MKS
Toolkit Release Notes
Version 8.0
MKS Software Inc.
12701 Fair Lakes Circle, Suite 350
Fairfax VA 22033-3831 USA
Support: +1-703-803-7660
+1-703-803-3343
http://www.mkssoftware.com
January 2002
Contents
MKS Toolkit 8.0
New
Solution
Increased Compatibility
New
Utilities
New APIs
New
Documentation
Updated
Utilities
Hardware and Software Requirements
Installing MKS Toolkit
Additional
Components on the MKS Toolkit CD
Uninstalling MKS Toolkit
Uninstalling MKS Toolkit
8.0
Uninstalling
Previous Versions of MKS Toolkit
Known Issues
Getting Started
with AlertCentre
Customer Support
Windows 95 Support
Additional MKS Toolkit Resources
Fixed Problems
MKS
Toolkit 8.0
MKS Toolkit 8.0 is the most feature-rich release that we have
ever made in our 15-plus year history, having spent the last year
in development. We are proud to bring you dozens of new features
and are equally proud that MKS Toolkit 8.0 marks the launch of
AlertCentre, a brand-new add-on to MKS Toolkit. Whether you are
new to MKS Toolkit or are one of our hundreds of thousands of
satisfied customers, you will find something new and exciting in
this release. The following sections provide an overview of the
new features in various categories:
New Solution
- AlertCentre. AlertCentre is a
cost-effective, easy-to-use monitoring solution for
ensuring the high availability of networks, applications,
and Internet/Intranet-based information systems. Built on
an integrated foundation for scheduling, alerting, and
automating repairs, AlertCentre lets you define monitors
that can observe, report on, and control the activities
of other programs or devices on your network so that you
can be sure that mission-critical applications are up and
running at all times. AlertCentre gives you and your
colleagues the ability to be notified in a timely fashion
if anything on your network is malfunctioning.
AlertCentre is available as an add-on to MKS Toolkit. For
more information, see the Getting Started
with AlertCentre section of these release notes and
the AlertCentre datasheet (http://www.mkssoftware.com/products/ac).
Increased Compatibility
- Windows XP. MKS Toolkit 8.0 features
full support for Windows XP Home and Professional.
- Visual Studio.NET. MKS Toolkit for
Professional Developers and MKS Toolkit for Enterprise
Developers now include support for Microsoft Visual
Studio.NET.
New Utilities
- Connectivity utilities. MKS Toolkit for
System Administrators and all higher products feature a
suite of connectivity utilities for improved
communications with remote systems. This suite includes
the existing remote utilities (rexec, rlogin, rsh, rsetup, rconfig,
and grconfig)
and services (rshd
and rexecd)
as well as the new secure utilities, telnetd service,
and xterm
terminal emulator.
The secure utilities (based on OpenSSH) provide a secure
link between machines and include:
secsh —
secure shell client
secshd —
secure shell service (daemon)
secsh-add —
add RSA/DSA identities for the authentication agent
secsh-agent —
authentication agent
secsh-keygen
— generate, manage, and convert authentication keys
secsh-keyscan
— gather secure shell public keys
scp — secure
remote file copy
sftp — secure
file transfer program
sftp-server —
server subsystem for sftp
For more information on the Secure Utilities, see the Getting
Started with Secure Utilities document available
from the Start
menu.
The telnetd
service is a full-featured Windows telnet service that
allows command line access from remote systems.
The xterm
X terminal emulator provides you with the industry
standard Xterm tool which works with Windows NT/2000/XP.
- New MKS Toolkit Scheduler with graphical and
command-line interfaces. MKS Toolkit for System
Administrators and all higher products feature the new
graphical MKS Toolkit Scheduler as well as a suite of
command-line scheduling utilities. Both the MKS Toolkit
Scheduler and the command-line utilities serve as
interfaces to the Windows Task Scheduler service, giving
all the advantages of a service-based scheduler while
providing additional scheduling and feedback options. The
command line utilities include:
at —
schedules a task to run at a specified time
batch —
schedules a task to run immediately
crontab —
lets you create, edit, and view a text file that contains
scheduling
information
for one or more tasks
taskrun —
runs a task and sends the output and errors produced by
the task to a specified
location.
This command is primarily intended for use by the other
scheduling
utilities
although it can also be used directly.
wts — similar
to the at utility, but allows you to schedule a task to
run on a remote machine
and to remove or edit existing tasks
- Tcl Scripting Language. MKS Toolkit for
System Administrators and all higher products feature the
Tcl (Tool Command Language) shell, tclsh. With its
simple yet powerful scripting capabilities, the Tcl shell
makes it easy for you to develop and change scripts
quickly and to conveniently tie together existing
utilities or programming libraries. MKS Toolkit for
Professional Developers and MKS Toolkit for Enterprise
Developers also feature the Tcl developer APIs which let
you embed Tcl in application programs.
Reference pages for Tcl can viewed with the man
command or as part of the MKS Toolkit Tcl Reference
which is available from the Start
menu. When using the man
command, you must specify the section as 1t for Tcl commands, and 3t for Tcl library
procedures to ensure that the correct reference page is
displayed. For example:
man 1t eval
displays the reference page for the Tcl eval command.
- GNU AWK. MKS Toolkit for System
Administrators and all higher products feature the GNU
AWK utility (gawk).
GNU AWK is an alternate version of the awk pattern
matching and scripting language used predominantly for
searching through and manipulating text-based files and
data. gawk
has been included to provide compatibility with other GNU
tools and ported scripts from a GNU environment.
- Event Logging. MKS Toolkit for System
Administrators and all higher products feature the eventlog
utility. With this utility, you can read, write, and
otherwise manipulate event logs on local and remote
systems.
- The install
utility. MKS Toolkit for System Administrators
and all higher products feature the install utility.
This utility is provided to improve the compatibility of
scripts and makefiles when porting from UNIX/Linux to
Windows. The install
utility creates directories on a file system and installs
files to a specified location.
- Other New Utilities. MKS Toolkit for
System Administrators and all higher products feature the
following new utilities:
hostinfo —
display name, IP address, and aliases of host
printenv —
display environment variables and their values
uptime —
display how long local or remote system has been running
New
APIs
- The wait3()
and wait4()
APIs. MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers
and MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers now include the
wait3() and wait4() APIs. This
inclusion reduces the effort involved in migrating UNIX
applications that use these APIs.
New Documentation
- Backup Solutions Guide. This
document describes the various archiving tools provided
with MKS Toolkit and how they can be combined with other
MKS Toolkit utilities to meet your backup needs. It can
be accessed via the Start
menu.
- Getting Started with Secure Utilities.
This document provides and introduction to using secsh and
other related utilities. It can be accessed via the Start menu.
- AlertCentre User Guide. This
document provides an introduction to AlertCentre, the
monitoring, scheduling, and alerting solution that is
available as an add-on for all members of the MKS Toolkit
family. It is only available when the AlertCentre add-on
is installed and can be accessed via the Start menu.
- MKS Toolkit Tcl Reference. This
online collection of reference pages describes the
features of the Tcl scripting language, including both
the commands built into the Tcl shell (tclsh) and the Tcl
developer APIs. It can be accessed via the Start menu.
- MKS Toolkit Perl Reference.
This online collection of reference pages describes the
features of the Perl scripting language. It can be
accessed via the Start
menu.
Updated Utilities
- Updated Perl. The perl scripting
language has been updated to version 5.6. A number of
additional modules are now also included.
- Unicode Support for the od and strings
Utilities. The od
(as well as hd
and xd)
and strings
utilities can now display the 16-bit subset of Unicode
characters.
- Clipboard-Handling Utilities Improved.
You can now instruct the wcopy
and wpaste
clipboard-handling utilities to wait for the clipboard to
become available (in case it is being accessed by another
program) with the new -r
and -t
options.
- smtpmail
Improved. The smtpmail utility
now features a -m
file option which allows you to send the
contents of the specified file as the text of
the message.
- Visual Pax Performance Improved. Several
outstanding issues with Visual Pax have been addressed to
improve the utility's reliability and performance.
- Expanded Use of PATHEXT
Environment Variable. The which, whence,
and test
utilities now use the PATHEXT
environment variable when determining whether or not a
file is executable. When the specified file name does not
exist, these utilities now check each extension in PATHEXT (in the order listed) to see if a file exists
with the specified name plus that extension.
In addition, the default value for the PATHEXT
environment variable has been expanded to include
extensions for awk,
sed,
and perl
scripts. It now includes the following extensions in
addition to any extensions specified in the Windows
NT/2000/XP PATHEXT
variable:
.com;.exe;.bat;.sh;.ksh;.csh;.sed;.awk;.pl
- GNU Make. GNU Make (gmake) is now
available in MKS Toolkit for Developers and all higher
products.
- The web
utility. The web utility is now available in MKS
Toolkit for System Administrators and all higher
products.
Hardware
and Software Requirements
- Select Add/Remove
Programs from the Control Panel.
The list of currently installed programs appears.
- Select Microsoft Internet Explorer and click Add/Remove.
A dialog appears prompting you for action.
- Select Add a
component to Internet Explorer. A
list of additional Internet Explorer components
appears.
- If you are running Internet Explorer 5+, select Offline Browsing Pack.
If you are running Internet Explorer 4, select Additional Explorer
Enhancements.
Alternatively, you can download Internet Explorer 5 or 6
and their add-ons from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie.
Without the AlertCentre add-on, MKS Toolkit products do not
have any particular hardware requirements. Any machine that is
sufficient to run the underlying operating system is sufficient.
AlertCentre, however, does have additional hardware requirements.
These are listed in the Getting Started with
AlertCentre section of this document.
Installing
MKS Toolkit
Before installing MKS Toolkit 8.0, we recommend that you uninstall
all previous and demo versions of MKS
Toolkit. If you have a previous version of MKS NuTCRACKER
Professional, we recommend that you uninstall
it, or install MKS Toolkit 8.0 on another machine.
When installing MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers or MKS
Toolkit for Enterprise Developers, the following additional
requirements apply:
- Microsoft Visual C/C++ (version 5.0 or later) must
already be installed on your system.
- You must install from an account with local or domain
administrator privileges. You do not need to be an
Administrator, but your login ID must be a member of the
local or domain Windows Administrators group before you
can install.
All MKS Toolkit products share a common installer. If you are
installing from a CD, insert the MKS Toolkit distribution CD; the
installer should start automatically. If you are installing from
an electronic distribution, run the self-extracting installer.
Click the Install Toolkit
button and follow the instructions on the dialogs that appear.
For information on installing the AlertCentre add-on, see Getting Started with
AlertCentre.
For step-by-step installation instructions and information on
administrative and silent installations, see http://www.mkssoftware.com/support/install.asp.
Additional
Components on the MKS Toolkit CD
The MKS Toolkit CD also includes a number of items that are
not installed as part of the normal installation procedure. These
are:
- The samples directory.
This directory contains a collection of sample source
code for use with MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers
and MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers.
- The redist directory. This
directory contains a collection of utilities and drivers
that may be needed to get full use out of MKS Toolkit.
This includes the most recent versions of the Jet
Database drivers , Microsoft Data Access Components
(MDAC), and Microsoft Management Console (MMC) as well as
Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Uninstalling MKS Toolkit
Uninstalling MKS Toolkit 8.0
To uninstall MKS Toolkit, use the following procedure:
- From the control panel, run Add/Remove
Programs.
- Remove MKS Toolkit 8.
- Remove SCO XVision Eclipse (if the XVision X server is
installed)
You must reboot your system before reinstalling MKS Toolkit.
Uninstalling
Previous Versions of MKS Toolkit
To uninstall a 7.x version of MKS Toolkit, run the TKUninstall
utility found in your system directory (you can find your system
directory with the windir
-s command).
Alternatively, you can uninstall the components manually with
the following procedure:
- From the control panel, run Add/Remove
Programs.
- Remove, in order, each of the following (if present):
MKS
Evaluation Guide
MKS Toolkit 7.x
MKS Platform Components 7.x
You must reboot your system before reinstalling MKS Toolkit.
Known Issues
The following known issues exist in MKS Toolkit
8.0:
- The MKS Toolkit Product Overview & Solutions
Guide states that the xterm utility
does not require an X server. This is incorrect. To use
the xterm
utility, you must have an X server, (for example, the
XVision X server provided with MKS Toolkit for
Interoperability and MKS Toolkit for Enterprise
Developers) installed on your system.
- When using the secsh
secure shell to connect to the secshd
service, you may find yourself working in cmd.exe rather
than one of the MKS Toolkit shells. This occurs when the SHELL
environment variable is not set on the system running secshd.
Normally, SHELL
determines which shell is used. When it is not set, the COMPSPEC
environment variable (which is normally set to cmd.exe)
is used instead.
- Under some rare conditions, Internet Explorer 5.x may
either refuse to submit data on a button push (typically
a save) or display a message that it cannot find the
server. Testing has shown that if you experience this,
upgrading to Internet Explorer 6 solves the problem.
- When installing AlertCentre on an NT 4 system, a dialog
may appear indicating that _lc_collate is not in MSVCRT.dll when the
installer attempts to start the MKS Simple Web Server
near the end of the installation procedure. If you see
this dialog, restart your system and try running the MKS
Toolkit (or AlertCentre Add-On) installer again..
The likely cause of this error is that version 4.2 or
earlier of MSVCRT.dll
was installed on your system and you needed to update the
Jet drivers. While the installer for the Jet Drivers
updates MSVCRT.dll
to version 5.0, it does not inform you that you need to
restart your system.
- In AlertCentre, do not uncheck Run in Hidden Window
for a schedule when running as LocalSystem. Doing so
causes the schedule to never run.
Getting Started
with AlertCentre
AlertCentre is a monitoring solution for System Administrators
and other IT professionals that need to ensure the high
availability of network-based resources such as Web sites and
email servers as well as disk space and remote access facilities.
AlertCentre enables System Administrators to define monitors that
can observe, report on, and control the activities of other
programs or devices on your network so that you can be sure that
mission-critical applications are up and running at all times.
AlertCentre gives you and your colleagues the ability to be
notified in a timely fashion if anything on your network is
malfunctioning.
System Requirements
- Windows NT/2000/XP Professional, Server, Advanced Server
or Terminal Server editions. AlertCentre is not supported
on Windows 95/98/Me and XP Home.
- Additional memory of 32-64 MB over operating system
requirements is recommended. Memory requirements vary
depending on the number of simultaneous monitors running
and the frequency of the polling interval.
- A minimum CPU speed of 500 MHz is recommended.
- Network connection.
- MKS Toolkit for System Administrators Version 8.0 or
higher.
- Internet Explorer Version 4.0 or later (for Windows Task
Scheduler).
- An HTTP 1.1 enabled Browser with JavaScript 1.2 enabled.
- Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) AlertCentre has
been tested against Version 2.6, although earlier
versions are likely to work, 2.6 or later is recommended.
- Microsoft Jet Database support.
- Optional Microsoft Management Console (MMC) version 1.0
or later.
- Optional similarly configured machine as a replication
partner.
- Optional phone modem for contacting pagers.
Most versions of Windows 2000 and XP come with Internet
Explorer 4 (or later), MDAC, Jet and MMC pre-installed. If these
are not installed, they are available on the distribution CD or
can be downloaded from the Microsoft web site. The installation
of these components is not integrated into the AlertCentre
installer. The installer does, however, list all the missing
pieces. These pieces can then be installed from the MKS Toolkit
CD (or the Microsoft web site) before resuming the AlertCentre
installation.
While not required, we recommend installing AlertCentre on a
server and using a dedicated machine for the Primary.
Installation
Before installing AlertCentre, make sure that
you have up-to-date versions of the MDAC and JET drivers
installed. The versions that shipped with Office 97 are not
sufficiently up-to-date; the Office 2000 versions are. Up-to-date
versions of these drivers are provided in the redist directory of
the distribution CD.
AlertCentre can be installed as part of the standard MKS
Toolkit documentation (see Installing MKS
Toolkit) or it can be installed separately, after MKS Toolkit
has been installed on the machine.
If you are installing from a CD, insert the MKS Toolkit
distribution CD; the installer should start automatically. If you
are installing from an electronic distribution, run the
self-extracting installer.
Click the Install
AlertCentre button and follow the instructions on
the dialogs that appear.
The installer also creates three standard schedules, secures
access to the configuration console and the COMponents, creates a
local group called AlertCentre Administrators
and creates an empty configuration database ready to use the
AlertCentre.
The actual installation of AlertCentre is now complete and the
AlertCentre User Guide will be available from the Start menu. Chapter
3 of this document, "Getting Started", gives complete
instructions for configuring AlertCentre and creating a simple
monitor.
For step-by-step installation instructions and information on
administrative and silent installations, see http://www.mkssoftware.com/support/install.asp.
Customer
Support
Contact MKS Software customer support at:
Web Site: http://www.mkssoftware.com/support
Online Request Form: http://www.mkssoftware.com/support/support.asp
E-mail: mailto:tk_support@mkssoftware.com
Telephone: +1-703-803-7660 (9:00am to 7:00pm ET, Mon-Fri,
except holidays)
Fax: +1-703-803-3344
Windows 95 Support
MKS Toolkit 8 is the final version of the MKS Toolkit that
will be supported on Windows 95. Support for Windows 95 will be
available until January 31, 2003.
Additional MKS Toolkit Resources
There are several other sources for additional information
about our MKS Toolkit products.
We have general product information, including technical
specifications, detailed utility listings, and datasheets at:
MKS Toolkit Product Information: http://www.mkssoftware.com/products
We offer a resource kit including example scripts, additional
utilities, more tutorials, and a wide variety of other useful
information at:
MKS Toolkit Resource Kit Page: http://www.mkssoftware.com/reskit
We have a number of additional articles, tutorials, and white
papers about using features of the MKS Toolkit at:
Through the years, we have accumulated a lot of technical
details about the MKS Toolkit products and have put this
information in a searchable database at:
MKS Toolkit Knowledge Base: http://www.mkssoftware.com/support/kb
Our customers commonly ask certain questions. These questions
and their answers are in our Frequently Asked Questions pages at:
MKS Toolkit FAQs: http://www.mkssoftware.com/support
Fixed Problems
There were a number of problems fixed in MKS Toolkit 8.0.
These are listed at: