Developer's Notes

These "Developer's Notes", written by the principal PIKT developer, Robert Osterlund, partly chronicle PIKT Changes, and partly report old news. They will also provide additional examples and give you some insight into day-to-day PIKT operations.

Developer's Notes will typically, but not necessarily, chronicle the events and circumstances leading up to each release. So, for example, Developer's Notes 1.18.x describe the 1.18.0pre (beta) releases, and events following the release of the immediately previous version, 1.17.0.

Note that older developer notes are not irrelevant or outdated. Most of the things discussed in older notes still apply to the latest PIKT versions.

Release 1.19.x
doexec Statement [2007/04/17]
Variable Logfile Names [2007/04/17]
Urgent Mode [2007/01/22]
New piktc Options [2007/01/16]
Test Environments [2007/01/08]
Release 1.18.x
Sorting Alarm Messages [2004/11/16]
RPC Binding and Firewalls [2004/10/26]
piktc View Files Option [2004/10/26]
#unset & #unsetenv Directives [2004/10/26]
Setting Environment Variables [2004/09/27]
Release 1.17.x
#set, #setenv & #echo Directives [2004/09/07]
Restoring Backup Files [2004/08/25]
piktf Find File Utility [2004/07/19]
Command-Line Item Macros [2004/06/23]
Release 1.16.x
Missing Newline Parse Error [2002/10/28]
File Backups [2002/05/14]
Pikt Rule Sections [2002/03/14]
Multiple Alert Timings [2002/02/27]
#rule() Debug Function [2002/02/27]
System Patches [2002/01/22]
DNS Lookup Macros [2002/01/22/]
Multiple Home Directories [2001/11/29]
Disk Usage Macros [2001/11/29]
NIS Hosts File Problems [2001/11/29]
Process Time Limits [2001/11/16]
=chomp() macro [2001/11/16]
Disk Hogs [2001/11/16]
Including Processes [2001/11/16]
Release 1.14.x
Mail Macros [2001/06/07]
PIKT Installation and Setup [2001/06/07]
Release 1.13.x
Mailman [2001/04/19]
Process Macros [2001/04/19]
Some Useful Defines [2001/03/24]
Disk Macros [2001/03/24]
Paging [2001/01/30]
Checking File Status [2001/01/30]
File Backups [2001/01/29]

Release 1.12.x
NIS ypservers [2000/12/23]
Other Scripting Languages [2000/12/01]
Release 1.11.x
System Lists [2000/07/29]
NIS passwd [2000/07/12]
False Positives [2000/06/24]
Suspending Alarms [2000/06/19]
Print Spooling [2000/06/19]
Shared User IDs [2000/06/19]
Daylight Savings Time [2000/06/19]
Mailman [2000/06/17]
Release 1.10.x
Temporary Glitches [2000/05/10]
NIS Malfunctions [2000/05/03]
More imapd Storms [2000/04/28]
Archiving Mail Files [2000/04/28]
imapd Storms [2000/04/26]
Dead System Processes [2000/03/09]
=remind() macro [2000/03/01]
Forwarding Alert Email [2000/03/01]
Release 1.9.x
Logfile Time Stamps [2000/02/04]
Reminder Messages [2000/02/01]
Unwanted inetd Services [2000/02/01]
System Files Backup [2000/01/13]
Release 1.8.x
Alarm Order [1999/12/08]
Debug Alert Timing [1999/12/08]
Root Crontab Changes [1999/12/08]
Data Filtering [1999/12/07]
System Failures [1999/11/24]
System Downages [1999/11/17]
Release 1.7.x
Parse Errors [1999/10/01]
User Accounts [1999/09/27]
Filtering Alert Messages [1999/09/09]
Developing Alarm Scripts (part 2) [1999/09/04]
Developing Alarm Scripts [1999/09/03]
Verbose Messages [1999/09/03]
passwd Problems [1999/08/31]