited by aemud; 21-06-2009 at 17:43.
Everytime i start a new game, after about a week i go to load the game and it says, Save game could not be loaded, so i have to start a knew game.
Any help?
I downloaded the knew patch but can't get it too work, i launch it but everything is the same, how do you get the 9.3 patch to work?
Well first of all you need to make sure you've downloaded the correct patch. If you are running FM via Steam it'll patch automatically, if it's via the disc you can download it via this link on rapidshare - http://rapidshare.de/files/45876435/..._Installer.exe
Once downloaded, you can run the .exe file and it'll find the game and all you'll have to do is click the 'update' button.
Let me know how you get on. Thanks.
Ive downloaded it, now how do you update it?
Last edited by Jack.B; 22-06-2009 at 16:52.
Double click the .exe file that you've got, then a box will appear. In the bottom right-hand corner you'll see an 'update' button - click it. Let me know how you get on. Thanks.
Still not working.
Having problems downloading and updating.
Does it matter where you download it too, as in the file.
Because once on rapidshare it tells you to browse for a file to download it to. (does it matter which file?)
Then when i click on the .exe file it takes me back too the start of rapid share, no box appears.
Is there another way of downloading apart from rapid share and steam?
And could someone give me screen shots of how to do it using rapid share?
Because this is really starting to P!SS me off!
Hi there, I have a problem with my fm game, whenever i click the shortcut on steam it says the game is unavailable please try again later. Similarly when I try to load up the game via a non steam application it says " This application has failed to start because saAuditMD.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem." Can someone helps me solve this problem. Thanks
You are receiving the error: 'This application has failed to start because saAuditMD.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem'
Fix: Please download the file from here and place in the following folder: C:\Program Files\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2009
Last edited by Neil Brock; 24-06-2009 at 13:55.
I have just tried what you suggested, when I extract the download with winrar I get a "WinRAR diagnostic message" with the following "http://downloads.sigames.com/download/saAuditMD.zip Cannot create saauditMD.zip access denied." What do you recommend I do now? Thanks for your quick reply I'd appreciate further suggestions.
Worked fine here, I'd suggest downloaded it again and extracting it into it's own folder. Let me know how you get on, thanks.
I`ve just tried it and it worked ok for me as well when you download the file right click on it and select the 3rd option down extract to saauditMD.
the go into that folder and just copy the file to the folder neil said
The saaudit download has worked however when I attempt to start fm via steam it still says the game is unavailable. Then when I try to start it offline it says that essential data is missing. What do you advise I do now? Thanks
I'd uninstall FM and Steam and re-install from scratch, sounds like there may be some Steam errors as well.
Let me know how you get on, thanks.
Yes I would suggest downloading said file and moving it onto disc. Whilst doing this I would also suggest doing the same for the 9.3 patch which I would very much recommend for the game. This can be downloaded via links found in this thread - http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=106355
ok, so i bought the game finally a few days ago and i have it installed properly as far as i can tell
i had a problem getting it to accept the key but the fix fixed that for me
the problem is that whenever i try to start up fm09, my computer turns off
at first i thought it was a power failure but it happens every time i try to start the game
i have updated all the drivers and my computer meets the system requirements
i have tried it without the patch and with the patch and it makes no difference
and i have looked everywhere for an answer but it seems like nobody else has this problem
well nobody apart from one guy who had a really old card
i only got mine last year though and it is well fit for fm09
so please, i am desperate now, can anyone help a fellow manager out?
I use a custom skin but the problem appears even with the default one. Sometimes the menus are completely fine, but I was unable to pinpoint when or why specifically.
In fact right now they are okay which is a bit puzzling since I have got a ton of FF tabs open and I'm installing something so the resource usage is high.
Not the most useful of descriptions, I know. And considering it doesn't seem to be directly linked with memory/cpu load I don't really expect a magical solution. Unless it's a well known issue and someone has dealt with it in the past.
in Error: (-821) how do i uninstall the game? ive been looking around and cant find it
Hi, I'm new here.
After reading through the best part of 51 pages, I am still no better off in solving the MAJOR problem I am having with FM2009.
I installed the game last week (through steam).
It got to just before season kick-off but it was running extremely slowly. So I bought an additional 512mb DDR RAM. ( I only had 512 ddr ram prior ).
I started a new game as I made some changes in the data editor and downloaded a facepack and logo pack through FM Base.
Things were working fine until the first friendly game. I keep getting kicked out either during or after the first friendly (sometimes it gives me tillthe second friendly).
This is extremely frustrating as I have spent HOURS searching the internet trying to find a solution and no-one seems to have an answer although its obviously a common problem!
I have uninstalled (complete uninstall (except deleting registries as I have no idea how)) the game about 12 times!!
I have tried installing with steam, without steam, deleting everthing from the apps folder (settings, cache etc).
I have tried a new game with small medium and large base. Without Italian Serie c (aparantly a problem).
I have checked the RAM and that seems to be fine. I only get problems with FM2009.
I really have come to the end of my patience as I have wasted hours without success.
I could really do with some help and i need to know where to find the solution and how to carry out a solution.
I would appreciate a quick response as im about 10 mins away from carrying out GBH on my pc
my computer specs are
Pentium 4 3.0 GHZ
120GB hard disk 7200 rpm ( I have 54 GB FREE )
512MB DDR memory ( I have also fitted an extra 512mb so 1GB essentially ).
SIS 661FX graphics cip on board ( also recently updated that driver ).
Im not sure how to tell exactly but I seem to be running microsoft. NET framwork 3.5 SP1.
In my control panel (add/remove) there is the above and also microsoft. NET framwork 2.0 service pack 2 and 3.0 service pack 2.
I have XP home service pack 3.
If you can please help me and let me know what I need to do and how to do it.
Many Thanks
Last edited by AHW1; 28-06-2009 at 16:18.
Dear SI games,
i got the Error : [-821]
i followed your steps, and when i re-installed the game it still asked me to put in my key code, i did and i got the Error again, please help me, i really want to play this game....
hi i have installed FM2009 and done the phone activation every thing went fine now when i try to run the game i get the following msg
fm.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close?also i get the facegen msg
anybody help
this has to be the worst site ever for help!